Listening to Those Who Matter Most, the Beneficiaries

To become more effective, nonprofits and foundations are turning to various sources for advice. Some look to experts who can share knowledge, research, and experience about what works -- and what does not. Others turn to crowdsourcing to generate ideas and even guide decisions about future directions or funding. Experts and crowds can produce valuable insights. But too often nonprofits and funders ignore the constituents who matter most, the intended beneficiaries of their work: students in low-performing schools, trainees in workforce development programs, or small farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. In bypassing the beneficiary as a source of information and experience, they deprive themselves of insights into how they might do better-insights that are uniquely grounded in the day-to-day experiences of the very people the programs are created for. In healthcare and education, when beneficiary feedback is collected with improvement in mind, it leads to better decisions. Still, collecting and using rigorous feedback from beneficiaries remains too often the exception rather than the rule at nonprofits and foundations. Adapted from the source document.