Now through April 30, we're asking for our community's input! Learn how your participation in a short survey will help us improve our services and better support our community.
For over 50 years now, The Friendship Center has worked to grow and evolve, always with the goal of meeting our community’s needs. We’ve been able to continue transforming as an agency and keeping pace with the demand for services because of our community's support. Now, we’re asking for our community’s input.
Throughout the month of April, we’re inviting all our stakeholders to take a short survey to help us improve our services and identify where our community needs more support. Whether you're a partner agency we work with, a former or current client, a passionate supporter, or a member of our community who shares our vision for eliminating violence, we want to hear from you!
We estimate that the survey will take about 10 minutes to complete, and your responses are so valuable in helping The Friendship Center continue to improve, expand, and adapt. If you’re on the fence about sharing your thoughts or don’t know much (or anything) about our services, we would especially love to hear from you. Knowing where we need to build awareness around the services we offer is just as critical as understanding where we can serve our community more effectively.
To discuss the significance of your participation, why we’re doing a survey, and how we hope to use your input, we asked our Executive Director Gina Boesdorfer to weigh in for this short Q&A.
Most broadly and basically, why are we doing a community survey right now?
GB:Â In the eight years that I have been at TFC, the landscape has changed at our agency and in the community. We want to make sure that we are pivoting and planning appropriately for the needs our clients are facing right now and the needs people anticipate being a top priority in the future.
Has The Friendship Center done any big call for our community’s input like this in recent memory? What kind of evaluation have we typically done in your time with the agency, and how is this similar or different?
GB: We have not had any big call for community input in my time with TFC. Up until now, evaluations and assessments of our agency and services have primarily been informal or in one-on-one meetings. While we have provided the opportunity for clients to provide feedback through formal surveys, it has been difficult to find a consistent and accessible process. Our current strategic plan has many components focused on internal operations. Many goals are to ensure TFC will operate more efficiently and effectively, and be more nimble in our ability to meet our clients’ and community’s needs as they fluctuate over time. The opportunity for collecting and using feedback is something that we have identified as a gap and a priority. We want to create a process to collect feedback and incorporate that information into our annual and future planning.
What are we hoping to do with people’s responses once the survey has closed?
GB:Â We developed this survey with a more consistent and ongoing evaluation process in mind. Our intent is to evaluate the data and then work to embed opportunities to provide feedback throughout the year. We have had a large focus on internal operations and will be starting to shift to thinking more wholistically about what it means to serve clients and provide education in the future.
Is there one or a handful of trends that we have anecdotal evidence for that data from this survey could help confirm or clarify? Is there a particular question or topic that you’re most curious to see the community’s responses to?
GB:Â Many of our systems and ways of serving clients have been significantly impacted by changes in our community. We have had both staff and clients struggle with the rising costs of housing and inflation. We are seeing a decrease in many funding sources, or a stagnation of funding, which equates to a functional deficit when you consider the increased costs and demand.
Many referral processes that worked well for years no longer serve our community the same way as all types of agencies and services see higher demands and fewer resources. We have a large service area, and we really want to find ways to more meaningfully serve all parts of it.
These are certainly some of the areas where I see opportunities for change, growth, and partnership in how we operate and serve our community. However, it is easy to get locked into your own lens or bubble in the community. I am very curious to see what people identify and what surprises we might find in the data to help open our vision and see the challenges from different angles, or see other challenges we may not have noticed. We are hoping for a wide response so that we can have really robust discussions as we look towards the future.
For any folks out there in our service region who maybe don’t know much about The Friendship Center and are deliberating whether to take the survey, would you encourage them to just do it? How important is it to us to have a broad spectrum of responses, and not just the feedback from our stakeholders who are most familiar with the work we do?
GB:Â I would encourage everyone who receives this survey to take it and pass it along. While we have large service numbers and often struggle to meet the need, prevalence data tells us that we are only skimming the surface.
Our vision is to live in a community where everyone is thriving in safe and healthy relationships. We will not reach that vision if we bury our head in the sand or only move forward using only our own knowledge, perspective, and lens. We want to know what we are doing well, areas for growth, where/what we are missing, and things we should consider that we have never considered before. We want to know what we do that people appreciate and what we do that people disagree with. We want to have big and hard conversations. We need as many voices and as much input as we can get to ensure we are doing everything we can to reach our vision.