2014 Fellowship Survey

In July last year the 2014 Fellowship Survey was sent out to all Fellows. The response rate was 29%, so many thanks to all of you who took the time to complete it for us.

Overall responses to the survey were positive. Over two-thirds of Fellows join—at least partially—to support our mission, the quality of almost all of our outputs is seen as very high and by far the majority of Fellows are intending to renew their Fellowship. The survey also generated a large amount of information that can be used to guide ongoing Fellowship development.  

The full survey results can be found here, and below we have pulled out some of the main issues that arose along with suggestions for how we will address them over the coming year. 

There is less satisfaction with local events compared to other areas of our work.

• We have known this anecdotally for some time so we’re working with the Fellowship Council to improve the quality and quantity of local events. A list of all Fellowship events can be found here.

There are a large number of Fellows wanting to self-organise but are frustrated at being unable to do so.

• We’re tackling this with the launch of our new website which allows Fellows to contact each other easily through the Find a Fellow feature, and also by increased local events so that Fellows can connect with each other in person.

Some Fellows want to be more involved in the work we do. 

• We want to find ways for Fellows to contribute more to our work, while recognising that sometimes this is not feasible. We have put in place a project engagement team and are developing clearer, more structured Fellow involvement with increased resources being put into this area.

There is a lack of knowledge about what we do.  Across the seven RSA Projects included in the survey, ‘have not heard of it at all’ accounted for between a quarter and a half of all responses. 

• The new website has much clearer signposting to what we do and we are also planning to create more varied ways of demonstrating our work such as videos and infographics, rather than only through reports. 

Younger people and females are less likely to recommend the Fellowship to suitable people than others 

• We will look in more detail at why this is the case, and what we can do to address it.  Our recent Young Fellow Centenary Appeal allowed us to support some young people to become Fellows who can help us identify how we might be able to encourage other younger people to join.

There are strong regional variations in how Fellows perceive the RSA.

• We will look at why there are these regional variations and ensure that all regions learn from what is working in the most satisfied region.

For more information please do have a read through the full survey.