Difference between revisions of "2011 Membership Survey"

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2011 Membership Survey Results

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The Membership Survey is held annually as a way to formally capture the membership’s thoughts and ideas on all aspects of the organization in a consistent format to be utilized by Executives and the Board of Directors in making decisions at the Administrative Meeting. It typically runs in the beginning of the year, to reflect thoughts from the prior calendar year; the 2011 Membership Survey was run from February 1st to the 15th 2012.

This report is designed to provide an overview of the results of the survey, compare against the previous year results and show how the results were utilized at the Spring Administrative Meeting. For the sake of being thorough and consistent, the survey results will be provided in alphabetical departmental order.

The 2011 Membership Survey had 212 respondents, as there were 571 members of the Tower as of January 1, 2012, this means that the respondents made up 37% of the Tower population. It should be noted that there were 253 respondents; however 41 of those did not complete the survey. Additionally, the Tower population statistic does not include Citizens and guests. In comparison, the 2010 Membership Survey had 208 respondents out of 641 Tower Members or 32% of the Tower population.

Demographics

The following charts show the breakdown of respondents based on rank, affiliation, age, location, sex, education, and field of work.

We can see below that the majority of respondents are senior members, which was the case in both 2012 and 2011. This is not surprising as senior members make up the majority of membership.

Both years saw that a large segment of respondents to the survey either chose not to provide their affiliation or did not have one. In 2012 for any respondent that did not self select as a senior member did not have an option to select an affiliation, whereas in 2011 affiliation was an option to all respondents. The drastic decrease from 2011 to 2012 in no affiliation would be due to this change in the survey, so that aspired Accepted and Soldiers would not have this option, nor would a self selected guest. Additionally it can be seen that the ratio of senior member affiliation in respondents reflects that of the Tower.

The majority of respondents both years are within the age range of 25 to 34, which accurately reflects Tower membership age spread.

Both years saw that the majority of respondents came from Canada, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

2010: USA 65%, UK 8%, Norway 5.75%, Canada 4.7%, and Sweden 3%

2011: USA 65%, Norway 5.5%, Canada 5%, UK 4.75%, and Sweden 3.5%

The remaining countries respondent rates from 2010 and 2011 are below. Both years saw a total of twenty countries that had respondents.

As both years respondents provided rank and sex was not asked, it fell to reviewing data on a line by line basis and comparing provided names against the Who’s Who.

This showed that the ratio of male to female respondents in 2010 was 23% to 76%, and in 2011 it was 23% to 61%, with 16% where names were not provided. Education and professions options were changed and difficult to compare between years. Below is the 2011 data.

The chart below shows field of work, 16% were students, 14% other, and 10% no answer.

Department of Administration

The Department of Administration handles surveys, reporting, and business related items. The survey items that fall within this section are the membership survey and staffing.

Staffing

Several people stated they had not applied for any positions due to not being eligible – mostly by being too new and positions requiring 6 months or being a senior member (9 comments.) The primary reason for not applying would be time due to real life or simply other priorities (23 comments.) The secondary reason given was that people have no interest in serving in positions because they either are not invested enough in the community and/or just want to be here to be here and not put forth any effort in their membership (10 comments.) There was a slight minority that felt they did not have the skills necessary (in some cases wrongly) for positions (3 comments).

Both 2010 and 2011 saw the majority of respondents state that the application process was fair (35%) and somewhat fair (25%). Similarly, the majority of respondents stated that the application process was very easy (30%) or easy (26%.)

Due to the percentages and comments not changing over the years, this question will be temporarily retired, to be brought back if a great concern is expressed by membership.

Membership Survey

Total of 25 comments to why one may not have filled out the survey in the past. Most of those who left comments and not previously completed the survey were new members since the last one (18 comments.) The rest admitted to being lazy (3), technical issues (1), didn’t think they were here long enough (1), were inactive at the time (1), and simply didn’t know it was going on (4). Comments regarding the survey itself, were a total of 58 comments. Most were positive (24 comments.) The perennial complaint that it is long came up a eight times. Two each pointed out spelling/typo errors and wished to provide more comments about Execs, as well as Admins and Staff.

Department of Community Outreach

The Department of Community Outreach handles community building and philanthropic activities.

Online Events

Survey respondents participate in Online Freeweeks, with 23% viewing the forum daily, 41% weekly. However, with regards to how important freeweeks are to membership, 38% responded that they were very or somewhat important. Last year the same question and options yielded 52%, indicating that less members hold free weeks as important to their membership now; 28% of respondents visited the forum daily and 38% weekly.

Of events held during free weeks, the most popular by far is affiliate group theme competitions.

Most members (who provided comments on the Membership Survey) love free weeks (32% of comments). The feelings regarding free weeks is spread across the spectrum, with members who hate them (15% of comments), those that understand their community building purpose and chance to be silly but don’t participate due to time (31% of 73 comments), and those who enjoy only aspects. The most popular parts of free weeks are avatar changes, RPs, and games – based on the comments. The Seanchan Invasion was mentioned 5 times. The biggest “complaint” examples were that the events are fast paced and some activities have an air of exclusivity. Membership is split into three groups regarding additional participation in Outreach Activities: things are fine as they are (8% of comments to this question), they just don’t have the time (38% of comments), or they just don’t care enough to participate more (18% of comments). Additional comments (35% of comments) including a desire for better marketing, innovation and organization – including advanced notice or knowledge of events and knowledge of things provided such as the birthday list. Comments about organizing appeared to be more on the affiliated group level – wishing to be more part of the decision process, wanting others in group to participate more, wanting more cross over of groups (between bonded pairs). Of the 244 members who started the survey, 74 left comments on this question.

The question requested new ideas to hold for events, and most of the suggestions were to bring back in frequently held activities or showing support for current activities. The novel thoughts included mentoring for real life, an Olympics type competition, more events related to being Servants of All, screen caps and gambling. There was also a request for a yearlong celebration for the last book. Role play and storytelling topped the suggestions (8 comments), followed by chat games and trivia (7 comments). There were a few requests to innovate the trivia to include WoT trivia and TarValon.net trivia, as opposed to what is currently done in #OWAH.

Philanthropy

The Spring Administrative Meeting determined that philanthropic activities at real life events will be administered by the Department of Community Outreach; additionally the charity for the Anniversary party will be chosen and static going forward whereas the charity for Fall Balls will rotate. The Feast of Light fundraiser will be pushed back to an earlier date to not interfere with holiday giving as it has in the past. Finally, a number of smaller fundraisers for a variety of charities will the new norm. All of these decisions are based upon comments from the Membership Survey.

The following charts are related to the question: Have you donated to a specific fund in the past or would you in the future?

Membership specific assistance:

Scholarship Fund:

Feast of Lights: