When organizations discuss evaluations, they often follow existing programs. The goal is to learn about the program and what participants thought about it and longer term what the impact might have been. These discussions often are focused on mass surveys (phone or internet) to get feedback.
Surveys are by nature not very personal. Participants are posed with many questions about their thoughts. To make analysis easier, most questions have pre-determined answers. At the end, you might be faced with a few short answer questions but people often do not want to take the
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time to fill them out and express all their thoughts. However, by changing the methodology, you can create not only a feedback mechanism but also an extremely effective engagement initiative.
Instead of running an online survey, consider running a focus group. These smaller discussions will allow you to dive deeper into participant’s thoughts but are also a great engagement program. I will give you an example. The other evening I was meeting with a colleague who runs a Jewish dialogue around religious practice. She recently was asked to take part in a focus group at a local schul to discuss their young professional programming. She described personal relationships being built during the discussion. Learning from each other’s ideas, discussion them, and building on them is very Jewish, it is a great way to build relationships, and if the discussion is well guided it will provide you with great information on your program.
When the focus group ended many of the participants stayed for an additional hour to continue the discussion and get to know each other better. Now, after the discussion she is interested to frequent the organization more and feels more connected to it. We all like to feel valued and a focus group can provide you valuable information as well as make your participants feel valued.
One last story about focus groups. Several years ago I helped conduct a focus group for a small Jewish organization. There were about 8 people in attendance with a mix of organization leaders and participants. At the end of the meeting one of the participants came up to me. He said that he had been involved for many years but had never been asked what he thought and thanked me for giving him that opportunity and listening so patiently.
We all have ideas and people like being heard. Utilizing focus groups (while more expensive than an online survey) is a cost effective way to gather deep information about your participants with an added benefit of building personal connections among people and with your institution.