Funding Partners
Feedback Incentives Learning Group
The Feedback Incentives Learning Group is a group of funders and philanthropy support organizations dedicated to exploring ways to support nonprofits and motivate foundations to listen to and act on feedback from those at the heart of their work. At the heart of the learning group is the hypothesis that when stronger rewards for organizations that listen well are in place, thousands more nonprofits and funders will improve how they listen and respond to the people they serve. The learning group was founded in 2020 and is facilitated by Feedback Labs.
The group is learning about feedback incentives by:
- Testing monetary and social incentives that can support improvements in nonprofit and funder listening practices
- Surveying foundations to learn about their views of feedback and what practices they use to support and encourage grantees to listen better
- Hosting a series of Learning Talks between group members and experts in adjacent fields
- Publishing pieces to share their experiences with and perspectives on feedback incentives
Does this sound like a collaborative learning experience you’d like to be part of? Contact Megan Campbell, Senior Director of Programs and Strategy, at [email protected] to learn more about the Feedback Incentives Learning Group.
Current Members
Founding Members
The Irritants for Change
The Irritants for Change are a group of feedback experts and nonprofit rating platforms that are committed to building shared incentives for nonprofits and philanthropy to listen and act on feedback. They aim to ‘irritate’ the sector in a way that encourages more and better listening. They were formed in 2018 and are facilitated by Feedback Labs.
In its first three years, the Irritants for Change laid the foundation for making listening and feedback the norm across nonprofits by:
- Developing a strong literature base so that nonprofits and foundations implementing feedback can ground their practice in an academic knowledge base, contributing to papers such as ‘Is Feedback Smart?’
- Creating a shared understanding of the characteristics of high-quality feedback practice with the Core Principles of Constituent Feedback.
- Rewarding nonprofits that share their listening practice through How We Listen, a nonprofit feedback self-assessment hosted on GuideStar by Candid that feeds into nonprofit ratings on Charity Navigator.
Developing knowledge and educational resources and engaging thousands of nonprofits through ‘How We Listen’ has only inspired the Irritants for Change to expand their vision. In the coming years, they will continue to motivate nonprofits and philanthropy to listen well by:
- Experimenting with metrics to better understand the quality of an organization’s feedback practice
- Evaluating How We Listen data to gain further insights on the state of nonprofit listening
Does this sound like work you’d like to contribute to? Contact Megan Campbell, Senior Director of Programs and Strategy, at [email protected]
Founding Members
Ashoka is the largest network of social entrepreneurs worldwide, with nearly 3,000 Ashoka Fellows in 70 countries putting their system changing ideas into practice on a global scale. Founded by Bill Drayton in 1980, Ashoka has provided start-up financing, professional support services, and connections to a global network across the business and social sectors, and a platform for people dedicated to changing the world. Ashoka launched the field of social entrepreneurship and has activated multi-sector partners across the world who increasingly look to entrepreneurial talent and new ideas to solve social problems.
Development Gateway is a nonprofit organization that delivers information solutions to the people on the front lines of international development work. Whether they are government policy makers deciding how to invest scarce resources, aid workers building schools and clinics, or citizens who want to have a voice in the development process, Development Gateway offers tools and advisory services that empower them to be more effective. We work behind the scenes to enable others to make a difference.
GlobalGiving is the largest global crowdfunding community connecting nonprofits, donors, and companies in nearly every country. We help nonprofits from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe (and hundreds of places in between) access the tools, training, and support they need to be more effective and make our world a better place. Since 2002, GlobalGiving has raised close to $300 million from more than 700,000 donors for efforts in 170 countries.
We build software and work to lower the barriers to using mobile for social change. Our desktop software, FrontlineSMS, has been downloaded more than 150,000 times and used in over 150 countries to help organizations communicate with even the most remote populations. Our newest product, FrontlineCloud, marries the convenience of the web with the reach of SMS and offers unprecedented access to mobile networks across the world. We believe in giving people ownership of the tools they need to change their world for the better.
GroundTruth Initiative is a new media and technology consulting company specializing in community-based participatory technologies, especially mapping and citizen journalism, in poor and marginalized regions throughout the world. We help expand the conversation and bridge technology gaps by promoting the use of open data and collaborative platforms. We design projects, tools, and websites to empower people to harness the potential of the internet to guide their own development processes and become more active participants in democracy by amplifying their voices. We help people to use the internet and simple digital tools to report on and speak out about issues they care about by using digital story-telling. We support the development of healthy local and community media.
Keystone is a citizen organization that seeks to maximize the developmental impact of citizen organizations, business and government, through designing and promoting innovative, practical methods of planning, doing, measuring and communicating that foster learning and responsiveness among all constituents. We believe that organizations function best when they listen and respond to those meant to benefit from their activities. Our Constituent Voice methodology helps civil society organizations to be inclusive and responsive in their engagement with constituents, systematic in their learning, and transparent in their public reporting. We have developed a suite of free-to-use prototype tools and offer advisory services that citizen organizations (as well as governments and businesses that seek to maximize their social value) can use to plan and learn with their constituents, in an ecology of actors, for significant and lasting social change.
Twaweza means ‘we can make it happen’ in Swahili. It is a ten-year citizen-centered initiative, focusing on large-scale change in East Africa. Twaweza believes that lasting change requires bottom-up action. We seek to foster conditions and expand opportunities through which millions of people can get information and make change happen in their own communities directly and by holding government to account.
Ushahidi is a non-profit tech company that specializes in developing free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping. We build tools for democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories. We’re a disruptive organization that is willing to take risks in the pursuit of changing the traditional way that information flows.
The initial work that led to the creation of Feedback Labs was supported by the Center for Global Development. The Center for Global Development works to reduce global poverty and inequality through rigorous research and active engagement with the policy community to make the world a more prosperous, just, and safe place for us all. A nimble, independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit think tank, CGD combines world-class research with policy analysis and innovative communications to turn ideas into action.
Founding Supporters