David Bonbright

Founder + Chief Executive, Keystone Accountability

Who He Is:

David leads a group of consultants that help organizations harness feedback from their communities of service. Over the past three decades, as a grantmaker and manager with Aga Khan Foundation, Ford Foundation, Oak Foundation, and Ashoka, David has sought to evolve and test alternatives to top-down models of social service delivery.

Q: What advice would you give to a nonprofit that doesn’t have a system for collecting feedback from its community of service, but wants to implement one?

 
A: Never be afraid of the responses you will get back. You will receive negative feedback, but this can only help you improve. Collecting feedback is easy once you shift to micro-surveys—one, two, or three question surveys. It’s not a challenge. You don’t have to fret about. You just get out there and try it, and you’ll see that it works. The quality of your answers will improve over time. Again, it’s not about getting a perfect representative sample the first time. It’s about improving your practice through learning and doing.

Q: What types of questions can a nonprofit ask the people whom it serves to measure its impact?

 
A: Ask people: Are we doing the things you want us to do? Are they the highest priority and value to you? These are ways to test whether you are serving the community’s interests and needs.

Q: What questions do you commonly include in Keystone surveys?

 
A: One standard category of questions we use focuses on results. We ask: What has changed as a result of your work with us? Change is a nice way to focus on impact.

Q: Share a lesson you’ve learned about nonprofit monitoring and evaluation.

 
A: Context matters. You have to figure out what’s the right way to ask questions for you and your culture and your setting.

Q: Should nonprofits share community feedback with founders, funders, and supporters?

 
A: Yes, one of the great powers of this approach is that it gives you exciting information that can be turned into stories. This allows you to better educate those around you so that they can better support your work.