What resources do you need to support your outreach efforts?
Findings from a VegFund dialogue with its current and past grantees (Part 5 of 6)
Posted on November 30, 2016 by Sally Thompson
Last month, we discussed what VegFund grantees see as the main barriers they face in their activist efforts. Our always-helpful grantees assisted us in defining the types of support, training, and resources that would be most beneficial in overcoming these hurdles and in spurring their work in vegan outreach. This month, we discuss the types and form of support suggested by our grantees and VegFund’s work-in-progress developing a resource center for activists.
The chart below shows a breakdown of the general types of resources of interest to grantees (respondents indicated one or more area of interest).
Figure 1
These resources fall into three general categories:
- interactional,
- organizational, and
- technical
We dug deeper in our conversations with grantees to find out what specific skills within these categories would be most useful to them. These skills included:
- assistance with tailoring messages and approaching the general public (interactional)
- coordination and leadership support (organizational)
- training in media use and production and food preparation (technical)
- tips on burnout
We also investigated what mechanisms were of interest to activists to receive support. Top suggestions included:
- An online forum for activists to exchange information and ideas
- Online portal/library: templates of documents such as publicity flyers, informational brochures, ads; organizational resources (calendars/volunteer coordination); lessons learned and best practices
Our grantees’ input has been instrumental in guiding us as we hone our grant programs and develop a compendium of resources and training modules, which we hope will become a hub for vegan activists in the near future. Your suggestions for training topics, tools, and other resources are always appreciated.
Join us next month in the sixth and final part of this outreach-focused blog series where we will summarize our findings from the online survey and introduce you to the VegFund Activist Resource Center.