Giving Compass' Take:

• The Director of a small community center called SHAPE in Houston, Texas, discusses how the center aims to get equity from feedback to solve community problems. 

• What are the best ways to ensure successful feedback loops? How can donors encourage feedback in philanthropic relationships? 

• Learn more about this topic in the Giving Compass Power of Feedback magazine. 

When I first started working with Feedback Labs and they asked about our “Feedback Loop,” I had to google the term to see what it meant. I work with SHAPE Community Center and “feedback” usually takes place with one party saying, “Hey, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

SHAPE is a small community center tucked away in Houston’s impoverished Third Ward. It was founded by “the community” in 1969 because Houston’s Civil Rights Movement needed a place that could give birth to the programs that would give meaning to their protests. Today, SHAPE is fondly called “The United Nations of the Hood,” for bringing together people of varied affiliations, who are working toward a more equitable distribution of power.

In SHAPE, the Pan-African community finds a distinctive environment which provides a culturally safe space, free from the stigma and trauma of historical exclusion and oppression.

Despite our growing multi-cultural population, people of color are facing numerous barriers trying to afford living in this city. During a recent Fair Housing forum hosted by SHAPE, we shared that the City of Houston received about 100 fair housing complaints over the past year, which is incredibly low for such a large population.

We asked the community why they are not making formal complaints about some of the incidents they have shared with us. The overwhelming response was that they did not feel their complaints would make a difference or that complaining would make their situations more difficult.

Here is where we find our greatest impediment to equity in the formal feedback process. With 50 years of service, SHAPE has deep roots in the community and feedback has always been an organic component of our work. Sometimes we get feedback when we’re not even asking for it. We hosted a forum this summer in response to the recent violent deaths of local children.

Read the full article about equity from feedback by Shondra Muhammad at FeedbackLabs.