To be useful, a survey must be carefully crafted.
As I wrote last week, surveys give you information about those whose support you seek and about your organization’s effectiveness. But to get that information, you need to prepare your survey carefully by asking the right people, in the right way.
Survey Participants
In order to conduct a successful survey, you need a willing pool of participants and a way to reach them. Start with your databases of clients, donors, and volunteers or the mailing list of newsletter subscribers.
Customize surveys: You may want to segment your list and create different versions of the survey. A national membership organization may tailor surveys to different categories of membership (local versus national, members in the mid-West versus members in the Northeast). The questions for donors and clients will differ: Why do you donate vs what services do you use. The results will give you better information about each group’s experiences with the organization and how that experience might be improved.
Watch your wording: How you word a question can affect the validity of the answer. Be careful in the way you use words such as “could,” “should,” and “would.” Avoid emotionally freighted words, such as “forced,” or “banned.” Be sure that the possible answers cover all the options, which may mean having an “other” or “none of the above” option. Do some research on the phrasing of questions to make sure that you don’t bias the results of your survey.
Expand your lists: Include people in the survey who do not have a relationship with organization in your survey. Finding out what discourages donating, volunteering, or using your services is good information to have. For a fee, online services will send your survey to specific audiences, based on factors such as gender, age, income, education, and a host of other demographics that allow you to home in on the people you want to hear from but are not on your own lists. Using these lists allows you to gather information from people you would not have reached otherwise and makes them aware of your organization.
Reach far: Remember, a survey is a quantitative method, which means that you need to have a minimum number of responses to make the data representative of your audiences’ opinions. If your responses are too few, the results are considered anecdotal. Typically, 1,200 responses can be considered enough, but it may depend upon the nature of your audience. When you open the survey, promote it heavily in your enewletter and on all your social media platforms.
Include the unconnected: People who do not have regular access to a computer, and those who have language or ability barriers must be given the survey in person at a normal point of contact, such as when using services or registering for a program or event. You can hand out survey forms and pencils as people come in. For some populations, a staff member may have to read the questions to the respondent and mark the answers for them. Homeless, elderly disabled, and non-English speaking constituents may require this personal interaction.
For those who do not use your program, you may need to arrange a survey at another location, such as a library or senior center. Results from these in-person contacts must be tabulated by hand, so allow time to do so.
Survey Tools
Free or inexpensive survey tools abound on the internet, from “Forms” in Google Drive to Survey Monkey and Google Consumer Surveys, which provide respondents as well as analysis of the responses.
Some online survey sites offer survey templates for nonprofits. The templates range from marketing research to donor feedback. They also provide online training, tips, and sample questions that can be modified to suit your organization’s information needs.
The advantage of online surveys is that they are easy to disseminate and to promote using social media, your website, and email. You must tabulate the results of your survey, which may mean hundreds, even thousands of responses, so, if you ask open-ended questions — “tell us in your own words … ” — allow enough time to manually review all the write-in responses. Again, online tools offer varying degrees of analytical services, some free and some on a fee-for-service basis.
Developing Your Survey
Keep it simple: The opportunity to ask people questions may tempt you to ask every question you can think of. Resist the temptation. If the survey is long and complicated, people are less likely to start or to finish it. Ask only what you need to know for the job at hand. Be conservative about the number of questions and mindful of the time it takes to answer them. After all, you are asking respondents to do you a favor.
The general rule is, don’t ask for something unless you intend to use that information. To help you determine what information you need, pretend that you have all the results. What do they tell you? And more importantly, how will you use that information? Your goal is to strike a balance between a comprehensive questionnaire and brevity.
Check your work: To help craft an effective survey, it can be useful to interview some constituents or test the survey on a few people first. This can help you develop appropriate questions, anticipate the types of responses you can expect, and test for bias in the questions. For example,a survey question may need rewording for clarity. Or, if your organization is religious, you may find out that you need to add choices that accommodate responses from interfaith couples.
It’s also a good idea to test your survey on people unfamiliar with your organization before launching it to the public. This step ensures that all the questions make sense, indicates how long it takes to fill out the survey, and highlights gaps, such as additional options needed in the multiple choice responses.
Survey Etiquette
Introduce the survey to respondents. Tell them why the survey is being conducted, how the results will be used, and how important their participation is to your organization. When they complete the survey, thank them.
It may increase response if you give respondents something in return for their effort — even a chance to win a raffle prize — people may be more inclined to click through to the end. The fee-based services often offer reward points to survey participants, which takes care of this aspect for you.
Done correctly, a survey can yield valuable insights for your organization that can bolster its appeal, improve programs, and increase fundraising.
