Last month I attended a very British event at the London School of Economics. A hundred or so of us gathered in the Shaw Library, named after George Bernard Shaw, one of the founders of LSE. We were invited there by the Webb Memorial Trust, a charity dedicated to advance the values of another founder[…]
How can youth charities collect meaningful feedback from the young people they serve? Twelve UK based youth organizations received grants to listen and respond to the young people they serve and in this blog post we share what they learnt. The organizations were all charities supporting young people in the UK and funded by the[…]
Usually if you want to get something done you set a goal. Run a marathon, lose a stone, reduce poverty – that kind of thing. This is certainly how traditional development projects work. Logframes are full of targets – 500 people attend training sessions, 1,000 families lifted out of poverty, or 3,000 jobs created. There[…]
For feedback to transform relationships it is imperative to close the loop. Go back to the people you asked, tell them what you heard and what you are doing about it. Then ask them what they reckon. As simple as that is, the dismal truth is that it is rarely done. It is this element[…]
If you’re one of the two billion people who own a smartphone, it likely comes with a weather app. The app is probably equipped with convenient features like maps that give you all sorts of forecast spectrums ranging from temperatures and uv index dangers, to allergen warnings. You can share this handy weather snapshot on[…]
At Keystone, we are very quick to make the argument that listening to those you aim to serve is not only the right thing to do, but also the bright thing – a way to not only better understand impact, but more importantly as a way to improve impact.
Surveys are a double-edged sword. It is useful, irresistibly so, to be able to assert something that is supported by survey results. Most of us are enthralled by this sirens’ call – I certainly am! But at the same time, surveys are riddled with two kinds of distortions. These have various technical names but boil[…]
I have a confession to make. Despite two years of surveying thousands of respondents for our clients I still fire up Google in the hopes that it will one day tell me how to conduct surveys the right way. Now, this is mainly due to being overly ambitious: I would one day love to see[…]
We would all like our work to speak for itself, better still if someone else can vouch for us! One way that industries like to do this is to showcase their ratings and feedback from customers. Not only does this help improve their service, but also help build credibility and trust. In the development context,[…]
Nonprofit organizations and foundations love to talk about “partnering”, “co-creating”, leverage”, and “synergy” – but do these hook-ups really yield as much value for the effort involved? Or is it just beneficial to be seen collaborating? I searched for reports on what value non-profit professionals typically get out of collaborations, but sadly, there doesn’t seem[…]