Choose Your Feedback Audience

L4G helps organizations gather feedback from the people who matter most to their work. Different audiences can give you different types of insights to strengthen your organization.

Most organizations start by surveying the people they serve directly, then expand to other key stakeholders over time. But the right starting point depends on your organization’s goals and context.

Which audience should you survey?

Clients
  • Who they are: People who directly receive your services or participate in your programs
  • What you’ll learn: How well your programs meet client needs, including what’s working in your programming and areas for improvement
  • Best for: Organizations with direct service programs
  • Example questions: “Overall, how well has this organization met your needs?”, “What could this organization do better?””
Get the Client Survey Template
Partners
  • Who they are: Organizations you collaborate with or refer clients to

  • What you’ll learn: what partners think of your organization, your staff, your partnership, and how it makes a difference in their clients’ lives

  • Best for: Organizations that work closely with partners to deliver programming

  • Example questions: “Overall, how well does this organization meet your organization’s goals for the partnership?”, “What could this organization do better as a partner?”
Get the Partner Survey Template
Volunteers

  • Who they are: People who donate their time to support your organization

  • What you’ll learn: Whether volunteers feel respected, valued, and connected to your organization

  • Best for: Organizations that rely on volunteers for programming

  • Example questions: “How connected do you feel to the mission at this organization?”, “What could this organization do better to support its volunteers?”
Get the Volunteer Survey Template
Community Members

  • Who they are: People in your service area who may become clients, supporters, or advocates

  • What you’ll learn: Community needs, awareness of your organization, and barriers to accessing services

  • Best for: Those wanting to understand community needs – including for advocacy, planning new programs, and reaching new clients

  • Example questions: “What are the main needs affecting this community?” “How familiar are you with our organization’s work?”, “What services do you wish were offered by this organization to address community needs?”
Get the Community Survey Template
Staff

  • Who they are: Your employees

  • What you’ll learn: Whether staff feel valued and supported, insights about your workplace culture, and how staff experience serving clients

  • Best for: Organizations wanting to improve staff retention, workplace culture, or service delivery

  • Example questions: “How connected do you feel to the mission at this organization?”, “How often do you feel like your voice matters at this organization?”
Get the Staff Survey Template

Still not sure which audience to choose?

Start with clients if you:
  • Run direct service programs
  • Want to improve program quality
  • Are new to collecting feedback

 

Consider other audiences if you:
  • Rely heavily on partnerships (partners)
  • Have a large volunteer base (volunteers)
  • Are seeking to understand broader community needs (community)
  • Want to improve internal operations (staff)

While you may want to institute feedback loops across all of your programs and stakeholder groups, it’s a significant lift to do that right out of the gate. In most cases, we recommend starting with just one stakeholder group so you can focus on one survey with one audience.

Consider the following as you prioritize which programs to start with:
NEED

Are there programs not hitting recruitment goals or slipping on outcomes? Do you want to learn how things are going with a new program before continuing or expanding? Are you wondering if partners are satisfied working with you? Consider focusing on these first.

CHAMPIONS

Are there staff who are especially interested in or excited about feedback? These colleagues could be valuable internal champions. If your organization is nervous about feedback, starting with programs or stakeholders they work with may be a helpful way to build support.

COMPLEXITY

Some organizations start with an audience that is easy to reach to get their feet wet, while others choose to tackle more complexity to get all the administrative kinks out. Consider your organization’s bandwidth and what makes sense for you.

Ready to choose your audience and create your survey? Go to your dashboard to get started.

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