Feedback from OAB’s 2008 survey

Your thoughts, suggestions and opinions

As you may recall, back in spring we sent out around 800 copies of a questionnaire to OAB members and friends, past and present alike. An encouraging one hundred and thirty nine of you took the time to reply, so we thought it only appropriate to report back on the kinds of things you told us, and what we hope to put into action as a result of your comments. A full report on the questionnaire is available to anyone who requests a copy.

Thank you to everyone who replied.

What you said

The survey began with a couple of questions about hobbies and interests and, unsurprisingly, the most popular pursuit by far was walking. Swimming, cycling, bowls and gardening were also marked by a notable number of people. With regards to entertainment, contemporary plays came out top (around one third of respondents pointed out their enthusiasm for them), while Shakespearian plays and quiz nights were also ticked by a over 20% of the respondents, confirming OAB’s suspicion that you may well be the most sophisticated members in the country!

Summarising the more open questions that followed (the qualitative ones if you will) is, of course, a little trickier, but particular patterns certainly did emerge. For example, when asked “What do you like most about supporting OAB” a considerable number of you pointed out that you liked being able to help others in a similar situation: “to give others a smile”. We were also very happy to note that a few people took this as a chance to say how much you valued the friendliness of OAB staff, and thank you for saying so.

Of course, your criticisms and recommendations are just as important as your compliments, and we certainly haven’t simply ignored those that came through. For example, though most of you decided not to answer the question “is there anything you think we should be doing which we are not”, the fact that the most common answer was your desire for more home visitors and, to a lesser extent, social events, will not be overlooked. We also recognise that around twenty people took the time to request better written information on equipment, with some of you making the fine suggestion that OAB should make an extra publication, or guide to equipment (something we had already discussed as a team before the questionnaire).

What we’ll try to do as a result

We are ambitious for the future, and want to put together the best, most personal, pragmatic services we possible can. Thanks to your recommendations, OAB’s direction can now be a little clearer. We know, for example, that getting more volunteers visiting visually impaired people across the whole county has to be a priority (and we’d like to think the new Banbury service, and Janet’s fine efforts there, confirms how hard we’re working on this). But we know there is the chance to do so much more. There are various ways of going about this, and we will no-doubt mention them in future editions of this newsletter.

We accept that OAB’s social calendar has not exactly been brimming with dates this year and, as a small team, putting on parties, walks and trips to the theatre is always difficult.

However, we recognise that, if we were able to put a program together, it would be well worth the investment of time and money (indeed, if you would like to help by funding or volunteering towards these events, we would be very happy to hear from you). More immediately, you may have already noted some changes to the newsletter’s layout – to include sections on local groups and the like – while we are also aiming to put together a separate equipment guide for every visually impaired newsletter reader by the end of 2010.
Of course, making OAB better in most of these ways will require extra funding. We’re working hard on increasing the number of people who support our services, as part of this funding process; but we don’t want to lose contact with anyone who helps us already! After all, we would like you to think of OAB as your local charity. If you would like to help OAB’s cause in any way – from donations and gifts in wills, to volunteering for the Home Visitor scheme – we would be very happy to hear from you.

Thank you for listening.

Ben
Fundraiser.