In this report, ORS impact takes its first look at Listen4Good Online Beta, a program to test Listen4Good’s new, interactive, feedback-loop building web app. In the summer of 2019, nearly 200 direct-service nonprofits and government agencies were selected to participate in a low-touch Listen4Good program where participants had full access to the web app, but extremely limited access to coaching or other ad-hoc support. This report looks at how the Online Beta participants, halfway through their 18-month engagement with the program, fared on reaching desired outcomes compared with organizations participating in Listen4Good’s co-funded grant program, a much more fully supported model.
Among the key findings:
- Overall, we found that Online Beta organizations are progressing more slowly than prior cohorts, though COVID-19 also likely impacted feedback work.
- Online Beta organizations report significantly increased ability to conduct feedback work, which is comparable to past cohorts.
- Online Beta organizations that progress through the feedback cycle report higher organizational impact than prior cohorts and similar results in terms of learning from and responding to feedback.
- Despite these promising signs of outcomes by participating organizations, this cohort reports a significantly lower Net Promoter Score (NPS) than prior cohorts.
- This version of a more scalable model can clearly work for some organizations, even in a challenging external context. More needs to be learned about which organizations don’t progress or who is not served well by this version of L4G.