White Paper Evaluates the Role of Constituency Feedback for Nonprofit Organizations and Their Stakeholders
The 21st Century Potential of Constituency Voice is designed to assist nonprofits in understanding why many current practices used to solicit feedback from constituents – are considered unhelpful.
The paper also examines whether comparative data could be utilized to improve feedback efforts.
The paper focuses on three specific questions asked by leaders from Alliance and UNCA member agencies, as well as strategic grantmakers:
- Why have formal feedback efforts not been sustained, valuable, or transformative?
- What opportunities are there to reform current feedback processes to make them more useful and transformative?
- What opportunities are there to develop feedback data and processes that compare across agencies?
A survey and several focus groups identified themes that define the role of feedback for nonprofits and stakeholders. Themes identified include: civic engagement, fund accountability, improvement, strategy, development, capacity building, and societal education.
The results, which were developed into six key findings, indicate that inconsistency surrounding formal feedback can be attributed to disagreements and a lack of clarity between agencies and funders about the purposes of feedback.
To help correct these discrepancies, the white paper offers recommendations for reform, which are designed to lead nonprofits toward transforming the utilization, or underutilization, of constituency feedback.
Please direct questions/comments about the paper to Linda Nguyen.
