Rooted in our Community
Perhaps you've heard it at a workday, or maybe it was through an email you received after your volunteer event. Regardless, we hope it rings true: Grassroots Ecology values your feedback.
As a community-based organization, we need your input in order to be successful. That is why in 2022 we underwent a five-step process with Listen4Good to collect and use volunteer feedback to improve our programs. We are grateful to the hundreds of friends, old and new, who responded to share about their volunteer experiences with Grassroots Ecology. We learned so much from you!
As part of the final steps in the process, we want to make sure that we not only integrate your perspectives, but also tell you how we're responding to your input.
“Grassroots Ecology is good at working to make a big difference and engage the community.”
Following are some highlights of what we learned about you, along with a couple responses to the most common suggestions we heard.
3 out of 4 respondents have shared that they join our programs to help the environment.
Nearly 1 in 2 said they joined a Grassroots Ecology event to build community and meet new people.
1 in 3 say they joined because they are interested in a career in the outdoor industry and/or to try something new!
Your top suggestion for us: The most common request we received was to provide more opportunities to engage with our habitat restoration projects. We think this is a fair request, and we would really love to provide as much outdoor programming as our community seeks. However, in order to do so, we need more staff. We are actively seeking grants and individual gifts that will enable us to hire more staff to guide more volunteer and education programs. As a subscriber to our newsletter, you'll be the first to learn about program updates and opportunities to support our programs!
A “quick fix” enabled by your feedback: After volunteers at certain sites mentioned the need for more tools to go around at workdays, we re-jiggered our tool sharing to make sure the right sites had the right tools—and purchased some additional tools as well. This type of feedback is so useful to us, as tool needs vary so much from site to site and season to season.
Our top reminder to you: We hear you about how uncomfortable it is when you aren’t properly outfitted for the outdoor work we do together—and we want to do all we can to help you “dress for success” in the field! Remember to carefully review all the information for each event on the registration page that you sign up on. When we recommend long sleeves and long pants, it's to protect you from the environment and weather conditions!
“Staff are knowledgeable, positive & make you feel valuable. I learn something new every time!”
Whether it’s your first, fifth, or fiftieth event with us, please continue providing us feedback on your experience with Grassroots Ecology. You will not only be able to enter our raffle for Grassroots Ecology merchandise, but you will be supporting us in our efforts to raise funding and improve our programs.
Thank you and we hope to see you outside soon!
By Valerie Lee, Community Engagement Manager
