My organization, the Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific (Adfiap), through a project with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia-Pacific (Escap), recently conducted a survey among members of the Bankers Association of the Philippines (BAP) to develop a training program on sustainable finance.
Associations often conduct surveys, but how do you start one? I am reminded by an article, entitled “Know Your Members through Better Surveys: A How-to Guide,” by Kent Agramonte of US-based Naylor Association Solutions. He said: “The first step in a successful membership survey is to establish your goal. If you are trying to figure out your members’ needs, ask about what they need or want from your association.” He cited the following:
What are the issues your organization is most concerned about?
Is the association doing enough to focus on issues that affect your business?
What can the association do to bring additional value to you?
He said the next step is to build and send the survey. Associations can avail themselves of several free and low-cost survey tools online that can help them generate basic surveys. “Once you enter your questions into the survey tool, test the survey on yourself, and make sure all question logic flows the way you intended,” Agramonte advised. “When you are 1005 confident that your survey is ready to be sent out, you may want to test it on a small sample of potential respondents before sending to your full distribution list. It’s a good way to tighten up the wording or answer choices that may end up confusing respondents.”
Once the survey is sent out, it must be kept open for at least two weeks (but not forever). He said the association must then send e-mail updates at the beginning of the second week to remind members to take the survey if they have not already done so. Worried about not getting enough responses to your survey? “Offer an incentive like a gift card or something,” he added.
“After two or three weeks, it is typically time to start looking at the results. Remember that you only need about a 10 percent response to make your survey statistically viable. For example, if you send your survey to 1,000 members and 100 members take the survey, then you can statistically project the results to your entire membership. If you don’t meet the 10 percent threshold, then your results are still viable as ‘nonscientific’ insight into your membership base,” he further advised.
“Once you have taken a look at the results, make sure to turn them into ratios, if possible. For example, if 63 percent of your members say they are concerned about an issue, it is better to say nearly 2 out of 3 members as most people can picture 2 out of 3 people in their head, but a concept like 63 percent is harder to imagine. It is also a good idea to share the results with as many people as you can.”
He said surveys only retain their validity for about two years. So he advised sending out member surveys every other year to make sure associations are kept abreast of the most up-to-date information about their members.
The contributor, Octavio “Bobby” Peralta, is concurrently the secretary general of the Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific (Adfiap), founder and CEO of the Philippine Council of Associations and Association Executives (PCAAE) and president of the Asia-Pacific Federation of Association Organizations (Apfao). The purpose of PCAAE—the “association of associations”—is to advance the association management profession and to make associations well-governed and sustainable. PCAAE enjoys the support of Adfiap, the Tourism Promotions Board (TPB) and the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC).
E-mail: obp@adfiap.org.