Stakeholder Engagement

GEO believes that fully engaging grantees and other key stakeholders leads directly to better results. Frontline experiences show that solutions take hold when their seeds grow from the community where the change is needed.

Inclusiveness and effectiveness, it seems, are tightly linked.

It’s a truth that is hard to embrace in practice. Nonprofit leaders tell researchers that grantmakers don’t sufficiently involve those working on the ground, closest to problems, and GEO research supports this. A minority of grantmakers (36 percent) solicit feedback of any kind from their grantees.

GEO seeks to provide its members and the wider grantmaker community with resources and tools to help them better engage grantees and other stakeholders.

Recommended Resources
 

		Do Nothing About Me Without Me: An Action Guide for Engaging Stakeholders Copublished with IISC, this guide argues the value of engaging diverse stakeholders, highlights grantmakers who are bringing stakeholders into the center of their work and offers a variety of tools to help grantmakers better engage grantees, community members and other partners. +download PDF +executive summary
		Imagine, Involve, Implement A GEO Action Guide + download PDF + Executive Summary PDF
		Is Grantmaking Getting Smarter? +download PDF +Full Data
		Listen, Learn, Lead Grantmaker Practices that Support Nonprofit Results + download PDF + Executive Summary PDF
		Community Visions, Community Solutions: Grantmaking for Comprehensive Impact by Joseph A. Connor and Stephanie Kadel-Taras GEO / Amherst H. Wilder Foundation order via external link: www.fieldstonealliance.org

Cherish Every Child Springfield
A Case Study of a Community-Wide Collaborative Planning Initiative external download:   + download PDF

Goodbye Command Control
Leader to Leader
The Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management / Jossey-Bass
external link: www.leadertoleader.org

Engage for Results
Engage for Results is a training for grantmakers developed by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations and the Interaction Institute for Social Change. These video clips are part of the training, which helps grantmakers to gain skills in effectively engaging stakeholders. The videos were created by Stony Hill Productions and supported by a grant from the Kellogg Foundation.