New “Shared Insight” Fund Opens to Help Build Constituent Engagement

By Ruth McCambridge

Nonprofit Quarterly (NPQ)

The power and value of deep constituent engagement and mutual accountability between nonprofits and constituents is a theme often repeated by NPQ. So our coverage of the nonprofit elements of this new "Shared Insight" grant program feels like a possible understatement because many of the foundations involved are philanthropic leaders. Could this mean that philanthropy will, in the future, support more seriously and consistently the democratic purpose of the nonprofit sector?

Today, seven foundations announced a collaborative grantmaking program aimed at helping foundations become more open about information sharing and helping nonprofits be more responsive to and better informed by the people meant to be helped by the organizations’ work. This second category of grants, dubbed “grant proposals for collaborative approaches to hearing from the people,” is divided into two areas: one focused on practice and one on research. This component of the Fund for Shared Insight is open to proposals from nonprofits that want to build systems that engage and use the intelligence of the communities being served to build the effectiveness of their organizations.

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