About Us
Transforming The Way Organizations Listen
Listen4Good (L4G) supports organizations to unlock actionable insights with the communities they serve. We are driven by a commitment to equity and a desire to deepen the impact of the social sector by centering and uplifting community voices.
What we do
L4G helps organizations gather, interpret, and respond to feedback from the people they serve.
This unlocks opportunities for client perspectives to influence improvements in program design, strategy, and equity across both the short- and long-term.
We partner closely with grantmakers to advance their strategic priorities through the sponsorship of grantees to participate in our programs.
Why we do it
We all know that community voice matters. Yet, people who receive services are not typically asked for their opinions. At L4G, we believe it’s critical to ask communities directly about how they see their own needs and how they experience the assistance they receive.
Without learning what the community thinks, it’s impossible to know if organizations – and the sector at large – are really making a difference.
When organizations explicitly ask for feedback, grounded in equity principles, and incorporate clients’ feedback to improve and change the way they deliver services, positive transformational change occurs.
Who we are
We are a committed group of nonprofit professionals and seasoned feedback coaches with deep expertise across more than 20 issue areas.
Our founder and Executive Director, Valerie Threlfall, a longtime leader in the feedback space, charts our direction and oversees our growth.
How we do it
We worked as a team to create and now embrace the following values and commitments in our daily work:
Equity
We seek to uplift voices that have been systematically marginalized and to strengthen organizational systems, including our own, to redistribute power. In acknowledgement that the most deep-seated and enduring inequities in our country are driven by race, we center race in our equity work. Our full equity commitment is described here.
Diversity & Inclusion
We intentionally seek out diverse perspectives to make us and our work better. Beyond including voices, we aim to build an inclusive culture where all team members, especially BIPOC individuals, feel supported to bring their authentic selves to the workplace and to do their best work.
Humility
We approach collaboration with humility, operating as thought partners in our work with others. We trust in the expertise of our teammates, as well as participating organizations and their clients. All voices are held with equal reverence, as we seek to listen and learn from all.
Humanity
We recognize the common humanity of everyone we work with. We lead with compassion, embracing the fullness and complexity of our whole selves, and with a commitment to support individual and collective wellness.
Innovation & Improvement
We continually seek out feedback so we can grow and get better at what we do. We approach our work with curiosity, create spaces to challenge assumptions, and learn from our successes. When things don’t go as anticipated, we see that as another opportunity to learn.
Excellence
We believe that everyone— the organizations we serve as well as the communities they serve— deserves the highest quality resources possible. We are committed to providing high-quality and accessible programs that create positive impact for organizations and their clients.
Our History
Listen4Good was designed in 2016 by Fund for Shared Insight as a capacity-building program to enhance philanthropy by promoting high-quality listening and feedback in service of advancing equity. We launched with a pilot cohort of 46 organizations and formed an initial partnership with SurveyMonkey in 2016. In 2018, we expanded our reach by creating a proprietary web app to share best practices nationwide.
In 2021, we introduced Online+ and Premium, new fee-based offerings. And in 2023, Listen4Good transitioned from an incubated project of Shared Insight to an independent project of the Tides Center.
Looking ahead, by 2025, we aim to serve more than 1,000 organizations across our programs.
