Tools & Resources to Shift Power to Communities
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Looking at your role/function within your foundation.
What are listening practices that can shift power?
Assess how you are listening through a set of reflection questions.
Build nonprofits' capacity for systematic feedback loops
Funders can listen by building the capacity of their nonprofit partners to implement high-quality, systematic feedback loops with the people they serve. More than 130 funders have sponsored their grantees to participate in Listen4Good, a program we spun out in 2023 that helps nonprofits gather data on client experience to improve outcomes and advance equity. Listen4Good also helps funders tap into community voice by coordinating learning cohorts and creating customized client feedback reports to promote funders and grantees cooperatively reviewing the data.
These kinds of listening opportunities can enhance partnerships with nonprofits and allow funders to hear more directly from the communities they seek to serve.
Get going with these tools and resources
Feedback Labs incentivizes organizations to build strong feedback loops, provides tools and training to make gathering feedback common social-sector practice, and supports a growing community of feedback practitioners, funders, and researchers.
Through Listen4Good, your foundation can support nonprofit partners to gather data on community experience to improve outcomes and inform your grantmaking.
Get inspired by what other funders are doing
Charles Schwab Bank sponsors grantees to participate in the client-feedback survey program Listen4Good and pays additional grant money to cover the staff time associated with participation. It also supports the nonprofits to collaborate in their feedback work and share key learnings with each other and with Schwab Bank.
For example, the bank has partnered with Communities Foundation of Texas and United Way of Tarrant County to sponsor a cohort of five human services nonprofits in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) area to participate in Listen4Good’s capacity building program and learning community. The DFW community convened five times throughout the 18-month program, covering topics including survey design, strategic planning data, and feedback system sustainability.
Elaina Mulé, community development at Schwab Bank, writes that the learning community allowed the bank “to gain new insights on community needs while developing deeper relationships with our grantees.”
The Barr Foundation and The Boston Foundation hosted a one-day New England Listen4Good Gathering in partnership with Philanthropy Massachusetts to connect, learn, and build momentum for funders and nonprofits in the area implementing high-quality feedback loops. Similarly, the Mary Black Foundation, Episcopal Health Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, and Virginia Piper Charitable Trust are among other funders that have hosted one-time convenings of their foundation staff and funded nonprofits working on client feedback efforts.
The Northeast Pennsylvania Funders Collaborative, a consortium of regional grantmakers, sponsored a number of nonprofits to participate in Listen4Good’s feedback program. The consortium — spearheaded by the Moses Taylor Foundation — held quarterly convenings for funders and nonprofits to share their progress and learnings around their efforts to collect and use community feedback. The funder collaborative also distributed mini-grants to help pay for the improvements that grantees implemented in response to community feedback.
Explore this menu to spark the changes you want to see.
Mix and match to find the examples, resources, and reflections best suited to help you and your organization shift power to the people and communities at the heart of your work.
Have questions about the menu or ideas for resources or examples?
Please reach out to our communications manager, Debra Blum.
