“I get that listening is important, but what role am I actually supposed to play to make it happen?” A program officer from a large private foundation recently asked my colleague this question. The fact that this program officer wanted to play a role in listening to the communities at the heart of their grantmaking represents a definite shift in the field — 10 years ago I regularly heard grantmaking staff question why they needed to listen to communities at all.

Now, their questions are focused on how to listen well, and the specific ‘hows’ that program officers in particular ask about are many and varied: How do I have ongoing conversations with my grantees about how they want to listen? How do I listen directly to communities without my partners feeling like I’m checking up on them? How do I deal with hearing conflicting suggestions from different community members? How do I make the time?

It reminds me of the “Barbie” movie (bear with me). Once Barbie accepts that her existence didn’t solve “all problems of feminism and equal rights” in the real world, she faces all kinds of practical questions. Granted, most grantmakers don’t need to figure out how to quell an insurrection of Ken dolls. But they do need to figure out how, practically, to make room for listening when it feels important but rarely like their most pressing priority.

Over the course of the next month, the funders that make up the Feedback Incentives Learning Group will offer practical suggestions for how grantmaking staff can listen better, within the realities of their day-to-day work. We’re excited to widen the lens of what we mean by listening and offer actionable suggestions for how to do it well.

Two years ago, in our first blog series with CEP, we wrote about how funders are using their power to dismantle the incentive structure that rewards nonprofits for aligning with funder priorities rather than the needs and desires of the people most affected by their work. We shared that, as part of that work, funders are increasingly providing capacity-building support to help their grantees listen and respond to the people at the heart of their work: 36 percent of foundations we surveyed offered grantees funding, training, or other listening-related capacity support, and 60 percent of the foundations that didn’t were considering doing so.

It’s heartening to see, two years on, that funders are finding more ways to start conversations with grantees about how they want to listen to communities, whether by adding questions to grant applications or using grantees’ How We Listen reflections on Candid, and offering support, like sponsoring trainings or access to listening tools, to help them realize those aspirations.

But much like Barbie Land needs many different Barbies to function, the ways in which funders hear community voices shouldn’t begin and end with just supporting their grantees to listen better. Funders should absolutely support grantees to listen well. They should also listen to their grantees, whether through the Grantee Perception Report, grantee convenings, or ongoing conversations. And they should also listen directly to the communities most affected by their grantmaking.

Read the full article about funder listening by Megan Campbell at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.