To Go or to Follow, That’s a Question

In this week’s reading “Why do funders and providers collect feedback and do they find it useful”, David, Kristina, and Laura talk about the different ways funders and providers see the feedback. At last they made some recommendations for practice.

One of the advices that I think is really good is that “funders and providers should agree on goals for feedback and how to use the limited resources available for feedback in ways that are mutually beneficial” (Campbell, Lambright& Bronstein). However, is it possible that the funders and providers can always agree on the goals for feedback? I think the one of the reasons for funders’ and providers’ different goals for feedback is that they have different expectations for the service they provide.

For funders, they are not on the scene when the service is provided. As a result, they need to use feedback to confirm that their money has gone to the right place. That’s why they give outcomes identification and verification the highest score. On the other hand, providers are the ones who actually do the service job. So they would tend to focus more on the work itself, and pay more attention to service improvement and their responsiveness to their clients.

Therefore, when the funders and providers find each other’s different expectations have led to disagreement on how to use the fund and resources, should providers go for what they think best or should they follow the funders’ interests because the providers need fund from their funders?