How To Gather Community Feedback Like A Pro
By: Marsha Druker
As community builders, we’re often so focused on organizing our event or initiative itself that data collection takes a backseat.
Stefan Palios is a pro at gathering data and feedback and using it to improve community programming and sales processes. He shared his tips for community builders:
Starting the feedback collection process at the beginning of launching your initiative and continuing throughout is key.
“I'm really sorry if you're already at the end.”
When you ask someone if they liked something after the fact, or if they value it or their ideas for you, then it needs to be based in something. Simply asking, “Did you like ____?” will often get prompt responses that are generic. “Yeah, sure I liked it.”
If you level set ahead of time where you ask, “What are you looking for from ____?”, you don't have to ask, “Did you like _____?”, you can ask, “Did you get what you said you wanted out of ______?” That makes it a much more grounded conversation and that's where you can get some amazing ideas for future community initiatives.
In the context of the Venture Out community, that's where Stefan and his team got the ideas that eventually led to their career fair, pride event, and accelerator. It was through collecting this ongoing feedback and asking, “You said you wanted ____. Did you get it?” some community members were more likely to say “Kind of, but it would have been nice if this other thing was available”.
Over time, as you collect all those ideas you can create new and amazing things for your community. And if you’re already at the end stage of your community event or initiative, don’t fret - start implementing these community feedback collection tips for future initiatives!
About Stefan Palios
Stefan Palios is a co-founder of Venture Out which is Canada’s largest tech and entrepreneurship nonprofit organization. Venture Out connects LGBTQ+ people to opportunities, mentors and each other.
These days, Stefan spends his days helping scaling tech companies and VC firms with content marketing. He also publishes Remotely Inclined, a newsletter about remote entrepreneurship.
Stefan has raised over $1 million for LGBTQ+ nonprofits and charities since 2013 and built an incredible sales model for Venture Out.
In Episode 10 of the Create Community podcast, we take a deep dive into growing a community through partnerships, data and feedback, diversity and inclusion, impactful content, and so much more.