With summer in full swing, things continue to heat up at Fund for Shared Insight with new leadership, new grants, new informational webinars, and a new analysis of our grantees’ feedback work. Here’s a quick look at these developments:
- Kelley Gulley, from The James Irvine Foundation, has joined our leadership team as co-chair alongside the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Fay Twersky.
- Our core funders have approved research grants, totaling $910,000, for five nonprofits to examine the relationship between feedback results and client outcomes.
- We’re offering informational webinars for funders and nonprofits to learn more about our feedback initiative Listen4Good and how to apply for the next round of co-funded L4G grants (submissions due September 20, 2019).
- A new report from our evaluation partner ORS Impact finds that a majority of L4G-participating nonprofits are continuing high-quality feedback work a year after their L4G grants are up.
Please read on for more information.
Shared Insight Welcomes Kelley Gulley as Co-Chair
In July, Kelley Gulley, a senior program officer at The James Irvine Foundation, joined Fay Twersky, vice president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, as a Shared Insight co-chair. Kelley and the Irvine Foundation have been champions for feedback and listening, and the team looks forward to her dynamic and thoughtful leadership as Shared Insight continues to explore new ways to build meaningful connections among foundations, nonprofits, and the people and communities they serve. Shared Insight also thanks the Ford Foundation’s Kathy Reich for her outstanding service as co-chair the last two years. Kathy will continue as one of Ford’s Shared Insight representatives.
Five New Grants to Examine Ties Between Feedback and Outcomes
At their July meeting, Shared Insight core funders approved five new feedback-research grants totaling $910,000. The grants, for one to three years, will support research examining the relationship between feedback results and client outcomes. The awardees are: Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula, Center for Employment Opportunities, Nurse-Family Partnership, Pace Center for Girls, and YouthTruth.
Webinars on Listen4Good’s Next Co-Funded Grant Round Scheduled
While Shared Insight continues to accept applications for the next Listen4Good co-funded grant round — due by September 20, 2019, at 11:59 pm Pacific time — newly scheduled free informational webinars for funders and nonprofits offer more information about L4G and the application process. L4G supports customer-facing nonprofits — across issue areas, communities, and budget sizes — as they build high-quality feedback loops with those they serve. L4G’s survey methodology offers a simple, yet systematic and rigorous way to listen to, and respond to, the people nonprofits seek to serve. To participate in L4G’s co-funded grant round, a nonprofit must be nominated by a current funder (existing or new). Nominating funders will contribute $15,000 to Shared Insight for each nonprofit selected to participate. Shared Insight will match the money and grantees will receive $30,000 for an 18-month grant period.
Here’s the schedule of webinars:
For funders:
Thursday, August 22, 2019
10 am PT / 1 pm ET
Please register here.
For nonprofits:
Thursday, August 8, 2019
10 am PT / 1 pm ET
and
Thursday, September 5, 2019
10 am PT / 1 pm ET
Please register here.
Report Finds Listen4Good Grantees Maintain High-Quality Feedback Loops Post-Grant
Past evaluations of Shared Insight’s Listen4Good grantees have reported that through L4G they increased their technical ability to implement high-quality feedback loops, gained insights that informed data-driven changes to programming and internal operations, and improved both their programs’ effectiveness and their overall ability to serve clients. Evaluations have also found that L4G helped foster a culture of openness and listening in participating organizations and advanced their equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts. Until now, however, these studies have examined L4G participants only during their grant periods.
In its latest report, “Sustainability of Feedback Practices: 2016 Listen4Good Cohort,” ORS Impact takes on a central learning question for Shared Insight’s feedback work: To what extent do grantees continue collecting high-quality perceptual feedback from clients after the L4G grant ends?
The report looks at 46 nonprofits that were the first to receive L4G grants in 2016, conducting interviews with 35 of them about a year after their grant ended. Among the findings:
- Thirty-one grantees are continuing feedback practices, which means that at least 67 percent of the entire cohort is sustaining feedback one-year post-grant.
- More than three-fourths (26) of the 31 grantees continuing to collect feedback report that they are still using all five steps in the L4G process, thus maintaining high-quality feedback loops as defined by the program.
- Most grantees have made minor adjustments to their feedback practice, including changes in survey questions, data-collection systems, and uses of feedback data. Twenty-nine of 33 grantees continue using the Net Promoter System question, and 26 continue using SurveyMonkey, the platform used in L4G.
- Nonprofits report that changes they made in response to L4G feedback are holding and that they continue using feedback to make adjustments. Feedback continues to contribute to some grantees’ efforts to increase equity and change power dynamics with clients. And some (14 of the 17 that participated in the longest interviews) report that their organizations’ culture continues to change in ways that support feedback.
- Grantees made suggestions about ways to improve L4G, including by providing a certificate of L4G completion to signal to funders that grantees are conducting high-quality feedback loops. Please feel free to contact Fund for Shared Insight with comments, questions, or ideas. And don’t forget to subscribe (link below) to Shared Insight’s newsletter to stay on top of all the news.
Please feel free to contact Fund for Shared Insight with comments, questions, or ideas. And don’t forget to subscribe (link below) to Shared Insight’s newsletter to stay on top of all the news.
