rootid Roundtable // Getting the Answers You Need: Community Input Through an Equity Lens

Valerie Neumark1h 8min

Marcus Cinque Harris00:05

Yeah,

before we hop back into it, we've been on screen for exactly 20 minutes. So we'll take a quick we'd like to call this our 2020 20 in every 20 minutes, we'll try to look away from the screen. Look out 20 feet in front of you. If you have a window that's you know, obviously preferable and just take 20 seconds to give yourself your eyes a little break. Do some blinking and take some deep breaths. Do a little stretch if you need

Marcus Cinque Harris00:42

Okay,

thank you, everybody.

Marcus Cinque Harris00:49

And

so today what we're going to do is we're going to be talking about stakeholder feedback. That's why everybody's here. Hopefully. And we're going to discuss surveys, focus groups, stakeholder interviews, we're going to get a better idea of what community input is and how to how, how to make that in how to do that in a more equitable sense. So I'm going to turn it over to Vallum Abell.

Valerie Neumark01:16

So, the first piece here is what format to choose. We focus on these three and decide how to use them in sort of different ways. So first, in terms of surveys, it's really about gaining broad, broad audience insight. Right, you can ask questions like we often will try to assess what people's values alignment are to an organization using surveys or what they're looking for from that organization. And then at the end, just as a like, you know, rule of the road for us will always ask people if they would be willing to engage in a focus group or a stakeholder interview. So that you know, as we see, across sometimes we've done surveys where like, 1000s of people respond, we're able to at least get a group of people for focus groups or interviews that the organization might not know directly or might not have really close relationships with. The second one here is focus groups. This really allows more people to participate in a one on one experience, but it really needs a lot of you know, you need to be a good facilitator. In order to get the information that you want out of a focus group, like making sure that everyone is having an equal time to share their experiences and that you don't try to ask too many questions, which is similar with surveys. Generally speaking, you know, more than 10 questions people are just not going to answer and if you can do it in five try. And then the last one here is stakeholder interviews. We really will focus these on alignment to organization sort of the emotional alignment more so than anything else. And this is the place where we really can get the most personal and deepest insights

from an individual and be able to ask questions, you know, keeping in mind to be careful and not lead the interviewee to the answers that you want them to say because that's not what we're trying to do here. But gives you a chance to really listen and for them to really be heard and it's it's the sort of most effective way to build that relational trust. So I'll hand it over to him about

Mabel 03:44

Yeah. And regardless of which format you choose, so you can you don't have to just do one format, you can do surveys, and then to focus groups then filter into stakeholder interviews. But regardless of what you choose, you want to think what what is your own? What is it that you want to get out of out of the questions that you're asking people? So you're starting thinking about yourself thinking about kind of what Bob mentioned earlier about your own biases. So what is it that you want to gain out of this? So something in write it down is helpful? Reading it to others is helpful. But some some that we have some goals, questions, high level questions that we have in mind, or do you understand Do people understand what you are and what you do? So you're spending a lot of time on marketing and creating messages on your name? Your colors, everything? It's important to ask throughout as your community are they taking how are they taking this in? So just having that goal in mind is important. Do they even know that the you know the people that your target audience Do they even know you're creating items for them? Ideally, you're creating with them so that yes, the answer is yes. They know that it's for them, but if you read if they've come across your material, do they even know it's for them? Or do they identify somebody else that has happened when we're in when we're testing for example messages? And we think this is we wrote it out for a specific audience group. And, or it's written out for a specific audience group and then we're interviewing somebody that identifies with that group and now they think it's for somebody else. So it's not landing with them. Do people understand the breadth and depth of your work of your mission? Can they explain what direct or indirect impact you have within your community? And that's a an important goal because you want them to talk about you. You want them to share that information with you with other people so that they trust so that you build that relational trust with other people. Most of the people I trust are because I spoken to somebody that I trust and knowing that your community has that same is able to speak about you in ways is really helpful for you. So just having those goals in mind. These are not questions that you're asking them directly. So you're breaking those questions down differently for your audience, but it's just goals that you have in mind. You can even write down your answers so that you're checking your biases thinking what you think people are going to answer for these.

Valerie Neumark06:44

similarly to what Abell was just saying, is thinking about really what do you want to learn what's important for your organization to to glean from people and what potential biases might be coming into play? So thinking about identities, thinking about the questions that you're asking people and why you're asking those questions. And oftentimes there can be different positional power dynamics that happen right? Like you might have an executive director or board member that wants you to ask a question that you really don't feel like you need the answer to. And I think the piece of that is thinking through you know, don't ask questions you already know the answer. To or that you know, like art, sort of building on baseline knowledge so that you're not you want to just be careful to not like waste people's time on answers you could get somewhere else, right? Like if you did five minutes of research. Could you find the answer to that online? You know, versus this is really trying to understand this individual real person's experience.

Mabel 08:00

And

then this is continuing on on what like what is it you're trying to get out of as well as why, you know, the director of a space is actually asking you to get out of asking. So these are some example goals. There's so many different ways to to get at these different things which is why we talked about surveys, focus groups, stakeholder interviews, the questions that you ask and get so I guess there's so many different paths to take even within the questions that you're asking. But just thinking about the goal helps you narrow that down. Yeah, other part of it is that as you're asking, as you're speaking to people, other things come to mind to people they react differently. To to your questions than you expected, even if you've practiced it, even if you've thought of all your biases. So knowing your set, the goal that you want to focus on helps you know where to ask more questions, if it's an interview, especially where to dig in deeper, and we'll talk a little bit more about that.

Mabel 09:12

Yeah, these are some sample

Valerie Neumark09:17

Yep.

So we're gonna stop and do a about five to eight minutes we'll see sort of what how people are looking, but doing an individual writing and reflection time. So what are three to five goals you hope to achieve through stakeholder feedback what do you hope to glean and understand? What format do you think will be the most effective for what you're hoping to find out? And what power or identity dynamics Do you think you need to consider be aware of consider different equity challenges that might be existent in your team in your system, you know, in your community, and what do you need to consider and this isn't meant to point fingers or make anyone feel bad. It's really about acknowledging and being aware and noticing what might be a dynamic that you need to consider and that's that's the first step in making this a more effective and relational experience.

Marcus Cinque Harris17:14

Okay,

great. How's everybody doing? Everybody get a chance to finish the journal activity. Right? Well, let's put that aside for a quick second. What we're gonna do is we're going to do a little stretch break now, because it's been at least another 20 minutes, it feels like so I'm gonna stand up here for this because one of the most important things that we can do we spend a lot of time on these, you know, virtual screens. And virtual spaces, but we want to make sure that we're moving our bodies we're breathing. Take a second look away from the screen. Move Oh, I heard a crack there. Just tells me that this was definitely necessary. Also, just take a few breaths. Close your eyes. Just inhale deep. Exhale. And as you're doing that, just try to move your body a little bit. Like I said, Stand up if you need to step away from the computer for a second. Do a little walk around the room or, you know, over to the window

Marcus Cinque Harris18:29

and

one last deep breath in and exhale Yeah, there you go. I feel see some people moving around. I love it. Love it. Okay. Feel a little rejuvenated. How's everybody feeling? Everybody's Good. Can give a thumbs up or send an emoji. You know? Okay, great. Well, glad to be back into it. And we're gonna hop right back into the presentation. And we'll have another one of these a little later, I believe as well. And so what we're going to discuss now a little bit Oh, I'm sorry, Michelle, I'm gonna pass it over to you after well, I'll just tell them what they're going to be doing now. We're going to be designing the feedback and the feedback experience so that it's meaningful for stakeholders and what that just means. It's kind of, you know, how you want this to what the process is going to look like and Miguel, I'll pass it back over to you.

Mabel 19:31

Now,

that's good. You covered it if you can go to the next one. So we've gone over what you want out of the process, we've gone over a little bit what you're being asked for. So what may be supervisors are asking for maybe your managing donors and what they're asking for your we've gone over your you've thought about your bison biases and taken them into account and now Now maybe you're now it's time to kind of make sure that this is meaningful, not just, Well, that is meaningful period. Because if it's meaningful to the stakeholder, it is meaningful to your own mission, it is meaningful to like the time that you're spending is more meaningful. So that's where we'll focus in the next in this slide. So the first thing is that we want you to center the feedback process on the perspective and the needs of your stakeholders and interviews. You already know what you know. The goal is to now get information from other people outside of you perspectives outside of you. So centering Them or us really gives that really gives you I mean if you think about it just monetarily, it gives you more more for your money because you already know what you know. So why why not center other people now and get more information, but also it gets you closer to your mission. It helps people feel valued. So you're focusing on what they want. Now you're putting aside everything or most things that you want. You're you're putting a focus on them. Before you're before you're sorry, before your meeting with them. You're doing your research, like Val mentioned, you don't want to spend time on questions that you already know the answer to, but you're also balancing that research understanding that you're balancing what you find may be online or in publications or whatever, wherever you're going to do your research with individuals. You're balancing those two ideas. You're trying to not ask questions. That you're not going to do anything with. So keeping in mind that you're centering the, the, the respondents or the interviewees to focus group participants, you're centering them, so if they're sharing something that doesn't feel totally aligned with your goal you're you are meant to give them some space for that. But the questions that you ask, you should they should all account for something that you're that you actually need. And think about it in terms of valuing their time in terms of valuing your time and money many aspects. And then as you're doing it, um, so many things come up sometimes. Yeah, I mean, you're all working with, you're all probably working with deep missions that are deep and so many things are connected. Sometimes you're talking with an interviewee, for example, about immigration and, you know, as researchers, you might kind of take this this like you might start getting detached about the topic for a second

because you're you're taking on this researcher mindset, but it's it's a human everything that we're working on as a human is important as humans. So something might come up where it's emotional for them. It's emotional for you, and it's just important to acknowledge what's happening. You know, and kind of put aside the goal sometimes and acknowledge what we're all feeling in that moment. Yeah, that's a you can move on Marcus. So good code that we that previous cohort participants shared. Always remember to hold those that are dedicated to your organization close and give them a real seat at the table. So a real seat at the table. What that means is knowing what motivates them and what their needs are and compensating them for their time related to that motivation or their needs. So compensating them, ensuring that they feel valued, but also compensating them in other ways that Val mentioned earlier. And keep in mind that those that are dedicated to your organization includes dedicated to the mission itself, so centering those most impacted so not just people that are participating in your activities, people that are donors, but those that are dedicated, because

they are impacted by them by their mission themselves.

Mabel 24:33

So who do I approach for questions? You're asking? So we've talked about a little bit about making sure that you're centering those most impacted by the mission. You're also taking into account internal stakeholders and external stakeholders so it's sometimes we kind of forget that our community includes those that work in the organization and includes us. So talk to your co workers talk to on different levels and as well as those that are outside of your community. And again, centering those most impacted so not just donors, that that's often happens because you know, you want to continue your mission you want to gain the donation in order to continue the work that you're doing but um, without without centering those most impacted you're not you're not really continuing the work that you that you really want to do. You're going to base the questions on your stated goals. So, big dance there that you're going to do, and then you're considering who you are choosing to interview and what biases biases might come into play. examples come to mind but I know we're thinking about time. But just remember that who you are as an individual might have an impact on the interviewee. So one example that comes to mind is somebody I was able to interview and it wasn't until the end of that interview where I got the real answers from him and I think me as a female was an impact on me as somebody that was working with their organization versus some and he was an employee. So all of those things come in some come into play when you're consistent within with that, so what we did at the time was given the time that he needed that was the immediate solution

that we had at the time, just just keep asking, just keep giving him the time and hope and gaining his trust in order for him to understand that what he was sharing was not going to be shared exactly as he shared it. So that we could protect his job and his opinions still, were valued and mattered. Hope that makes sense. And this goes, you could go to the next one. Okay, sorry. So this goes along with what I just mentioned. So before the interview, discuss who is who is the best person to speak to we can always match the interviewee to the interviewee, interviewer or the facilitator to those that are being that are participating in our focus groups. But we can do our best and we can match it with with different things like time, which I mentioned before, so just align that time. And in that example, it goes it's the same thing I mentioned earlier, where, you know, the person I was interviewing, he was worried about his job. He was also skeptical because he's said these things before and you know, and didn't have an impact. So, um, so it really took us time time. Was the time and kind of just being genuine, was the thing that allowed him to share some of his

Marcus Cinque Harris28:21

thoughts.

Mabel 28:23

Yeah, and also kind of being vulnerable ourselves. So we share some ideas that we thought we try to be not biased in the interviews we try our best but if we noticed that there's something that the organization really wants to hear from and the interviewees are holding back from then we have to kind of share ourselves with them in order to ensure that that they feel comfortable sharing back and of course, confidentiality. So within our especially within interviews, but also known with all of them within interviews, with surveys, those are the most confidential ones. We are we usually put Well, we always tell the rest of the respondents or the interviewees how their information is going to be managed. So we asked them if it's okay to record, we let them know that it will probably that the information will be summarized and shared as a group without revealing who they came from without saying any identifying identifiers. And if there are pieces in the in their responses, even if it's like something that's amazing that they shared if there's something that they want to pull out of their summary, even though of their responses, even though it's going into a summary. If there's a fragment that they want to remove, we remove that and we just use it as a way to do our own research afterwards. So that information isn't lost, but we just remove it respecting that they know best how they want to handle their information.

Marcus Cinque Harris30:11

Yeah,

this is a lot of great information about thanks. I know it seems like probably so much and there's so much like you were saying there's so much depth that we can go into. I've learned so much working with you on a lot of these different projects. And one of the things that I'm really grateful for is are the resource that we're going to highlight for today, which is the stakeholder Interview Guide, which provides a lot of structure and question sample questions. It's really just a beginner guide for how to build out the survey process focus groups, stakeholder interviews, and I'll give you context around what to do and a lot of the things I'm Abell talking about, because even though they seem some of them might seem like kind of Oh, yeah, that makes sense. It's it's, you know, the process of it. We don't want to leave any parts of this out. And that's important to make it feel like a very equitable process. So we do have this resource will share it in our both in our newsletter and our follow ups from this, and I believe I'll put it in the chat right now, the dropbox link so that you can download that and let us know how you like it. Let us know if you have any suggestions and try using it and see how it works for you. Specifically, I wanted to also highlight page 31 of the guide which talks a little bit more about the deeper structures and questions of of how to develop your interviews, or your your or your just you know, your your focal points of of what Miguel was talking about in regards to making the questions feel accessible to everybody. And so that

kind of leads us into our second journal activity. We're going to take a quick second and think about how can you use community feedback to build connection and belonging. One of the things that I've gathered from even hearing ballon motel speak and this is a continuation remember of our if you were at our last workshop, our last roundtable Community Roundtable specifically we talked about values and audience mapping and that leads right into the work that we're doing here. So what we want to really understand is how can you center your audiences How can you build this process for feedback, and really center connection and belonging that So considering things like language and framework, the things that fit to your context? So asking yourself who will be included in this process? What are their lived experiences? And how can you frame the questions to make them feel both connected and belonged in the space and make them feel comfortable? So will it take about the mobile you think about five to eight minutes again? Ah yes, Nadia brought it up in the chat too. I wanted to let everybody know that we do have the recording from the last roundtable it will be on our YouTube soon. And also it will be I'll share it in the follow up from this meeting as well. And it's also a good thing if you want to join the cohort and get access to additional information in conversations. So for the deep dive will take about five five to eight minutes here. I'll put it on some music. And feel free to just take some time and answer these questions for yourself. And then we'll kind of leave that into our breakout rooms.

Marcus Cinque Harris36:41

Morning.

Marcus Cinque Harris39:27

Okay,

sorry to cut a little short here on the journal activity, but I do want to make sure that we get into the solution rooms and people able to connect. Before we do that. We're going to do a quick little 2020 here just to make sure that we're giving our eyes a little break and a little rest here. So once again, we're going to take 20 seconds you can feel free to count and we're just going to look 20 feet away for 20 seconds and we tried to do this again every 20 minutes

Marcus Cinque Harris40:05

okay

Marcus Cinque Harris40:05

okay,

and just before we get into our breakout groups, we call them solution rooms, reminder of our community agreements, please be aware of time we're going to take about 20 minutes to get into these. And then we're going to focus on the questions that we'll provide in just a second. But for you feel free to have a more open conversation and whatever your whatever is feeling present at the time, be ready to engage with other participants and we'll try to come around and check in on you if you need any help or any guidance. If any of the above doesn't happen, feel free to return to the to the main room and we can work out and sort out the groups further. And so for today's solution rooms we've just again, these are just suggested questions. Of course, starting with introducing yourself, your organization, your accessibility needs and pronouns, but then we're going to just kind of reconnect around those initial journal activity. So what are the five three to five goals you hope to accomplish through your own process for stakeholder feedback and discussing things like the power dynamics and potential biases that might come into play here? And how do we build connection and belonging with our interviewees. So at this time, I'm going to turn it over to wolf now turn it over, but Val, if you're available, I think we can get into these breakout rooms so people have some time to talk and again, just discuss these these questions.

Speaker 401:00:37

You were saying something about framing the questions and how you frame the question.

Marcus Cinque Harris01:00:44

Oh yeah, like how like stating the goal for for the interview can can really help get people on board with stuff?

Speaker 401:00:57

I was gonna ask the question to y'all. Yeah, like, did you find that open ended questions? We're talking about demographics like if you find that it's more helpful to have open ended questions so that people could just self identify or having the like, selection multiple choice or what have you. Because it's, you know, Bree was mentioning something like how it's such a it's so specific just depending on the communities and everything.

Mabel 01:01:29

Yeah, first surveys you're talking about, right?

Speaker 401:01:33

Mm hmm. Yeah, surveys and questions, I guess, in general. Yeah.

Mabel 01:01:37

I think you're right, that it's specific to the community. And it's like how you're processing the information. So sometimes you need that consistency, um, across the information, and if anybody types in one other letter, then it changes it for you. There was someone we were working with recently where I was just like, Oh, should we should we open it up? Because when there was so much we didn't know. There was so much information that like we weren't going to be able to find on our own that they could describe on their own.

Valerie Neumark01:02:23

Yeah, we've also done it where it's a combo, right? Like we put a bunch of different options and then we put self select and then you know, have instead of the optional, so people can then write their own. And people have used both and it's it's been really helpful. Because when it's like 1000s of responses, it does having the selectable ones does give us a way to like quickly search. And then you can also easily filter out all the people who have who have who have chosen and then see who's self selected also. So that's why I find it helpful to have both option to have like to use both versions. But that's when you have like lots of responses obviously.

Marcus Cinque Harris01:03:14

Yeah, anything else from the share? outs any other questions that we want to discuss before we go into our closing

Marcus Cinque Harris01:03:27

Okay,

well, thank you, everybody for for coming through and spending time with us and connecting with us. In closing, just to kind of wrap this up, we do have the resources and things that we'll share with you. But I wanted to remind everybody and I think most people here know that Rudy does coaching cohorts and consulting and all that for oops, professional development, capacity building, web development and design, as well as team building support for organization. So with the coaching, we can do one on one sessions with the cohorts. We can do it for small groups, whether that be with your team or your partners. And then consulting is if you have a project that you're looking for support on. We're more than willing to help you whether that's facilitating your stakeholder interview process or our community input process, or you know, something regarding web development design or any additional projects that you might want to have around audiences and strategy as well. And so I think, while I know Bri is part of it already, and if you're not a part of it, if you have any questions, feel free to let us know. But

we have a new cohort, our 2024 connections cohort is really designed to take these sessions and extend these conversations. And so we're meeting Fridays. So every month we do the Community Roundtable. And then on the Fridays following the Community Roundtable, we have an hour session where we get to go into a deep dive and solution, and we're going to be having some pop up events as well with specialists as in other connection points, maybe even some in person ones as well. So feel free to reach out if you need anything. My email will be in the chat. If you get a chance. Well, if you can put that in there for me, please. Thanks. And so just a heads up. Reminder that yes, this Friday we are doing the social room for the cohort that will be session two. If you do want to sign up you can go to our website rootid.com. Other than that, our next community roundtable will be organizing the chaos how logic models can help communicate what you do, and that is a free community roundtable just like this one. It will be Wednesday, April 17 at 10am. Feel free

to go to our events page and schedule. We're gonna have some more events coming up later today. That'll be on there. So lastly, we'd love to understand more about how this this particular session went, how this roundtable was for you. Feel free to give us feedback. We're going to put our survey link here in the chat. And let us know if you have any suggestions of how we can improve or anything that we should discuss going forward. And we'd love to get a better understanding of what's working is impacting you and your organization. And so finally, the last thing is just sharing in the chat one insight from today. We'd love to hear from you and understand more about what you found valuable in today's session. And just any appreciation for the team members here. The solution rooms, the people you've met, and our facilitators. So once again, I'm Marcus and Kay Harris, I want to thank Val in mobile. My information is there and there's as is as well and we are routed and we look forward to seeing you again soon. So please keep in touch and let us know if we can assist you in any way.

Valerie Neumark01:07:03

Thank you

Marcus Cinque Harris01:07:05

Thanks everybody.

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