Giving Compass' Take:

• Feedback Labs discusses the Center for Effective Philanthropy's Grantee Perception Report as a way to emphasize how internalizing feedback is essential to an organization's success.

• Whether we believe soliciting constituent feedback is the right thing to do or the smart thing to do, it's imperative that we go beyond just checking a box. Only when it becomes a real "movement" will we see true change.

• Here's more on how to create a meaningful feedback loop.

What do people want that can make their lives better? Are we helping them get it? If not, what should we do differently? Those three questions increasingly drive the work of the most effective organizations, and CEP’s new report, Staying Connected: How Five Foundations Understand Those They Seek to Help, demonstrates the importance of asking all three and achieving greater impact philanthropy.

The five foundations profiled in the report are among those ranked most highly by their grantees when it comes to questions in CEP’s Grantee Perception Report (GPR) about their understanding of intended beneficiaries’ needs and having the proper mindset.

Feedback Labs supports a network of more than 400 domestic and international organizations in the aid, philanthropy, and governance sectors. Participating organizations in our network share their feedback practices and help one another solve their feedback challenges. Based on the approximately 100 collaborative sessions that Feedback Labs has conducted, the importance of mindset stands out. Some organizations listen because they feel it is the right thing to do, morally and ethically. Others are motivated by the empirical research showing that feedback is the smart thing to do because it can improve measured outcomes, sometimes dramatically. Whatever the reason, when it comes to feedback, having the right mindset comes before everything else.

Nearly all the organizations in the Feedback Labs network are trying to use feedback to improve how they deliver services, as even small tweaks can improve efficiency and effectiveness. Participants in our network are starting to ask, “How can we listen and learn faster? Can we create incentives to adapt based on what we learn along the way, rather than punish staff for ‘messing up’ the original design?” When these questions apply to listening to and learning from beneficiaries of funding, it’s a powerful step in the right direction for turning feedback from a ticked box into meaningful action.

Read the full article about turning feedback into a mindset by Megan Campbell and Dennis Whittle at Feedback Labs.