During July and August 2013, we sent a survey to the more than 6,000 people on our mailing lists. We received over 1,100 responses, which is quite good for an electronic survey. Thank you to everyone who took part!
While we have already learned a lot from the survey results, there is still more we can discover as staff time allows for digging deeper into the responses. Here is a simple summary of selected results and some of our thoughts about them.
—More than 75% identified themselves as alumni. The next two top categories were friend (14%) and community member (10%).
—Electronic newsletters were the top type of information that people wanted to receive (55%). Alumni news (39%) and info about all SoA events (38%) were the next two most popular categories.
We are happy to see that our electronic newsletters are popular, and we hope that our increased electronic notices about events are helping to get the word out better. We understand that people (especially alumni) want to hear alumni news. We post most of this to Facebook and Twitter (no accounts required to view), and some is on the website. As staff time allows, we will try to increase the amount of alumni news we share.
—Nearly 31% of respondents had attended an SoA event within the previous twelve months. However, 38% had not been to an event during that time, and 32% had never attended an event.
We know that a number of respondents do not live in the area, so it is not possible for them to attend events. We hope that our relatively new calendar on the website will make it easier for everyone else to find events and join us.
—People expressed most interest (60%) in lectures by visiting artists, art historians, or designers, followed closely by gallery openings (59%). The third most popular category was lectures by current faculty (46%).
We think we are doing fairly well with the mix of events that we are providing. If you have a specific suggestion for an event, send it to soanews@uw.edu.
—Just over 31% wanted to see an electronic newsletter four times per year. This was followed by monthly (24%) and every other month (14%).
We are happy that you want to hear from us so often. Unfortunately, an electronic newsletter takes time to produce, and we do not have the staff for that at the moment. Hopefully, our added event emails will answer some of this need.
—When asked about longer versus shorter articles, the majority (55%) liked a mix. This was followed by people who only liked short articles (36%) and those who only liked long articles (6%).
We are trying more of a mix with this issue. Let us know what you think at soanews@uw.edu.
—Just over 86% of respondents did not follow us on either Facebook or Twitter. 11% like us on Facebook, 2% follow us on both, and just 1% follow us on Twitter.
This surprised us! Clearly, we need to find out more about who is following us on Facebook and Twitter. For those of you who do have Facebook and Twitter accounts, follow the links above and add us to your feed.