For decades, social organizations have struggled to gather meaningful data to prove programs work. Yet a simple and often overlooked measurement solution exists beyond evaluation and monitoring: directly asking constituents for their feedback.

And though the social sector faces a unique set of barriers to including user voices, new tools and smart tactics can help mission-driven organizations listen and innovate as well.

Lean Data, developed by Acumen, provides guidance on collecting better customer data in a publicly available guide and through an online course. Lean Data uses simple 10- to 15-question surveys to gauge the social benefit that companies bring to the people they serve.

L4G, a program and survey tool from Fund for Shared Insight and SurveyMonkey, helps more than 200 nonprofit organizations collect, analyze, and respond to feedback from their participants.

So, how can your organization get the most out of customer feedback? Follow these recommendations:

  1. Identify your customer: It is important to be clear about which of your various customers you want to survey so you can target your questions and learning goals.
  2. Start internally. Be a role model by collecting internal feedback for your organization before collecting it from clients.
  3. Provide resources for feedback collection. While collecting customer feedback is less expensive than conducting rigorous impact evaluations, funders and investors should recognize costs and build the capacity of organizations to implement high-quality feedback systems.
  4. Develop plans to apply feedback. Customer feedback provides a window into the way entrepreneurs and leadership teams respond to data and learn from failure.
  5. Make feedback part of your ongoing business analysis. Collecting customer feedback in the social sector is a relatively new practice but one with great potential for generating insights and illuminating areas for improvement.

Read the full article about gaining feedback through customer surveys by  Melinda Tuan & Jessica Kiessel at Stanford Social Innovation Review.