One of the overriding challenges facing organizations is how to increase membership and encourage wider involvement. Focus groups are becoming an ever more popular means to this end.
Recently, I was invited to participate in one.
The focus group was a locally held, professionally organized exercise. I had done it once when I was living in Atlanta and thought it an interesting process. As I recall it was some marketing effort geared toward cars, but for the most part I just remember being intrigued by the experience.
I don’t know how I got chosen for this most recent one, but I decided that my Monday night wasn’t too busy to pick up some quick cash for giving my opinion on something. After all, I am usually happy to give it for free.
The organizing group was out of Memphis. It was a professional operation. They called to profile me and then emailed to verify eligibility and attendance. They also assigned homework to be completed before we got there. Clearly it wasn’t a fly-by-night business.
Our homework consisted of creating a collage of pictures and drawings representing elements and facts about a company we particularly admired. They wanted to know why we admired them, how we knew about them and what their message was that memorable.
As we worked through our hour and a half commitment, it became apparent we were providing input for C Spire. Having spent time praising these guys on their commitment to Starkville and the installation of fiber, I was pleased to participate. But I was even more interested in the process structure and the reaction and responses from the other participants.
This private sector effort made me think of all the unsuccessful attempts to approve public bond issues to build a police station over the past 10 years, which then led to thinking about all the non-profit organizations needing to know how to succeed by appealing to various segments of a community.
The failures of the bond issues were great disappointments to those working on them, especially since most citizens acknowledged it as a widely needed project.
I wonder if a focus group or a survey would have saved us all the time and money we spent on these ill-fated attempts.
The common wisdom says we could have predicted and then possibly modified the outcome if we had asked the correct questions from all segments of the voting population and then clearly addressed those issues of concern. We won’t know unless we try it for the next project.
The public and non-profit boards and commissions struggle to create value and buy-in from their constituency toward their community efforts. So how do they incentivize participation? Dinner and cash worked well for my group, but sadly non-profits and the public sector are limited in their resources. If the appeal to good works doesn’t do it then what alternative is there? The collective experiential wisdom is pizza and beer. No kidding.
The good news is that non profits can usually get someone to donate those two perks for a small group pretty easily. The bad news is that too much of one could skew your results and too much of the other could put everyone to sleep.
What is tricky is to make sure that you can identify and get each of the necessary target groups there. Each group should be small and they need to have common interests. Similarly situated and relevant members such as particular age groups or professions or hobbies need to be studied together. They have to be pertinent to the goal.
There are resources available to the public and non-profit sector. We need to remember to use all of them as we figure out how to adapt and meet the needs of our varied constituents.
Next time we have a big project that needs citizen buy in, we should try to focus.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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