Week 4: Surveys

This week I began drafting my survey to administer to DCC's clients. To help me do so, I used resources such as a guide by the University of Wisconsin-Madison on the fundamentals of survey writing. The survey had two goals: to determine the demographics of the community DCC helps and to figure out how satisfied the community is with that service. Considering DCC offers a multitude of services, my survey could easily pass 50 questions(which it did in its first draft). However, as I wanted to minimize the response bias of my survey, I needed to limit my questions to a maximum of 20 questions. To do so, I condensed several of my questions and allowed for more opened ended answers. At the same time, I ensured that the instructions for each question were clear, sometimes to point of redundancy, so that the none of the respondents misinterpret the questionnaire reduce the reliability and validity of my results. Thankfully, I was able to reduce my draft to about 15 questions, albeit a few more may added or cut as the survey is reviewed by my advisors at both BASIS and DCC. Hopefully, I can begin administering the survey the week after next.
I also began reading some literature one of my supervisors at DCC, Mike Cassidy, recommended I read so that I can better understand the relationship between nonprofits like DCC and the communities they serve directly. One of the most interesting pieces I read was from a book "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded" which discusses the dysfunctions and contradictions of modern nonprofits in a collection of essays written by those who have worked in the nonprofit sector. One of the major focuses of the book is on how the nonprofit sector has become increasingly corporatized, with foundations focusing more and more on obtaining grants and not on actually helping and empowering their community. As nonprofits have become increasingly businesslike, the book argues, they lose their power to bring about real social change as they begin to treat the communities they serve as victims.  It also draws a contrast with the current state of the nonprofit sector in the US with Latin American social and political movements, such as the Landless Workers Movement, that eschew a traditional hierarchy and are "horizontal based", meaning they seek a group consensus.
Finally, I spent the majority of this week at DCC reorganizing the filing system of their executive director, Mike. Despite sounding deathly boring, it was actually a pretty interesting process, mainly because it allowed me another insight into the inner machinations of nonprofit management. Most of what I sorted through was junk that Mike threw away, but some of it was pretty interesting, such as the partner resources from other nonprofits that DCC would refer people to when they needed help. The ecosystem of nonprofits is quite fascinating to learn about, which I will go into in a future blog post.