Fund for Shared Insight and CFLeads co-hosted this webinar to introduce community foundations to Shared Insight’s Listen4Good, an initiative designed to help organizations build high-quality, client-focused feedback loops.

Valerie Threlfall, managing director, Listen4Good, shared details about the two Listen4Good opportunities now available this summer — an 18-month co-funded, capacity-building grant program and a new, streamlined offering, Listen4Good Online+, for organizations interested in working more independently. Community foundations and other funders that signed the Council on Foundations’ COVID-19 philanthropy pledge were especially encouraged to consider a special offer to participate in Listen4Good Online+ as a way to help fulfill their commitments to listening and feedback.

Jennifer Aronson, associate vice president for programs, The Boston Foundation, shared her experience sponsoring nonprofits participating in Listen4Good. She talked about how the feedback initiative has affirmed the foundation’s shift “from transactional grants to transformational partnerships,” helped prioritize efforts to “get proximate” to and learn from the communities it serves, and readied it to more effectively and equitably respond to today’s crises. 

Melinda Tuan, Fund for Shared Insight’s managing director, moderated the discussion, which included an introduction from Deborah Ellwood, president and CEO, CFLeads.