Giving Compass' Take:

• The author explains how the feedback movement is integral to social impact work. Mutual respect and open lines of communication are key to success.

• Why is it essential that feedback remain an iterative process in social impact work? 

• Read the Giving Compass Power of Feedback magazine for more information. 

Those of us working in social impact are sometimes guilty of throwing around a few jargony words and phrases – “scaling,” “end-user,” “prototyping,” and the list could go on. These phrases are born out of the social innovation field and human-centered design thinking process.

As someone who works on developing programs that combine design thinking with policymaking and social impact, it can be easy to forget that this jargon can be confusing and overwhelming if you haven’t yet been exposed to the world of design-thinking.

Rather than getting bogged down in the design process, Feedback Labs has managed to succinctly define what the design-thinking movement is all about — feedback.

Whether it was feedback on a foundation’s grant proposal process, feedback to an NGO on how they’re delivering humanitarian aid, or feedback to an emerging social enterprise on how they’re building their product, two full days were spent demonstrating the importance of feedback in social impact.

  1. Feedback is at the heart of social impact work —Feedback in social impact is based on mutual respect, equal footing, and open dialogue between service provider and beneficiary. Your work might be well-intentioned, but without bringing the beneficiary along for the ride with you as you design your service, your impact is likely not maximized.
  2. Feedback is an iterative process —Feedback is iterative and ongoing. There should always be open lines of communication between a service-provider and beneficiary, always an eagerness to quickly close feedback loops, and always a willingness to even revisit how the feedback is being conveyed.
  3. Feedback is a movement This movement is based in the genuine belief that beneficiaries are not just people to be served, but rather, communities to partner with.

Read the full article about feedback movement by Kayla Auletto at FeedbackLabs.