California Families in Focus

Who are the people you serve with your mission?

The people we serve with our mission are youth and families from low income, single parent homes and communities of color from downtown, central, west and north long beach. We focus mainly on developing the single mothers to become capable and resourceful head of households and we work with the at promise youth by providing mentors and helping them heal trauma through Art, Music, Poetry and Dance.

How is your organization collecting feedback from the people you serve?

Electronic surveys (by email, tablet, etc.), Paper surveys, Focus groups or interviews (by phone or in person), Community meetings/Town halls, Constituent (client or resident, etc.) advisory committees, Suggestion box/email,

How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?

To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals,

What significant change resulted from feedback?

A recent change that we have incorporated into our organizational practices from the feedback we have received from the members we serve and the members of our CFF tribe is that we have developed and incorporated a learning circle and member happy hour where we host team building activities and getting to know you fact sheet, where we ask our members to fill out the getting to know you sheet and partner with a member they do not know and they introduce each other by reading the sheet and creating a story of the person they are introducing based on what they read. We also select one member once a month and highlight them, their business and any highlights they want to share. This allows all members to get to know each other's journey and it creates a culture of respect and understanding.

With whom is the organization sharing feedback?

The people we serve, Our staff, Our board, Our funders, Our community partners,

How has asking for feedback from the people you serve changed your relationship?

Asking for feedback from the people we serve has increased attendance, participation and creative advice on how to deliver information and communication to our community. We invite the people we serve to volunteer at our programs, projects and events and we provide orientations and trainings, thank you letters and certificates of appreciation from our nonprofit and also from elected officials. Because of our efforts to include the members we serve, our events have become more focused, with clear goals and objectives and more impactful and well funded and well attended. Our member involvement really has increased and we are more productive at the office with the day to day activities because our members are doing the hands on tasks that free up our time to get more office work done.

Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?

We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback, We ask the people who gave us feedback how well they think we responded,

What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?

We don't have any major challenges to collecting feedback,