When people are unhappy with government services, they can call their politicians, protest, organize, and vote for change. When customers are dissatisfied with a private company, they can take their business elsewhere. But what can people do when they aren’t happy with the services they receive from social impact organizations? Here strikes to the core of what makes this work so challenging: a disconnect between whom is served and who holds programs responsible for those services.
Some staff at social impact organizations believe their programs are accountable only to donors. But the best programs I’ve seen listen to people in the community and take back what they hear to transform their work. In doing so, they build strong community partnerships. These organizations have a few things in common. I hope they can serve as a guide for social impact organizations looking to build community accountability.
Create a culture of humility
Social impact organizations work to make meaningful change in people’s lives and in communities. That’s hard. And if there is one thing that I know, it’s that no one changes just because someone tries to persuade them to do so. Instead, we have to start by recognizing people are experts on their own lives. Their opinions and feedback are valid. Those opinions should inform programmatic work along with science, research, and evidence.
All too often we bring what we perceive as a solution to a community to get buy-in off the bat. But the most successful programs hold a culture of humility. They seek out the community’s wisdom first and then work together to solve problems.
This starts with a few important ingredients: 1) managers who do not expect their staff to have every answer; 2) staff who are brave enough to ask for help when they need it; and 3) a willingness to seek out the people with whom they want to work and get their input. Staff need to be willing to listen to people who might not share their titles or education, and who have lived experiences and insights that they do not. Feedback from managers and community members are equally important to these organizations. They hold that feedback collectively accountable for the success of their programs.
Senior leadership has to cultivate this attitude and reinforce it daily in programmatic decision-making.
Seek community input in the planning process
Social impact organizations can build community accountability by making sure the people and groups they serve have a say in planning programs. The best programs I’ve seen didn’t take a strategy that was fully developed to the community. Instead they build, edit, revise, and monitor it together.
Community engagement doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all approach. Organizations have a range of ways to do this, including by creating community advisory boards with volunteers who live in the community and receive their services; and conducting stakeholder interviews, community surveys, or focus groups. What form community engagement takes depends on the program and the size of the population, but the people you serve need opportunities to provide honest reflections on plans. Most importantly to build and earn trust, organizations have to integrate those honest reflections into the plans and bring back those revised plans to the community again for their review.
Create mechanisms to provide ongoing feedback
Successful programs seek ongoing feedback from the communities after developing plans. Staff need to feel empowered to take that feedback and make changes to the program.
Ask yourself: To whom should service recipients turn to share feedback that your project is great? Or where can they complain when they’re unhappy about how you’re delivering services? Do the people you serve know how to provide feedback? And how do you address their feedback?
You might feel compelled to push back: Maybe these approaches could work for other social impact programs, but it won’t work at mine. It can’t be brought to scale – especially when logistic, literacy, language, and security challenges would prevent the program and the communities from having meaningful engagement. It would cost too much. It’s not the way we run our program.
My response is: How can programs afford not to listen to communities? Social impact programs invest billions of dollars every year into communities. Wouldn’t it be good to know if those investments are meeting the communities’ needs?
Ultimately, we have to acknowledge that the communities we serve have the wisdom and judgment to best report on their needs and the programs serving them. They hold important insights about how to shape this work. Taking into account their expertise is the only way we will succeed.