Listening to Those Who Matter the Most was the most resonant article for me in this week’s materials. It provided clear and concrete advice and evidence of who nonprofits should be accountable to and why. The authors’ argument that nonprofits tend to devalue if not completely overlook constituent’s views and opinion rings true for me, both in my professional experience and in my studies. I found the conversation about the ways to elicit feedback and the results of the YouthTruth surveys to be enlightening in a way that the theoretical nature of some discussions of accountability are not. For instance, while The Many Faces of Accountability contained some interesting information, I found it to be too abstract and middle-of-the-road to be actionable. Most of the suggestions, like “nonprofit leaders need to focus their attention on accountabilities that really matter” are too vague.

I also found the YouthTruth discussion interesting as I am doing a paper for another class on the topic of the Gates Foundation and their overwhelming influence on education policy. In particular, they have a history of forcing through reforms without sufficient community connection or evidence to back it. It is good to see that an effort like YouthTruth exists that does attempt to bridge a connection with constituents and elicit student’s actual views. It seems like it would have been useful, however, for the survey questions to focus on students opinions on broader issues and Gates reforms such as Common Core, value-added teacher assessments, increased testing, etc. which affect them directly, rather than only on hyperlocalized issues like school culture (even though that is important as well).