Giving Compass' Take:

• Organizations in the social sector can make a more substantial impact by garnering and listening to constituent feedback. 

• Constituent feedback can have clear benefits for organizational learning.  How can donors help provide nonprofits with the capacity to build useful feedback loops? 

• Check out the Giving Compass Power of Feedback Magazine on Giving Compass. 

Charity Navigator is dedicated to making impactful philanthropy easier for all. To that end, we are undertaking new initiatives that will allow donors to better understand the impact of their donations or charitable investments. There are many ways to define “impact” and even more ways to assess it. One potentially important measure of program results may lie in the hands of an organization’s beneficiaries.

Much like customer feedback can stand to boost a company’s bottom line, listening, collecting, and responding to constituent feedback may serve to improve the overall impact of organizations in the social sector.

By opening direct lines of communication with their beneficiaries, charities can gain valuable insight and feedback into how their programs are working for the people they serve. Are the people the organization aims to serve truly benefiting from its support, services, or advocacy-related activities? If so, how can the organization continue to build upon this success? And, if not, what can be done differently to ensure that the needs of its constituents are being met?

Charities often rely on quantitative forms of measurement to assess whether or not they are making a difference, i.e. tracking the number of people served, meals distributed, etc. The input, experiences, and suggestions of the individuals served are rarely evaluated when organizations consider the efficacy of their programs. Developing systems for listening, collecting, and responding to constituent feedback can enable nonprofits to better serve their constituents and improve organizational learning and efficacy to achieve their mission.

The process of engaging constituents is both continuous and iterative. It begins with gathering meaningful information by speaking to the organization’s primary beneficiaries. The organization can then evaluate the information and create an action plan based on the feedback they received to improve their services.

Read the full article about constituent feedback by Michael Thatcher at Charity Navigator.