What are the barriers in your outreach efforts?

This month, we’re discussing obstacles our grantees face in their work reaching out to new audiences with vegan messages. Identifying these barriers is a good starting point for proactively finding solutions and improving the effectiveness of our outreach.

In a 2016 survey of VegFund grantees, we asked the question “What would encourage you to reach out to new audiences in your activism?” Not surprisingly, a majority of activists report time, financial limitations, and the need for more volunteer support to participate in more outreach.

Importantly, activists also reported their need for enhanced activism skills — from expanding their presentation abilities to learning how to produce effective outreach content and materials at a reasonable cost (for example, learning or improving writing, marketing, videography, graphic design skills).

Regarding activists’ self-rating of their confidence in their existing skills for a variety of areas involved in vegan outreach activities, the results shown in Figure 1 indicate an “above average” confidence in event organization, food preparation, and one-on-one conversations, whereas a large percentage feels a lack of skill (below average) in technology and producing materials and content.

In the area of speeches and presentations, activists were more evenly divided between high and low ratings, with about 31% expressing an expert level of skill and 23% rating themselves as not skilled or below average. But, the survey results also show a fairly wide distribution of skill-confidence in all areas.

Figure 1

Apart from this survey, grantees have also noted self-presentation, tailoring messaging to a given audience/individual, and managing volunteer support efficiently as areas in which they’d like to improve.

VegFund has been gathering this type of information from our grantees — who have been very generous with their feedback — as part of our planning strategy to provide a robust training and resource center for activists.

Earlier this month, VegFund held the first in a series of activist training sessions — a webinar titled “Learn to Tell Stories That Ignite Change,” by Elizabeth Sell.  Our goal is to supplement the financial support VegFund offers with the training and resources that activists can use both to enhance their influence and to make outreach a low-stress and enjoyable activity.

Stay tuned for more information of VegFund’s activist training and resources in the months to come — and join us in finding ever-better ways to persuasively convey the benefits of a vegan lifestyle.

Join us next month for part 5 of 6 in this blog series where we will be looking at what resources could be helpful for VegFund grantees based on these findings.