We want to thank all of you that took the time to complete our 2017 survey. Your feedback really helps us understand where we need to focus our efforts. As some of you will remember, we last did a member survey in March of 2014. This year we repeated most of the topics so now we have some indication of the member preferences over time.

Before diving into the numbers, we should note that the survey results published in the March 2017 Northlander show only the first page of the survey. Both pages will be available in the April issue. Apologies for any confusion.

There were 116 of you that completed this year's survey. In 2014 we had 93 members complete the survey. We now have the ability to send emails to NCR members as opposed anyone that has registered at the web site so we sent the survey intiially to our list of 537 email addresses. Approximately 40 percent of you read the email and there was a 25 percent increase in completed responses.

You can peruse the numbers yourself at this link, and we will summarize them below:

1. Over 75 percent of you marked your primary benefit as Driving Events or Publications. This is good news and bad news that we will expand on in a future communication;
2. Over 50 percent of you attended less than five events last year and plan to attend that amount this year;
3. Over 70 percent of you use online resources to find out about events;
4. Calendar date, Family Obligations, Travel Distance, and Work Schedule get in the way of you attending events;
5. Over 20 percent of you think that we have enough events; and
6. Many of you are will to help at the events.

When we compare these numbers to the responses in 2014 at this link, we can see that the majority of the responses to the questions are similar with one exception.

Changes make a difference.

What do we mean by changes. One of the frustrating facts of running a volunteer organization is that you must focus on only what you can control. A good example of what we can't control is represented by the responses to What limits your ability to attend events? (item 4 above).  What we can control is using the resources available to the club to provide events that members will attend. The best example of this type of change is the 50 percent increase in interest in Rallies from 2014 to 2017.  The other change is that the majority of you affirmed your support for NCR Events Emails. In 2014 this method wasn't mentioned; while in 2017, it was the top response for your primary source of event information.

Going forward, we will focus less on holding more events and more on improving the experience and execution of each event. One of our challenges is to find an effective means to leverage your willingness to help, so we will continue to emphasize communications to and from members. Beginning this month we will be replacing the first of the bi-weekly event notification emails with the First Friday update. The First Friday update will briefly describe the any changes in the club and the current month's activities. 

Thanks again for taking the time and staying involved in your club.

Thanks to the 130+ members who took the time to fill out the survey we put out to you. As a result, I know that myself and a number of other Board Members have had great conversations and emails about the club with different members. There has been a lot of great feedback about what you, the members, want from the club.

In our last Board Meeting, we dedicated over half of the time to poring through the results to see what we could find. Dick Demaine and Rich Willey put a lot of time into breaking the results down different ways to see what was common, what was different, and what we can do. With some good conversation and lots of consideration, we came up with the top three things we think will make a big difference for our membership.

The first thing we are going to do to help everyone enjoy events better is to try and have name tags available to everyone at events. The was one of the universal things that came through in the survey. While we always think of ourselves as a friendly group, seeing someone’s name and being able to introduce yourself becomes much easier when you have a name to do it with. And, if you’re like me, you forget names quickly, so it makes the remembering part a little easier.

Second, we are going to work to have quarterly member appreciation dinners around the region. We saw many different ideas of how to do this, and the solution that we came up with was to have some dinners that should be convenient to members in all areas. This should let folks get out to an event, make some friends (with name tags!), and have a great social time. Watch the calendar and website for more details on this as we get the dates and locations worked out and published.

The final thing we heard was that people need plenty of notice for events. With busy lives pulling us in different directions, it helps out when you can plan for things. We are going to do our best to make sure all events are published at least 2 months ahead of schedule. I can understand the frustration and annoyance people get when they miss an event that they are interested in because they didn’t get enough notice. I’m sure there will be more that comes out of the survey, but those are the initial action items. We’ll keep everyone updated on further analysis and decisions that come out of the survey as we determine them.

Getting to what is going on in the club, we have started our season with a great first DE and Charity Laps. I don’t know the final tally on the donations to Make-A-Wish, but just by the smiles that were seen, the event was a great success. Word around the track was that it was one of the best yet! Our goal this season is just like last year’s - to raise over $10,000 so we can provide a full wish to a child. I hope you’ll come out to some of the other charity events throughout the year at Porsche of Stratham for the Car Show and follow up with Ivy on the Charity T-Shirts. I’m sure there will be more articles in this Northlander about this wonderful event. I’m disappointed that I will miss the Spring Rally that Jeff Torrey has put together. I know there has been a lot of planning put into this event and Jeff has a great day planned.

Seeing the RSVP list growing since the first announcement, it’s going to be very well attended. I hope there are lots of pictures and a great wrap-up article so I can hear about all the great things I’ve missed. I hope to see you at an event this summer. Come up and say Hi!

Matt