Field Building
Building a strong feedback field
We are committed to building a community of stakeholders using similar approaches to make the use of high-quality listening and feedback in the service of equity standard practice in the social sector.
While we have other defined areas of focus, such as experimenting and innovating around creating more meaningful relationships between funders, nonprofits, and the people and communities they seek to serve, we see field building as an important frame that encompasses much of our work. Our research, funder-listening, and international initiatives, for example, are all part of building a strong field. Here, we share some of the field-building work that undergirds and advances these and other efforts.
Infrastructure Grants
Shared Insight has three primary feedback field infrastructure partners.
Listen4Good
Listen4Good is a capacity-building program that has partnered with nearly 130 funders to sponsor more than 630 nonprofits in building high-quality feedback loops that advance equity, inclusive practices, and authentic client partnerships. With our support, Listen4Good has grown into a free-standing initiative offering fee-based programs across the country.
Feedback labs
Feedback Labs is a convener, connector, and hub of knowledge, tools, and resources to accelerate the culture of listening and co-creation among funders, practitioners, and the people they seek to serve. With our support, Feedback Labs is building its capacity to convene people, catalyze collaboration, disseminate findings/good practices, and strengthen the feedback field.
YouthTruth
YouthTruth is a national survey project run by the Center for Effective Philanthropy focusing on gathering feedback from students nationwide in grades 3 through 12 for use by school leaders and education funders to make better decisions that lead to better outcomes for students. With our support, YouthTruth continues to serve more school districts and build toward a sustainable financial model.
Feedback Champions Fellowship
Shared Insight supports the Feedback Champions Fellowship in partnership with Feedback Labs, with the goal to diversify voices in the feedback field by identifying and supporting emerging leaders. During a one-year fellowship, participants receive training, mentorship, and opportunities for skill-building, connecting, public-speaking, and writing.
The first cohort, chosen February 2022, is comprised of nine mid-career leaders at nonprofits or foundations who have demonstrated a commitment to incorporating the voices of the people they seek to serve into their organization’s decision-making.
Irritants for Change
The Irritants for Change is a group of leaders from 11 key philanthropic infrastructure organizations who came together in 2018 to make listening and responding to constituent feedback the norm in the social sector. Representatives from Shared Insight’s Listen4Good feedback initiative participate and Shared Insight contributes staff time, resources, and financial support.
Among the group’s accomplishments so far are:
Core Principles of Constituent Feedback
Eight core principles, developed by the Irritants with input from the feedback community, demonstrate how to think about and implement feedback in ways that foster effective, equitable, and safe listening. The principles are intended to be enhanced over time as listening and feedback work proliferates in the social sector and beyond. Send comments and suggestions to principles@feedbacklabs.org.
How We Listen
How We Listen is an initiative encouraging nonprofits to reflect on, improve, and share their feedback practices by incorporating new reporting measures into GuideStar’s nonprofit profiles and Charity Navigator’s rating system.
Strong Field Framework
We are using the Strong Field Framework developed in 2009 by The Bridgespan Group and commissioned by one of our core funders, The James Irvine Foundation, to assess our progress in building the feedback field.
Feedback Field Assessment Findings
A main focus of Shared Insight’s theory of change is building a feedback field to support the use of high-quality feedback among nonprofits, foundations, and the people they seek to serve. In this report, Shared Insight’s evaluation partner ORS Impact examines the status of the feedback practice field, defining it, then calling out its strengths, gaps, and opportunities.
Accomplishments and Lessons Learned
This report assesses Shared Insight’s work, accomplishments, and challenges during its Phase 2, 2017 – 2020. Among other examinations, the report looks at the strategies, approaches, experimentation, and outcomes around Shared Insight’s feedback-practice work, including field building,
Learning Groups
Our learning groups offer new ways for additional staff members from our core and sidecar funders to come together to explore special topics at the intersection of the work they do and the collaborative’s priority areas and interests.
Listening, Learning, and Evaluation Group
In an effort to continue building the feedback field and support foundations in walking the walk, Shared Insight invites evaluation and learning officers from our partnering foundations to come together to discuss how listening to feedback can inform and be integrated into grantmakers’ evaluation efforts. The Listening, Learning, and Evaluation Group meets virtually once a month and includes evaluation and learning colleagues from Barr, Blue Meridian Partners, Ford, Hewlett, Hilton, Irvine, MacArthur, Moore, Omidyar, Packard, and Target foundations. Please contact Penny Huang at penny@fundforsharedinsight.org for more information.
Grantee Feedback Learning and Action Group
The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s Grantee Perception Report (GPR) is one of the most robust grantee feedback tools available. Many of Shared Insight’s partnering funders use the GPR. In this group, we invite them to come together and support one another in the full feedback loop, which includes making sense of their results, responding to the feedback in meaningful ways, and closing the loop with grantees. The group meets virtually several times a year and includes representatives from Ford, Hewlett, JPB, MacArthur, Margaret A. Cargill, Omidyar, Packard, Sobrato, Target, and W.K. Kellogg foundations who are responsible for their foundation’s GPR feedback loop process. Please contact Jonathan Brack at jonathan@fundforsharedinsight.org for more information.
Participatory Philanthropy Committee
Building on the work of Fund for Shared Insight’s multi-year Participatory Climate Initiative, this group offers our partnering funders space to further learn about and experiment with participatory practices throughout the philanthropy process, including in grantmaking, strategy development, and evaluation. The group will also explore other interrelated equity-focused approaches, lenses, and practices, such as trust-based philanthropy. The goal is for funders to leverage what they learn to advocate for and implement more participatory practices within their own organizations and to act as participatory philanthropy ambassadors in the field at large. Meetings take place quarterly and include representatives from the Cargill, Kellogg, MacArthur, Moore, and Packard foundations. Please contact Katy Love at katy@fundforsharedinsight.org for more information.
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Sarah is passionate about evaluation – a systematic method that combines inquiry and the strategic use of data to facilitate better decision-making and ultimately greater impact for social change. A respected facilitator, trainer, and coach, Sarah helps organizations transform evaluation work into broader learning initiatives that help define next strategies and spur new understanding about sustainability and capacity building. She is currently the CEO of ORS Impact.
Lissette, managing director, portfolio strategy and management at Blue Meridian Partners, provides strategic and executional leadership on critical business priorities and leads innovation efforts which will expand Blue Meridian’s work as it evolves. Lissette additionally oversees the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation’s remaining work on the Youth Development Fund and PropelNext. Before joining EMCF in 2010, Lissette held senior leadership positions at YouthBuild USA and the Boston Foundation, and was the founding executive director of Casa Nueva Vida, a shelter for homeless Latina women and their children.
Melinda guides and facilitates Fund for Shared Insight’s operations, communications, grantmaking, evaluation, and more. As an independent consultant to senior leadership at philanthropic organizations around the country, Melinda promotes, crafts, and implements strategies for effective philanthropy. Prior to starting her consulting practice in 2003, Melinda co-founded and ran REDF, a social-venture capital fund; served as a manager at a national healthcare nonprofit; and worked as a management consultant. She enthusiastically brings her unique combination of business, leadership, evaluation, and management skills to helping mission-oriented organizations meet their goals, care for people, and better the world in which we live.
Rick is responsible for developing and executing communications strategies to support Fund for Shared Insight’s goals, which include expanding the number of nonprofits and funders that use listening and feedback to inform and improve their work and building a strong feedback field. After serving as vice president for programs and communications at the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation from 2010 to 2017, Rick launched an independent consulting practice focused on philanthropy. Rick co-authored the Daring to Lead 2006 and 2011 national studies of nonprofit executive leadership, and has been a contributor to The Chronicle of Philanthropy. He currently serves on the boards of the Community Foundation for the Central Blue Ridge, the National Center for Nonprofit Enterprise, and The Highland Center, a multi-tenant nonprofit community center serving rural Virginia.
Gita helps build the capacity of Fund for Shared Insight’s team to integrate an equity, diversity, and inclusion lens into all of its work. She publishes and presents extensively on racial and social justice, and consults regularly to foundations, funder networks, advocacy organizations and coalitions, and leadership development programs around the country. Check out Gita’s recent TEDx Talk, “Leading for Equity,” and her blog on race and parenting.
Jonathan supports Fund for Shared Insight’s leadership team in engaging funders in adopting high-quality listening and feedback practices. For more than 20 years, he has worked at the intersection of youth development, education, and workforce development. He began his career as the founding director of an academic mentoring program, Berkeley Scholars. Later, Jonathan was part of the founding team at CODE2040, a nonprofit focused on increasing the participation of Black and Latinx people in tech. He has also worked on capacity-building, leadership development, and equity, diversity, and inclusion at Tipping Point Community. Most recently, he was the director of Collaborative Impact at the Foundation for California Community Colleges.
