Debra Blum’s Chronicle of Philanthropy article “Growing Calls for Nonprofits to Listen to Beneficiaries Prompt Action” covers the recently held Feedback Summit, convened by Fund for Shared Insight grantee Feedback Labs.
This invitation only event brought together many at the forefront of the growing feedback movement to think through some of the promising opportunities and tough issues facing beneficiary feedback. Issues such as the extent to which nonprofits and funders will actually act on feedback, whether feedback should also be used to promote broader social change, and what happens if feedback given is counter to the organization’s mission, goals and proficiency.
Participants all agreed that there needed to be more case studies documenting how nonprofits successfully used feedback loops to improve services and outcomes.
A new promising feedback approach highlighted at the Summit was the Fund for Shared Insight’s “Listen4Good” initiative that is providing funding to help nonprofits use an adapted version of the Net Promoter Score℠ (NPS®) to gather feedback from the people they seek to help.
Another feedback tool explored at the Summit was the use of interviews to allow for more open-ended responses. A number of best practice recommendations were given to help practitioners elicit actionable feedback through interviews.
Finally, the article concludes with four takeaways from the Summit: 1) Don’t let time and money be barriers to collecting feedback; 2) No feedback is too trivial; 3) Be on the lookout for innovation; and 4) Consider your feedback system as part of a broader strategy of openness.
Read the full article on Chronicle of Philanthropy (please note this article is only available to Chronicle of Philanthropy Subscribers)
