Support grantees to listen well
Funders can support grantee efforts – and explore how listening can inform their own grantmaking work – by sponsoring nonprofits to participate in Listen4Good, a feedback capacity-building program, or make other capacity-building grants.
Funders can also promote and support listening by signaling to grantees that meaningfully engaging with impacted people and communities is an expected standard. Make sure you are working with grantees around this issue in the spirit of partnership and with serious intentions to also use what you learn to change your own practices.
When NEPA Funders Collaborative organized in 2019, it set the goal of raising $75,000 from its members to support five nonprofits to participate in Listen4Good’s co-funded grant program. When $90,000 was collected, the group set aside the additional money for mini-grants to help pay for changes the nonprofits might implement in response to client feedback.
When Arrow Impact paid for a grantee to participate in the feedback capacity-building program Listen4Good, it also provided a direct grant to the nonprofit to cover the staff time associated with participation, which includes developing, administering, and analyzing client-feedback surveys.
Q: Please describe how voices of historically excluded groups and/or individuals with lived experience are sought out and reflected in program decision making.
Q: To what extent do you let those who provided feedback know how their input was used?
Q: To what extent does your organization listen to and obtain feedback from those you serve?
Q: Please describe how voices of historically excluded groups and/or individuals with lived experience are sought out and reflected in program decision making.
Q: To what extent do you let those who provided feedback know how their input was used?
Q: To what extent does your organization listen to and obtain feedback from those you serve?
Q: Please describe how voices of historically excluded groups and/or individuals with lived experience are sought out and reflected in program decision making.
Q: To what extent do you let those who provided feedback know how their input was used?
Q: To what extent does your organization listen to and obtain feedback from those you serve?
NEPA Funders Collaborative, a consortium of grantmakers in Northeastern Pennsylvania, co-funded a number of nonprofits participating in the Listen4Good feedback initiative. 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 client feedback.
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.
During a site visit to a nonprofit that had applied for a grant to pay for security upgrades at its facility, the Plough Foundation suggested the nonprofit conduct informal surveys among staff, volunteers, and clients before and after the upgrades to inform plans for changes and then gauge how they were received.
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.
