Learning from Listening
After six years, The Listening Fund has closed. Through our brilliant partners, we have learned so much about what is needed to improve accountability to young people, as well as gaining valuable insights into running a pooled fund, working directly with young people and sharing knowledge. This short blog is a summary of that learning and if you’d like to know more then please do get in touch: we’d love to have a chat!
Improving accountability to young people
There is no ‘right way’ to better listen to young people. Identifying an effective approach depends on many contextual factors including an organisation’s listening skills and readiness, the young people with whom they’re working, staff knowledge and capacity, and the organisation’s existing work and mission. You can read more about these issues – and how to tackle them! – in Collective Discovery’s Sharing Power guide.
Although different contexts resulted in a variety of listening approaches, there were some common factors which supported partners’ most successful work:
- Having a clear ‘why’: developing a robust rationale for why this work was important to the organisation and its overall mission
- Time: building a culture of listening and accountability is a long-term investment which requires proper planning and strategic commitment
- Flexibility: adapting plans, processes and structures according to the needs and feedback of young people, staff and other stakeholders
- Organisational buy-in: not only to new listening structures and processes, but to the ‘why’ behind the listening
- Peer support: access to a network of professionals engaged in similar work who can offer insight and support.
Running a pooled fund
Blagrave positioned itself as the lead organisation within The Listening Fund. This provided decision-making clarity, a sense of ownership and organisational simplicity which benefitted both contributing funders and delivery partners.
However, this approach also meant that The Listening Fund didn’t maximise the resources it might have had at its disposal had the management of The Listening Fund been more of a collaborative endeavour. A looser sense of ownership also understandably reduced some funders’ engagement. Organisations establishing a pooled fund should consider the balance between clarity in management and the weight of collective resources.
Working with young people in philanthropy
Collective Discovery captured the insights and lessons from The Listening Fund’s journey with its board of 10 young advisers in this must-read paper. Based on our experience, issues to consider for funders exploring working alongside young people include:
- Establish a clear reason for involving young people in your work: and ensure that all stakeholders, including young people, know and understand the ‘why’ of their involvement
- Do an in-house audit of the skills, policies and procedures required for the planned work: few funders are set up to work directly with young people, so take the time to understand if you need external support and plan accordingly
- Make sure you’re well prepared to meet young people’s needs: including relationship-building residentials, personal development opportunities, and the different levels of existing knowledge and experience which will exist amongst your new recruits
Sharing knowledge
The Listening Fund was always eager to share what it learnt with the wider sector but despite having access to funders’ resources and privileges, it struggled to generate widescale interest in its work. This was in part because we failed to properly identify our audience. Once we began to focus on practitioners, on those already convinced of the importance of listening and accountability but eager to explore how to do this work well, we enjoyed a significant increase in engagement.
Working with a learning partner
Far less of this learning would have been surfaced, and in a much more haphazard way, without the support and involvement of Collective Discovery. The success of this partnership was dependent on Collective Discovery’s independence from The Listening Fund; their experience which enabled them to build trusting relationships with the Fund’s partners; and their long-standing interest in the ideas and principles behind the Fund.
In addition, Collective Discovery were comfortable and confident working iteratively, trying different approaches to supporting partners, capturing learning and sharing what they discovered. This resulted not only in the broad variety of resources on The Listening Fund website, but also an 11-part podcast series exploring the work of the Fund: not something we could have predicted in 2020.
Talk to us!
This blog is a snapshot of what has emerged from six years of collaboration. If you’re interested in going into more detail about what we’ve learned, contact us at grants@blagravetrust.org to start a conversation.
Edd Fry, Listening Fund Project Manager