The Evangelical Lutheran Foundation of Eastern Canada (ELFEC) is a charitable foundation that manages a portfolio of investments on behalf of a number of congregations and faith-based organizations. Staff at the foundation use QuestionPro in several ways, including helping them revise their investment policy and feeding continuous improvement for their educational seminars.
Empowering investment policy
In 2013 the ELFEC board was in the process of revising its Investment Policy Statement. The directors were convinced that, for a faith-based charity, it was essential that their investment practices were consistent with their values and beliefs. They were convinced that Responsible Investment had to be the cornerstone of both policy and practice – but how to determine which values were most important.
The solution was an opinion survey, distributed to all of ELFEC’s key constituents. It identified a number of environmental, social, and governance factors, environmental analysis and asked respondents to rate their importance. The result was a clearer understanding of where the stakeholders stood on the important issues, and a policy statement that reflected constituent priorities.
Continuous education improvement
A second program area for ELFEC is providing educational seminars for congregational leaders. Jeff Pym, ELFEC Executive Director, noted that written evaluation forms are the time-honored method of gathering input following a workshop. “There are two big problems with paper evaluation forms”, he continued. “People hate taking time at the end of a session to complete them, and once they leave the room they would rarely mail them in. The second problem is the labour required to tabulate results and prepare summary reports.”
Now Jeff invites people to complete a QuestionPro survey a day or so after each educational workshop.
“We distribute the survey by email and follow up with gentle reminders after a week or so. Our surveys get a much higher response rate – typically 60-80% — than the old method. Plus, the data analysis and reports are comprehensive and virtually instantaneous. We analyse the responses to see what’s working and make adjustments to our content and methods before the next workshop. QuestionPro enables us to be highly responsive to feedback and to continuously improve our educational offerings.”
Jeff’s top three
When asked what he likes most about QuestionPro, Jeff replied:
- The variety of question types.
- Easy survey distribution options.
- Instant downloadable reports.
