Fund for Shared Insight: 2015 Grantee Interview Themes

In October 2015, ORS Impact interviewed representatives from the 14 organizations that received grants from the Fund for Shared Insight. The purpose of these interviews was to capture insights from the experiences of grantees in their work to date, with the goal of informing discussion and decision making during the November Core Funders meeting. More complete reports of progress on activities and outcomes will be based on the reports by grantees due in January 2016.Findings are summarized below by key groups of grantees, as well as by current areas of interest of the funders

Feedback Loops and Openness: A Snapshot of the Field Baseline Report

Fund for Shared Insight ("Shared Insight") is a collaborative effort among funders that pools financial and other resources to make grants to improve philanthropy. Shared Insight believes philanthropy can have a greater social and environmental impact if foundations and nonprofits listen to the people they seek to help, act on what they hear, and openly share what they learn.In early 2015, ORS Impact conducted a baseline assessment to set a bar against which to measure progress over time, as well as to inform near-term decisions based on a deeper understanding of the field's current state. We explored the current state of philanthropic and nonprofit practice related to feedback loops, as well as foundation openness practices through key informant interviews, a media analysis, reviews of foundations' and sector-serving organizations' websites, and use of existing secondary data sources, such as the Center for Effective Philanthropy's report, "Hearing From Those We Seek to Help: Nonprofit Practices and Perspectives in Beneficiary Feedback." Methods are described more fully in Appendix A, as well as the strengths and limitations of each method in Appendix B.This memo lays out our findings in each area, as well as considerations and implications for Shared Insight going forward. We also lift up a few emergent findings that arose from the data collection process

Fund for Shared Insight: Media Analysis

Fund for Shared Insight ("Shared Insight") is a collaborative effort among fundersthat pools financial and other resources to make grants to improve philanthropy. Shared Insight believes philanthropy can have a greater social and environmental impact if foundations and nonprofits listen to the people they seek to help, act on what they hear, and openly share what they learn.Related to feedback loops, Shared Insight's work is focused on increasingthe extent to which foundations listen to others—especially the people they seek to help—and respond to their expressed interests. When Shared Insight talks about "the people they seek to help," they are referring to the individuals who receive programs and services from nonprofit organizations; for example, the students served by charter schools, the recently released prisoners benefiting from job-training services, and the low-income first-time mothers participating in prenatal through birth programs.Over the next three years, Shared Insight would hope to see changes in the amount and kind of discourse in the field related tobeneficiary feedback loops. In the summer of 2015, one year since the launch of the collaborative, ORS Impact repeated a media analysis of relevant blogs, periodicals, and reports. The following memo outlines changes in the amount and kind of discourse in the field around feedback loops compared to the year before Shared Insight launched. We raise a few observations and considerations. More detailed methodological notes follow

Fund for Shared Insight: 2015-2016 Media Analysis

Fund for Shared Insight (Shared Insight) is focused in part on increasing the extent to which foundations listen to others — especially the people they seek to help — and respond to their expressed interests. One of Shared Insight's short - term outcomes around feedback practice includes "more dialogue in the sector about the importance of hearing feedback from the people we seek to help and application (and limits) of collecting feedback into the normal course of business."To this end, ORS Impact conducted an annual media analysis of relevant blogs, periodicals, and reports for each of the following timeframes:July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014, the year prior to the launch of Shared Insight, which we refer to as the baseline;July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015, the year immediately following its launch; andJuly 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016, the most recent time period.This memo outlines changes in the amount and type of discourse in the field around feedback loops in the most recent year compared to the previous two years. We raise a few observations and considerations. More detailed methodological notes follow