Giving Compass' Take:

· This interview with Carla Ganiel touches on the Hewlett Foundation's new research into how funders gather and use their feedback from beneficiaries.

· How can funders use beneficiary feedback to improve their giving? Why is it important to pay attention to this feedback? 

· Read about why listening to beneficiaries is key to successful grantmaking.

Why did you commission this field scan of foundation “beneficiary” listening practices?

The foundation has supported efforts to elevate beneficiary voices for a number of years through Fund for Shared Insight, a funder collaborative dedicated to enabling individuals served by nonprofits nationwide to share their perspectives. To date though, most of the nonprofits supported through the Fund for Shared Insight have focused on direct service. Over the last few years, we’ve had an increasing sense that we could and should be doing more to incorporate listening into our own strategies, some of which involve direct service but most of which are focused on systems change. We commissioned the field scan as a starting point to help us understand what other funders are doing in this regard and how we can improve our own listening practices. We hope it will be useful for other foundations as well.

What do you mean by listening to beneficiaries?

We define listening as efforts to consider the views, perspectives and opinions of the people and communities the foundation seeks to help for the purpose of incorporating those perspectives into strategic considerations and decisions. This might mean gathering direct feedback from young men and women in West Africa about attitudes and behaviors related to contraception and taking those views into account when making grant decisions.

Why is listening important?

Foundations are motivated to listen for a variety of reasons, which are described in the scan. For us, I think it comes down to our core values of humility and inclusion, our belief that we don’t have all the answers. We trust our grantees to be our partners in collaborative problem solving because they bring different experiences and perspectives to the work. But we also need to extend that same trust to the ultimate beneficiaries of our grantmaking who not only see the problems we’re trying to solve from yet another perspective but are also most affected by the decisions we and our grantees make.

Read the full article about foundation beneficiary listening by Carla Ganiel at Hewlett Foundation.