JULY 2023

Our Not-So-Secret Weapon

Listen4Good Coaching Team, Spring 2023. Not pictured: Kevin Wu, Nicole Moler

During the course of the consulting work I’ve done over the years, I’ve often been asked by organizations, "What’s your secret sauce? You have to unpack your secret sauce and codify it if you want to scale."

While I’m less and less of a believer in the very concept of ‘secret sauce’—as everything really seems to come down to intention and where you choose to focus—I do think I taste a smidge of what makes Listen4Good (L4G) special, and that’s our coaching team. Simply put, they’re the best.

When we ask organizations about what they value most about working with us, they invariably mention the coaching support that’s built into the fabric of L4G. My hunch is that it’s because our coaches combine feedback expertise, strong strategic instincts, a sense of groundedness, and a commitment to equal partnership and humility. When you bring all this together, you get something close to magic.  

Just listen to Raven Johnson, below, of Birmingham Talks, dishing about her experience with her feedback coach.

Developing a Culture of Listening at Birmingham Talks 

Listen4Good recently commissioned a video with L4G participant Birmingham Talks, a free citywide program in Alabama that works with babies from birth to three years old to help build lifetime literacy.

See how Birmingham Talks worked with Listen4Good to demystify the survey process with the help of their coach, and how they gleaned valuable data for impact reporting while building closer relationships to the families they served in the process.

A Joyous June Convening in Atlanta with the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation and its Grantees

While we have not left the virtual world behind, conferences and convenings are coming back, and the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation (AMBFF) recently invited Listen4Good to host an all-day convening of its 19 L4G organizational participants in Atlanta. 

There, core team members and coaches from Listen4Good gathered with participating nonprofits to share their feedback experiences with each other. Organizations benefited from learning tips and tricks from others and also hearing about the key dimensions of sustainable feedback cultures. As one organizational participant described, “I liked learning through the sharing of other organizations. Definitely had a lot of light bulb moments during the round table discussions.”

Organizations also were able to engage in some focused action planning with coaches about what they needed to do next internally to solidify their learnings from their initial L4G experience and make feedback a growing part of how their organization operates. 

We look forward to hosting more similar convenings in the future!

In Case You Missed It: Listen4Good Launches as an Independent Initiative

In 2015, Fund for Shared Insight incubated Listen4Good in an experiment to promote stronger feedback and listening practices in the social sector.

Over the course of the next several years, Listen4Good went on to serve nearly 800 organizations across the country and to provide best in class capacity-buiiding services in feedback and listening in the service of equity. 

With such strong demand for these services, Listen4Good launched as an independent initiative this past May, and is now a fiscally sponsored project of the Tides Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. To learn more about this journey and what it means for the future of Listen4Good, check out the blog post below. 

Heads Up: L4G Email Down From August 12-13

In Closing...