If you run a volunteer program, you know how important it is to collect feedback from your volunteers. A well-designed survey can help you measure their satisfaction, identify their needs, and improve your impact. But how do you create and manage a volunteer survey effectively? Here are some tips and tools to help you out.
Before you start designing your survey, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and what you want to ask. Think about your goals, such as evaluating your program, improving your communication, or recruiting more volunteers. Then, brainstorm some questions that align with your goals, such as how often they volunteer, what they enjoy or dislike, or what they would like to see changed. Make sure your questions are clear, concise, and relevant. Avoid leading, biased, or sensitive questions that might skew your results or discourage participation.
Having a clear goal and/or purpose for the survey will help guide the design of the survey questionnaire appropriately. Just like in research, one’s research questions would help guide the design of the survey instrument! For instance, evaluating the volunteer program could have one explore questions such as: is providing volunteer service twice weekly as compared to monthly effective in reaching the target population? Or are volunteers satisfied with their current work rate in the organization? Survey questionnaire must be free of bias, not leading. Avoid jargons. Use clear and simple languages. Finally, attention must be paid to obtaining consent, data privacy and confidentiality!
Clear objectives and well-written questions are the first steps in creating an effective volunteer survey. Establish your goals, whether they are to evaluate program impact, volunteer satisfaction, or areas that need development. Make sure your questions are diverse, clear, and easy to understand to?meet these objectives. Use a combination of closed-ended as well as open-ended inquiries to get input that is both qualitative and quantitative. You can ensure that your volunteers provide insightful and useful feedback by designing well-thought-out survey questions that are in line with your objectives.
Once you have your goals and questions ready, you need to choose a tool and format for your survey. There are many online platforms that offer free or low-cost options for creating and managing surveys, such as Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, or Typeform. These tools allow you to customize your survey design, add different types of questions, and collect and analyze responses. You can also use offline methods, such as paper forms, phone calls, or interviews, depending on your resources and preferences. Choose a format that suits your audience, your budget, and your goals.
When creating or managing a volunteer survey, the correct technology and structure must be chosen carefully. Platforms such as SurveyMonkey and Google Forms provide User-friendly interfaces and a variety of question types. Select a tool that will work well for your organization and simplify analyzing?the replies. Open-ended, multiple-choice, and scale-rating?questions are examples of formats that offer a thorough understanding of volunteer responses. To effectively obtain insightful information, it's important to find a balance between the depth of data and user experience.
Picking the right tool helps to effectively manage and analyze things. The format being chosen must align with your audience and objectives
After you create your survey, you need to distribute it to your volunteers. You can use different channels, such as email, social media, or your website, to reach out to them and invite them to participate. Make sure you explain the purpose and benefits of your survey, and how long it will take to complete. You can also offer incentives, such as rewards, recognition, or feedback, to motivate them to respond. Be respectful of their time and privacy, and avoid sending too many reminders or spamming them.
One thing that I have found helpful is to leverage existing communication channels that your volunteers are already engaged with. For example, if you have an email newsletter or social media group dedicated to your volunteer program, sharing the survey link can be an easy way to distribute it without spamming inboxes. When crafting your message, focus on explaining why their input is valuable and how it will be used to improve the program. Transparency and showing appreciation for their perspective go a long way. Additionally, keeping the survey concise, and mobile-friendly, and offering it in multiple languages if applicable can help increase response rates.
Once you collect your responses, you need to analyze your results and draw insights. You can use the tools you chose to create your survey to generate reports and charts that show the trends and patterns in your data. You can also use other tools, such as Excel, Google Sheets, or Tableau, to perform more advanced analysis or visualization. Look for the key findings that answer your questions and support your goals. You can also compare your results with previous surveys or benchmarks to measure your progress or gaps.
Principais formas de analisar os resultados de uma pesquisa de voluntariado: 1. Univariada - análise de cada indicador isoladamente. Ex: cor/ra?a. 2. Bivariada - criar uma rela??o entre duas variáveis. Ex: motiva??o e cor/ra?a. 3. Multivariada - estabelecer rela??es entre duas ou mais variáveis. Ex: motiva??o, cor/ra?a e proje??o. 4. Preditiva - projetar o futuro do voluntariado e antecipar tendências. 5. Diagnóstica - focar em entender porque isso aconteceu. 6. Comentários - consolidar em nuvens de palavras e favorabilidade (promotor, neutro e detrator).
One thing that I have found helpful is to categorize volunteer feedback into broader themes. For example, rather than getting lost in the details of each comment, look for overarching trends like communication, training, recognition, onboarding, etc. This can help identify systemic strengths to continue leveraging and potential areas for improvement. Additionally, segmentation can provide useful insights. You may find certain feedback resonates more with certain demographics like newer volunteers versus veterans. Comparing their perspectives can shed light on how to better support different groups. When analyzing open-ended questions, word clouds can be an impactful visualization highlighting frequent terms.
The final step is to act on your feedback and use it to improve your volunteer program. You can use your results to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your program, and plan actions to address them. For example, you can improve your training, communication, or recognition strategies based on what your volunteers said. You can also use your feedback to celebrate your achievements, share your impact, or recruit more volunteers. Make sure you communicate your actions and outcomes to your volunteers and thank them for their input.
N?o adianta de nada você fazer uma pesquisa bem estruturada e bem redigida e simplesmente n?o levar em considera??o o feedback recebido na tomada de a??o seguinte. Dito isso, coloque em prática o quanto aprendido da pesquisa.
Here are some additional tips for how to act on volunteer feedback: Prioritize. Not all feedback can or should be addressed at once. Focus first on potential areas that pose the greatest challenges for retaining and motivating volunteers. Quick wins also build confidence that their voices were heard. Involve volunteers. Gather input from them on proposed changes and have select volunteers help drive the solutions. This promotes buy-in and gives them ownership. Update policies/procedures. If there are systematic issues like overly complex paperwork revealed, work to update standard operating protocols incorporating suggestions. This institutionalizes changes.
Tive experiências com pesquisas em que formamos um grupo de trabalho diversificado e colaborativo para elaborar as perguntas. Posteriormente, analisamos em conjunto as respostas e desenvolvemos um plano de a??o. Foi uma experiência fantástica.
Consider focus groups to dive deeper. While a broad volunteer survey can provide valuable data on overall program strengths and weaknesses, there are times when you may want more in-depth context and suggestions from a particular group of volunteers. For example, if you notice that feedback from your high school student volunteers shows declining satisfaction, facilitating a small group discussion with a subset of them could offer more granular insights. Sometimes people are more comfortable opening up in an informal setting. A focus group also allows for an exchange of ideas and peer learning. Someone could build off another's comment generating creative new solutions.