L4G Nonprofit Application OPEN (archive, 2017)

How Nonprofits Can Participate in 2017

We are thrilled to announce we will be offering up to 75 Listen for Good grants in 2017.

In order to apply to participate in Listen for Good, a nonprofit must be nominated by a current funder (existing or new). If the nonprofit(s) a funder nominates is selected to participate in L4G, the nominating funder will contribute $15,000 of the $45,000 grant total for each nonprofit selected.* Selected grantees will receive a $45,000 grant over two years: $30,000 paid the first year and $15,000 the second year.

We will accept proposals from funder-nominated nonprofits until Friday, May 26, 2017 at 11:59pm Pacific Time. There will be several informational webinars offered to answer applicants’ questions. Participation in these webinars is optional and will not influence funding decisions.

* Grantees that are nominated by Shared Insight Core Funders are fully funded by the core funder.

Proposal Selection Criteria

We will assess proposals received in response to the request for proposals based on the criteria below.

Importantly, this grant opportunity is open to nonprofits located anywhere in the 50 United States serving domestic beneficiaries and working in any issue area, as long as the effort is customer-facing. Nonprofits need not have experience collecting feedback from the people they seek to help in order to apply, but they do need to demonstrate a commitment to collecting and using beneficiary feedback going forward.
THRESHOLD CRITERIA

• Applicants must be nominated by a current or new funder who supports their participation, and who agrees to contribute $15,000 to Fund for Shared Insight’s Listen for Good initiative in support of the grant.
• Applicants must be a U.S.-based, 501(c)(3) public charity whose work is focused domestically. Its beneficiaries for this initiative must reside in the 50 United States.
• Applicants must have a minimum annual budget of $500,000 in the current (2017) and previous (2016) fiscal years.
• Applicants must serve at least 100 beneficiaries annually and have intentions to survey a minimum of 50 respondents for each cycle of Listen for Good.
• Applicants must serve, and plan to implement feedback loops with, clients whose voices are least heard. For example, these might be families visiting food pantries, youth attending afterschool academic and enrichment programs, residents living in public housing, recent immigrants using legal-aid services, or individuals participating in job-training programs. (Please see FAQ for more detail on what this does — and doesn’t— mean.)

ADDITIONAL SELECTION CRITERIA AND EXPECTATIONS

• Organization demonstrates commitment to design and implementation of high-quality beneficiary feedback loops, defined as:
  – Data are collected regularly (at least 2x/year, ideally more often);
  – Response rate over the course of the year is substantial (targeting 60-80%);
  – Data are used to inform organizational practice (and ideally lead to programmatic changes); and
  – Staff close the loop with those who provided feedback (how this is done will vary by organization).
• Organization embraces use of the standardized question set and data collection via the SurveyMonkey platform; participation in technical-assistance offerings provided through L4G; contribution of anonymized data to benchmarks; and sharing data and lessons with Shared Insight and its nominating funder.
• Organization’s leadership team demonstrates commitment to engaging in the downstream activities associated with implementing high-quality feedback loops, including:
  – Using the data for ongoing improvement
  – Communicating and advocating the value of beneficiary feedback to staff and other stakeholders
  – Dealing with hard situations that could arise from receiving or responding to feedback
  – Closing the loop with beneficiaries
• Organization has sufficient capacity to execute on the proposal and to participate in Listen for Good technical-assistance sessions (group and individual) and Fund for Shared Insight’s evaluation of the project.
• Organization can collect data in English, Spanish, Chinese (traditional characters), or Vietnamese. If organizations wish to collect data in other languages, they must manually enter data into a pre-programmed survey in one of the above four languages on SurveyMonkey.

Informational Webinars for Nonprofit Applicants

In order to be as clear as possible about our criteria for the Listen for Good requests for proposal (RFP), we are holding a series of open conference calls to hear your questions and provide as many answers as possible. Based on previous webinars, we are updating our frequently asked questions (FAQ) documents that will be provided above. Please read these FAQ first before asking your questions via email or the conference calls to make the best use of everyone’s valuable time. Thank you!

• Tuesday, April 18, 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern – closed
• Tuesday, May 9, 12pm Pacific/3pm Eastern – closed
• Wednesday, May 17, 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern – closed
• Monday, May 22, 11am Pacific/2pm Eastern – closed

How to Learn More

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Contact Us with your feedback or questions