South Lake Survey
As you are aware, the Chamber undertook its annual membership survey during the month of June in conjunction with over 350 other Chambers across the country through a company called 9G.
Survey Results
Survey Response Summary
Thirty-five thousand plus Chamber members have responded, representing over one hundred thousand individual comments. The raw narrative data is available for review as well as the statistical analysis of the quantitative data as it relates to our Chamber. There is also a summary of the questions asked and the narrative responses in the 10 categories or "indicators" that were addressed in the survey.
For those who are unfamiliar with the statistics portion of the analysis, each of the 10 categories surveyed had a "base" factor or average national response to the questions in each category. The data is then localized with an organizational factor "org" that tells how each Chamber did benchmarked against the "base," or rest of the country. If the "org" factor was higher than the "base" factor then the Chamber is functioning "above average," if it is below the base factor, work needs to be done on that particular category.
Our Chamber performed above the base average on 8 out of the 10 categories. One of those where we were below average had to do with questions inquiring about office and meeting locations and use of technology, "Infrastructure" issues if you will. Growing pains and an aging building are issues the Board and membership are well aware of here and it is a slow moving work in progress. We also had lower marks than average in this area last year.
The other area where we were a bit below the averages around the country was under "Membership". These covered areas like activation and retention of members, communication and marketing of member businesses, and also provision of needed programs and services.
In addition, there is a statistical analysis called the "standard deviation from the mean," which reflects how far the responses on questions in each category deviated from the average response, either on the negative or positive side of that average. Each question was answered on a response scale from 1 to 5. Generally speaking, the lower the standard deviation from the mean is, the less likely you are getting extreme responses (ones and fives) to a question and that you are more in balance on that issue.
Here again our Chamber had a lower standard deviation from the base national standard deviation in 6 out of the 10 categories. The infrastructure "Headquarters" issue had many negative comments and the standard deviations under "Business Assistance", "Larger Business Community", and "Community in General" were higher than the mean national response. This only suggests we have some differences of opinion on how we are addressing business needs, how well we promote a business friendly attitude in the community, our interaction with the community at large, and the Chamber's image. On the whole we are still doing better in these areas than most other Chambers that participated.
Our task over time will be to lower those deviations from the mean in order to be an even more stable and balanced organization, and to achieve higher overall scores than the previous year to show we are listening to the membership. Our Board, staff, and committees will be using these ideas and suggestions in order to build upon our strengths and shore up our weaknesses in these areas.
Survey Results
Survey Response Summary
View 2007's survey results
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