The answers you seek depend on the questions you ask. I am looking at this from the perspective of data collection in our field. For nonprofits, collecting data is never just about gathering information. It's also about how honest we are willing to be, how much vulnerability we can handle, and how ready we are to truly listen. If our questions are rushed, defensive, too safe, or only meant to confirm what we already believe, the data will show that. Send such a data collection tool out into the world, and our worry becomes: how do we get a high enough response rate on it? But sometimes, the real issue with data collection isn't the response rate or whether people want to answer. The real issue can be that those rushed, defensive, non-meaningful questions can make your community feel the organization is not really ready to hear. Community listening is not proven by sending out a survey. It's shown by the quality of your questions, how clear your intentions are, and your willingness to be changed by the answers you receive. That requires ● Honesty. Honesty about what you really want to know. Honesty about what you are ready to act on. Honesty about what you may not want to hear. ● Vulnerability. Because good questions can unsettle certainty. They can expose gaps. They can reveal harm. They can make visible the distance between what we say we value and what people actually experience. That's where the most useful answers are found. So before your next survey, listening session, intake form, feedback tool, or evaluation, I think some of the most important questions are internal: ● What are we really trying to understand? ● What are we brave enough to hear, acknowledge, and commit to act on? ● What will we do if the answers require more from us than we expected? The answers you seek depend on the questions you ask. And the questions you ask reflect the kind of organization you are willing to become. #nonprofits #community
So wise, Meena! And yes!
This reminds me of something I read recently. Basically it was talking about how simple shifts in perspective have big impacts. So the example was of a pilot flying and instead of saying “don’t hit the mountain” (effectively “attracting” the mountain and a crash by focusing on it), instead you would say”find the safe path”. Asking better questions can work the same way.