Dear AmeriCorps Grantee:

I am writing to invite your organization to become part of the Johns Hopkins University Nonprofit Listening Post Project, a cutting-edge initiative designed to identify the major challenges facing nonprofit organizations in our country and the promising responses nonprofit executives are taking to cope with them. For the first time, the Corporation has formed a partnership with Johns Hopkins that will allow a select group of AmeriCorps programs to participate in the Listening Post Project.

As outlined more fully on the project’s web site (www.jhu.edu/listeningpost), the Listening Post project has been underway for five years in cooperation with a number of leading nonprofit intermediary organizations and their member organizations. In the process it has generated important new information about such crucial matters as:

• What are the major challenges facing nonprofit organizations?
• How are nonprofits responding to these challenges? Which responses are most promising?
• What else might be necessary to help nonprofits cope with these challenges?

In the past, results from the Listening Post Project have been widely disseminated to nonprofit managers, policymakers, the media, and other stakeholders. This year, the expanded Listening Post Project will allow us to compare the challenges faced by AmeriCorps programs to those faced by other nonprofits, and to help you respond to the challenges you face, both in general and in tough economic times.

The Listening Post Project’s surveys, or “Soundings,” are web-based surveys that should take a maximum of 20-30 minutes to complete. Organizations participating in the Listening Post Project are typically invited to respond to about three web-based surveys, per year. This year, about 550 AmeriCorps organizations, including State competitive and formula programs, national and EAP direct grantees, and National Direct sites or sub grantees, have been selected to participate.

The first Sounding, about information technology issues, is scheduled to begin within the next few days. Participating organizations will receive a separate email from Listening Post staff, containing a link to the web-based survey. Also, over the next few weeks, your program officers, with help from the Corporation’s Department of Research and Policy Development, will be working with you to prepare for the second sounding – about nonprofits’ responses to economic stress – which will be administered in early March.

We thank you in advance for your participation in the Listening Post Project.

Yours in service,

Lois Nembhard
Acting Director, AmeriCorps State and National

Testimonials from Listening Post Project participants:

"The Listening Post project has been valuable in education for Board members. I have used excerpts from each one to give my board a picture of what is going on in the whole environment of not-for-profits. For example, the access to capital information has been useful to us as we consider our own access to capital for campus expansion and renovations. Additionally, the question sets often force me to consider pieces of my organization that I have considered in a finite set before—we need to spend so much time on the big picture and keeping our organizations moving forward."

Robin Mixdorf, CEO/President
The Meth-Wick Community, Cedar Rapids, IA
(Elderly Housing & Services)

“I would urge others in the nonprofit community to commit to participating with the Listening Post and its ongoing research. These surveys are a great way to let smaller nonprofits relay their concerns and be heard on a national level. The effort the Listening Post puts into disseminating the results means that a wide public audience sees the results. Of course, these results can help to tell our story to the various policy making groups around the country.”

Joyce Anderson, Administrator
Missoula Manor Homes, Missoula, MT
(Elderly Housing & Services)

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