The DIY Engagement Survey

Theory of Change

1. Our work is rooted in strategic communications and campaign plans that clearly connect our day-to-day activities with our intended long-term outcomes - we have a clear theory of change.

We have campaign and communications plans that include clear power maps identifing the people who make the decisions that affect our organizational outcomes. We have strategies and tactics to reach those people, and to mobilize the groups and people who influence them. We are able to consistently reach and influence our priority targets, both directly and indirectly. We have the ability to build and track relationships with people over time in a systematic way. We have clearly defined victory conditions for our campaigns.
We have campaign and communications plans that we track progress against. Our team generally coordinates its activities well. We know who the influential people on our issue are, and we have had some success at influencing them through our campaigns, but we would like to be able to systematize and scale this better. We have systems for building and tracking relationships, but our use of them is not consistent, too time-consuming or the systems need to be improved.
We have campaign and communications plans that we believe support our desired organizational outcomes, but we’re often unsure if we’re succeeding. Our team is somewhat coordinated. We have a sense of who the important players on our issues are, but our ability to connect with them is limited. Our systems for building and tracking relationships are very informal and decentralized.
We have a number of strategies and tactics that we believe support our desired organizational outcomes, but they are not unified in clear written campaign or communications plans. Our team members often work independently with minimal coordination. We work with people who care about our issues, but it’s not clear whether these are the people who have the biggest impact on our issues. We don’t have systems for building and tracking relationships over time.

Comments

Website

2. Our website does a good job of providing value to visitors and engaging them in achieving our mission.

Our website offers one or more interactive services that draw a steady stream of visitors. We have effective ways to convert these visitors to deeper levels of engagement with our issues and our organization. Our site is designed and structured from our users' point of view, rather than reflecting our internal organizational structures, and as a result visitors can easily find what they're looking for on our site. We write content specifically for the web, and understand how writing for the web is different from other kinds of writing we do. Many staff people are able to create and publish content on our site, and we may even engage our users in creating site content.
We have a good sense of who our audiences are and what they want from our website. We have made some attempts to convert website visitors to higher levels of engagement via email signups and social media links. We sometimes write content for the web, but often feel that we don't have enough time and are forced to repurpose other content with minimal editing. We believe the information we post on our site is valuable to our audiences, but haven't invested in developing services that we deliver through our site.
We have some sense of our website audiences, but we don't yet have a clear plan for creating content to serve them. We regularly put up content, but it is often repurposed from other program efforts (e.g. press releases, technical reports, etc.). We're no longer dependent on a single staff person or consultant to update our site, but we still struggle to empower everyone who should be contributing content. We don't have clear ways to convert people from website visitors to higher levels of engagement.
We don't have a clear sense of our website target audiences. Our web content and our information architecture are not focused on our target audiences. We don't know what our site visitors want from us; we just put out what information we can. We rarely update our website, and depend on a single staff person or a consultant to put new content online.

Comments

Email

3. We use email effectively to communicate with and engage our constituents.

We have a regular email schedule, but respond quickly and effectively to breaking news opportunities. We track our open and clickthrough rates, and use this data to shape our content, subject lines, timing, layout and language. We do A/B testing of different variations of our emails. We segment our lists so that we are delivering content that matches people’s interests and behaviors. We never add people to our lists without confirmed opt-in permission. We follow current best practices for composing effective email content. We test our email designs in multiple email clients to ensure maximum readability. We respond quickly and consistently when we receive replies to our broadcast emails. We report back in a timely fashion to our email activists on our campaign progress and the impact of their actions.
We have a regular email schedule, and are sometimes able to respond to breaking news opportunities. We have email statistics, and we have drawn some conclusions from them about what works best. We don’t do A/B testing of our emails, or don’t do it consistently. We do some segmenting of our lists. We never intentionally add people to our list without confirmed opt-in. We try to follow email content best practices, but keeping up is an ongoing challenge for us. We respond to email replies we receive. We sometimes report back to our email activists on our campaigns, but would like to be more consistent at this.
We have a basic emailing plan and a schedule, but it is challenging for us to respond to news opportunities or other events outside of our schedule. We have email statistics, and we look at them, but we’re not sure what conclusions to draw from them. We don’t segment our lists. We believe that email permission is important, but we are not consistent in collecting it and there may be some people on our list who have not clearly opted in. We don’t do any A/B testing of our emails, and don’t feel we have a thorough understanding of current best practices for effective email content. We rarely report back on our campaigns after we ask for action.
We send broadcast email, but we don’t have a well-defined plan. We may have a broadcast emailing tool, but we still send some emails outside of this system. We don’t have a coordinated email publishing schedule. We don’t collect email statistics consistently or don’t analyze the stats we do collect. We don’t segment our lists. We don’t know where many of our email addresses came from.

Comments

Action Opportunities

4. We offer our supporters action opportunities that are effective and engaging.

We regularly offer action opportunities and are consistently able to measure our success at engaging people. Our statistics show that people continue to be interested, engaged and active over time, and we’re able to use our stats to continuously improve our tactics and execution. We target our asks based on what we know of our constituents’ skills and interests. We have a diverse set of action tactics, and we are consistently able to refine these tactics and to generate creative new ideas. We are able to knit our actions together into narrative-driven campaigns, and continuously report back to participants on their impact.
We regularly offer action opportunities, and have had some measurable success in engaging people in them. Constituent action requests are sometimes disconnected from our core campaign strategies. Our success has been limited to specific programs, but so far, we haven't managed to consistently engage people across our program areas. It's not clear whether we are successfully keeping people engaged over the long run. We have a diverse set of tactics for action to draw on, but generate new tactics only occasionally. Follow-up reporting on our successes is limited or inconsistent.
We offer action opportunities at least fairly regularly, but we can't track how many people are participating. Constituent action is rarely the strategic heart of our campaigns. We don't have clear evidence (even anecdotal evidence) that people are interested in opportunities we're offering. We tend to rely on a limited set of tactics and feel limited in our ability to generate new ideas about how to engage people.
We don't offer our supporters opportunities to take action in support of our mission or issues, or we do so only once in great while.

Comments

Engagement Tracking

5. We have clear paths for tracking and engaging people who want to get more involved in our work.

We have a documented "ladder of engagement" which defines several levels of possible engagement with our organization, describes the services and opportunities we offer at each level, and the criteria for moving people up the ladder. We have clear goals for increasing the number of people at each level of engagement. We have a system for tracking people's progress.
We have done some thinking about engagement levels, e.g. a donor pyramid, but it is incomplete in one or more ways: it may not cover all of our program areas and activities; it may not have clear goals and metrics; it may not include all of the ways people relate to us. We have a tracking system, but it is not tracking everything that is important to us.
We have a list of ways people can get more involved, but we have no way to segment our audience to determine which opportunities are the most appropriate ones to offer. Our systems for tracking response and engagement are minimal. We have difficulty evaluating how well we are doing at building relationships.
We know the people who are most involved in our work, but we don't track this information in any kind of system. It is difficult for us to know who in our broader circle of constituents is interested in a deeper relationship.

Comments

Accomplishment Tracking

6. We have the ability to effectively track our programmatic accomplishments.

We track outputs and outcomes for all of our major program activities in a centralized database that is accessible to all key staff. We have measurable goals for our key metrics. We have “dashboards”—reports that provide near real-time snapshots of our progress towards our short-term and long-term goals. We use this information to "course correct" on an ongoing basis to both specific program tactics and broader strategy.
Every team understands its goals, and there is data available to measure success. However, this data is not shared as widely as it could be in our organization, or it may require considerable “manual” processing to be useful. When we put in the effort, though, we are able to make important “course corrections” to both specific program tactics and broader strategy.
We track some of our program accomplishments, but tracking is limited to a subset of our staff, often the development department. We collect information periodically rather than on an ongoing basis. Program tracking information is not shared organization-wide. We have trouble identifying clear longer-term trends in our progress. We frequently “course correct” at an individual program level, but struggle to think holistically about our program work; or, we do annual evaluation, but are not nimble enough to make changes outside of this formal review process.
We don't have any formal systems for tracking our program work. We rely mainly on anecdotes and unstructured information.

Comments

Operational Documentation

7. Our key processes, relationships, and logins are documented.

We have internal documentation of all of our key business processes, constituent relationships, vendor relationships, service logins, etc. This documentation is consistently kept up-to-date, and is readily accessible to everyone who needs it. We have proven our capability to smoothly hand off responsibility for key business processes as staff transition in and out.
We have documentation for many but not all of our important business processes, relationships and services, and it is usually up-to-date. It may not always be available to everyone who needs it. We sometimes have smooth hand-offs of responsibility between staffers, but have occasionally lost important information.
We have some documentation for our business processes, relationships and services, but there are significant gaps. Our documentation may not be very up-to-date. It is not readily available to all staff. Information handoff continues to be a challenge during staff transitions.
Our important business processes, constituent relationships, vendor relationships and service logins are not documented. Staff find it challenging to find this information when they need it. Staff transitions often result in lost information.

Comments

Use of Analytics

8. We are regularly using analytics data (e.g. website, social media and email stats) to guide our online work.

We have a culture of data-driven decision making in our organization. We collect analytics for all of our online communications tools consistently and thoroughly. We regularly review our analytics data, and use this data to continually improve our efforts. We conduct experiments that test different tactics, designs and content to identify best practices for our online communications.
We have analytics for all of our major online systems, but we’re not able to collect all of the data we need. We review our data fairly regularly, and understand the big-picture trends in the data. We occasionally use this data to make decisions and/or improve our efforts, but we don't always feel confident in interpreting it, or can’t get enough information. We don't regularly do experiments to evolve our understanding of what works best.
We have the analytics for some of our online systems, but there are significant gaps in our ability to collect data. We often feel unsure about what questions to ask of this data, or how to use it effectively.
We don't collect analytics data. Or, we collect it, but rarely or never look at it.

Comments

Online/Offline Coordination

9. Our online and offline communications and organizing efforts for organizing, policy and fundraising are well coordinated.

Communications, organizing, policy and fundraising staff have tightly coordinated plans. All four of these disciplines are part of our campaign planning process. We have a strong culture of and appropriate tools for information sharing across teams. There is relatively little work that is “siloed” within a single team. We have a clear and consistent “organizational voice.” We coordinate timing, messaging and strategy across all our communications channels, including: direct mail, action alerts, website content, social media, print publications, email newsletter, major donor outreach, etc. We track a unified history of all “touches” with each constituent, so we know exactly who got or did what, when.
Our campaigns have coordinated plans across teams, and some parts of our organization are very well coordinated, but there are still program or functional areas–such as fundraising--that are siloed. We don’t have any significant “turf” issues; our main barriers to better coordination are technical or tactical. We could probably do a better job of maximizing engagement with our major donors and activists if we were better at sharing information amongst ourselves.
We usually plan to be coordinated across our teams, but we frequently have trouble coordinating our day-to-day activities, especially when we’re in “crunch mode.” We occasionally run into “turf” issues that make coordination challenging.
We tend to plan within teams, not across them, and there is little day-to-day operational coordination among teams. Information sharing among staff members is an ongoing challenge, and we often feel that there are “turf” issues within our organization. There is little consistency to our “organizational voice.” Constituents often receive communications “touches” from different teams that have little to do with each other.

Comments

Social Media

10. We make effective use of social media channels to engage our constituents.

Social media channels like Facebook and Twitter are an important part of our communications plan, and there is a social media component in all of our campaign efforts. We have a regular schedule for participating in conversations in our network, and we have policies about who manages our presence and the role of other staff and constituent spokespeople. We have a clear understanding of how social media content is different in tone and style. We actively participate in our social network, responding to comments, commenting on other’s posts and re-tweeting interesting content from allies and constituents. We have established goals for our social media work, and we regularly review analytics data. We have been successful at converting social media fans and followers into deeper levels of engagement, including financial contributions.
Social media is an important part of our communications efforts, and we post to Facebook and Twitter regularly. We have a staff person who is specifically responsible for our social media efforts, although we don’t have policies in place for the rest of our staff. We have at least a general idea of the goals for our social media work, but we don’t have systems or processes in place to regularly track our results. We understand the tone and style of social media communications, and our audience engages with our content. We try to be active participants in our social networks, but we don’t dedicate enough staff time to do it consistently. We don’t have a good way to measure the results of our time and effort.
We think social media is important, but we haven’t committed much staff time to it and we don’t have clear goals. We have accounts on Facebook and Twitter, and we typically post once or twice a week. When we do post, it is often as an afterthought and not part of our multichannel communications plan. We rarely respond to comments or other posts. Our staff doesn’t have the time to actively monitor and participate in our network conversations. We’re don’t have any process in place for reviewing analytics data, so we don’t know if the time we are spending on social media is worth it.
We have accounts on Facebook and/or Twitter, but we don’t update them regularly. We have not established goals for our social media efforts, and we’re not sure what kinds of goals would make sense. No one on our staff is specifically responsible for posting to and monitoring our social media channels. We don’t track analytics data, so we’re not sure if the time we are spending is having much impact.

Comments

Sections

Services

Theory of Change

Website

Email

Action Opportunities

Engagement Tracking

Accomplishment Tracking

Operational Documentation

Use of Analytics

Online/Offline Coordination

Social Media

Making us Blush