Why End-of-Season Surveys Matter
If you’ve been hanging around us for a while, you’ll know that a few years back we shifted from equipping independent mentors to launch mentoring groups to equipping churches to launch mentoring programs. Why the shift? There were a few reasons, one being that churches have more capacity to launch sustainable programs that develop and continue over time.
Part of that sustainability is the continual tweaking and adjusting that accompanies anything we repeatedly do and want to improve.
The end of season survey has long been a part of our mentoring process, but in working with churches, who might have multiple mentors, each with slightly different mentoring styles, we realized surveying mentees upon commencement is even more important.
So, we sat down with a survey expert and fine-tuned our end of season survey, which is available to use for anyone with a Radical Mentoring account.
To date, over 400 surveys from over 20 churches have been completed. While the stories of life change are what light up our mentors and church partners (and rightfully so), I would argue that stories of life change paired with the data from surveys paint a better picture of the depth of growth happening in mentoring groups.
In this post, I want to share both best practices for using our survey system and why the results matter to your church and its staff . . .
How to use the survey: When you log in to your Radical Mentoring account, you will see the “Surveys” on the second row of icons on the welcome page, as well as towards the bottom of the left-side icon menu on all pages. From there, you can either insert the email addresses you want to send the survey to or copy and paste your custom link and send it manually.
When to send the survey: For best results, I would include it as part of your Commencement Retreat. Send it to each mentee and have them complete it on their phones right then. If you have the link ready ahead of time, it won’t take but 20 minutes to complete, and maybe not even that. But if that isn’t doable for whatever reason, sending it out the week after Commencement and giving a deadline will suffice.
What will the survey tell you: The survey is designed to help you measure a mentee’s growth (in their relationship with God, marriage, relationships with others mentees, etc.) and to determine which elements of the mentoring season were the most helpful and least helpful to that growth, leaving room at the end for more open-ended questions and the opportunity to recommend others who would benefit from a mentoring group experience.
Now that you know how it works let’s talk about why the end of season survey matters and who will be interested in the results. As each survey is completed, the account holder will receive an emailed copy of the survey and then once your results come in, our team will put together a summary report for you. To date, the mentees surveyed report that . . .
- 97% have deepened their walk with God
- 98% have improved as a man and leader
- 98% have seen their overall life improve
- 90% have developed intentional male relationships
- 96% have seen their marriages improve
- 58% have increased their giving to their local church
Who wouldn’t care about results like that? Imagine your church with more and better male leaders, more life change without more staff or money, increased giving of time, talent, and treasure, and stronger men, marriages, and families.
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Responses (1)
I find your survey intriguing. However, it is not clear to me how to understand it. The stats are interesting but not very useful unless you are trying to encourage people to use your process. That being said I’d like to understand how your 20 churches implemented and used your process. Can you articulate more about this?