GGVNW _ Questionaire
Dear Neighbour,
I attach below the Questionnaire discussed as the recent meeting.
Please complete and return it to me in time for the next meeting on 10th March
Kind Regards
Geoff
Greater Glencairn Valley Neighbourhood Watches (GGVNW)
QUESTIONNAIRE
AIM
A) To increase the level of attendance at our monthly meetings at the Phoenix Hall, Glencairn Heights. To do this by changing the time and/or day of the week on which they are held and by finding means of communicating with the rest of the valley residents who do not attend the meetings for whatever reason.
1. Present situation
We regularly get around 30 people to our meetings. The total population of the valley is approximately 5000 to 30 (less than 1%) is an extremely small sample.
2. Day of the week
As you will know, we normally meet on the second Wednesday of each month.
We have recently been approached by a number of residents who would like to attend but who have other regular meetings on the same Wednesday evening.
We wondered therefore if a different day of the week would reduce the number of clashes and free up more people to attend our meetings.
We spoke to the manager of the Phoenix Hall who informed us that the only other possibility on a regular basis was the second Tuesday of each month. The only two options available are therefore the second Tuesday or the second Wednesday of each month (assuming that whether it is the first, second or third week of the month is immaterial). Please register your preference where indicated below.
3. Time of the meeting
The meetings used to be held at 6.30pm all year round. Last year it was decided to look at changing this with a view to attracting more members. It was felt that people working in town might prefer a later start. A referendum was held with several alternatives and the chosen one was to start at 6.30pm in the winter (April to September inc) and 7.30pm in the summer. This was implemented last year but has not led to any increase in the attendance figures. The time now seems ripe with the change to winter times not far away to re consider this issue. Please register your preference where indicated below.
4. Communications
We can easily pose the above options to those residents with e mail (we have over 300 members on our Google Group – still less than 6% of the total population) and those who attend our meetings, but this still represents only a small fraction of the total valley population.
We need therefore to find a way of putting these options to those other residents who
· have e mail but are not on the Google Group or
· do not have e mail or
· do not attend our meetings for some other reason
5. Discussion on means of communication
Nearly all of our communications are carried out by e mail. This has so many advantages that there is no real alternative. However this leaves us with the problem of contacting those who do not have access to e mail. We feel that by not being able to easily contact those residents without e mail, we are missing out a large number of putative members. We have in the past tried to overcome this problem in a number of ways:
* By asking those with e mail to print out copies of messages and handing them to neighbours who are without e mail but given the number of messages and their nature, this is not practical.
* Another idea was to have a central place with public access where messages can be displayed. This might work with the more “administrative” ones such as Minutes of meetings, Agenda etc but would not work with urgent alerts etc.
* A further idea was to ask the local Press to publish excerpts of say the Minutes but again this would take up much space and we do not think they would go with it.
* Even arranging drops into post boxes would only work for Minutes etc and is extremely labour intensive.
* We were shown a system which works by giving alerts by SMS and of course most people have a cell phone even if they don’t have e mail. However when we investigated this system it had several shortcomings and we were not in favour of it. (It may improve in future to a state where we could re consider it).
Our present thought is (with permission of the management) to arrange for a copy of the Agenda and then the Minutes to be displayed in the Glencairn Heights Spar – a central location visited by many residents – for people to read there. (To make many hard copies available for people to take away with them would be too expensive)
We are rather at a loss as to how otherwise to deal with this and would welcome (practical) suggestions where indicated below. In the meantime we will discuss possibilities with the management of the GH Spar.
6. Voting
This Questionnaire will be circulated by the Google Group. Please vote where indicated below and return this document by e mail to : gneden@googlemail.com before the next meeting on 10th March.
7. Preferences
a) Day of the week Yes/no
I would prefer the meeting to be held on
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
b) Time of meeting Yes/No
I would prefer the meeting to be held at
6.30 all year round
7.30 all year round
c) Means of communication
My suggestions for better communications is
Geoff Neden
Secretary
12/02/2010
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