Hey, social entrepreneurs, are you listening? Trump is.

’Tis the season of Trump. He is winning the Republican Primary and everyone is asking “why?” The answer is so simple and it’s the one nobody likes to admit: He is responding to what people want.

Unfortunately, in a climate of fear, what they want is abhorrent. Bans on Muslims entering the country. Aggressive tactics with our neighbors. Downright intolerance.

He is speaking to our lesser selves in America. But he is speaking to a constituency that by all accounts might sway the Presidential Election. This is not something to scoff at because it feels uncomfortable.

There is something social enterprises can learn from The Donald, though. We need to listen to our constituents. We need to understand our beneficiaries. Assumptions abound in the social space. 

No matter how much we say we are listening to locals, we have to ask ourselves, are we really? Do we go above and beyond to make sure we understand the motivations and desires of the people we so actively seek to serve?

And once we have information from beneficiaries, do we stop, or do we dig even deeper?

Talk to your typical philanthropist or social entrepreneur and they will share an anecdote about something they learned that completely changed their perspective on local reality.

When I worked in Mpumalanga, South Africa, I once asked my host dad in our community what the most impactful thing we had done in the community was? Was it the schools we built, the community centers or soccer fields, the scholarship fund or day camps or libraries? There were so many things and his response was immediate: The scholarships. It motivates all the students to work harder, he said.

Days, weeks, months and even YEARS later, without an ounce of research backing me up, I told countless people that scholarships are the most high impact activities we had done in the village. Pretty thin, right?

There need to be more tools for collecting actual insight from the field. We could do a better job listening to the people we want to serve. 

That’s a big reason I launched Unleesh. To create a simple solution for two way interaction from people all over the world. What if we could find out what hundreds of people think about a single topic like this?

We’d be able to respond to their hopes and dreams with support. We could serve our better selves everywhere.

Saul Garlick is founder and CEO at Unleesh and founder & Chairman at ThinkImpact.