FeedbackLabs

What Do People Want To Make Their Lives

BETTER?

CLOSING FEEDBACK LOOPS IN AID AND PHILANTHROPY

Because people should drive what affects them most.

What Do the Poor Need? Try Asking Them

David L. Kirp, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley weighs in: "To improve poor neighborhoods, the…

How come this foundation’s grantees love its reporting process so much?

What is the Inter-American Foundation doing differently? Do happy grantees make for more social impact?

Can the act of giving and receiving feedback create citizens instead of beneficiaries?

Does feedback produce a new kind of subject? Will it help instill a new form of governance-- a social contract--…

Americans gave $358 billion to charity in 2014. Did “beneficiaries” have any say in the matter?

Private philanthropy has the power to determine the lives of millions of people. Yet it doesn't have to answer to…

Is the feedback related to actual behavior?

Behavioral economists talk about the "intention-action" gap. Does feedback measure only intentions?

The Doctor is In: Regular Monitoring to Stay Healthy

How is project M&E like a visit to your family physician or the coroner?

Net Promoter Score for the Nonprofit Sector: What We’ve Learned So Far

Feedback Labs members discuss the top 8 things to pay attention to

LabStorm: Can mobile phone surveys be 100 times cheaper and 10 times faster?

Louis Dorval from Voto Mobile talks to Feedback Labs about using mobile phone technology to hear from citizens in Afghanistan,…

People of higher social class have less compassion for others. How can feedback help?

Can providers of public goods and services do a good job if they cannot empathize with their beneficiaries?

How the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs came to have a Chief Customer Service Officer

After its 2014 scandal, the VA is collecting feedback to prevent killing its own constituents.

For effective course-correction: Whistleblowing or Rapid Feedback?

Does the development sector need its own WikiLeaks? Would incorporating citizen feedback early and regularly improve projects and reduce the…

Is Technology a Bridge or a Jack?

How do we make sure that tech doesn't amplify structural disparities? How do we use it to be more inclusive?

When will the World Bank prioritize learning over lending?

Peter Senge explains how reports are not knowledge. Knowledge-- defined as the capacity for effective change-- requires learning and learning…

What does the digital revolution mean for the “business” of development?

Feedback Labs met with the World Bank's Ken Chomitz, co-author of the upcoming World Development Report: Internet for Development. How…

At what point in the future do we evaluate program success?

We want to know if our social programs are working. But when, really, do we know? And why do we…

Closing the Loop is an in-depth exploration of how aid and philanthropy could be better with constituent feedback. In an on-going discussion, we tie together what we know (and don't know) from theoretical and empirical research.

WHAT IS A CLOSED FEEDBACK LOOP?

Simply collecting feedback is not enough; closing the loop is what matters. Making regular people true co-creators in aid and philanthropy requires five steps: design, collect, analyze, dialogue, course correct. Creating buy-in among all stakeholders is crucial to completing all steps of the loop.

WHAT WE DO

We have three strategic pillars - framing, convening, and mainstreaming

Underpinning our strategic pillars are principles of constant learning and collaboration. That is, the activities under each pillar inform and build upon one another in a set of internally consistent feedback loops.