Listen to inform measurement, learning, and evaluation

There are many ways of knowing. Listening and feedback practices produce knowledge that is just as valid as data from other monitoring and evaluation activities, and should be a critical component of your approach to measurement, learning, and evaluation.

New & Noteworthy

After participating in Listen4Good, REDF incorporated some of the Listen4Good survey questions into a multi-year study conducted by an outside research group evaluating the effectiveness of REDF’s job-preparation interventions. REDF also followed up by seeking additional feedback from employees at the social-enterprise businesses it supports.

Omidyar Network worked with 60 Decibels (formerly Lean Data) to collect feedback — through phone interviews and online surveys — from 4,800 clients involved with 24 organizations in Omidyar’s education portfolio around the world. Among other findings, the data showed that clients of ed-tech organizations were most concerned with the depth and variety of content and the user experience, whereas clients of early-education organizations wanted wider choices in content and were most focused on the quality of the content. Omidyar shared these insights with other players in the sector and used them to advise their investees and guide their own future investments.

Get inspired by this collection of ideas to spark the changes you want to see.

Real-life examples highlight practices and policies that value lived expertise, improve grantmaking, and advance equity.

About this collection

We offer a range of examples because there are no one-size-fits-all solutions; and we share them in a menu format so you can pick and choose what’s interesting or relevant to you. We don’t rank the practices or the organizations employing them or intend to signal that any featured funder has listening figured out or listens well across the board. Each example represents only a moment in time — a practice one of your peers told us (or an intermediary) about, and that we hope might inspire you to enhance your own listening work.

We encourage you to examine the menu with a willingness to turn kernels of ideas into something right for you. Remember to assess your organization’s understanding of the values, commitment level, and resources needed to implement high-quality listening and feedback practices. For more information on preparing to incorporate new practices or programs, check out our Participatory Philanthropy Toolkit’s Funder Readiness Assessment.