Changemaker Obstacles and Help

A few months ago, I asked changemakers to fill out a survey describing their biggest challenges and sources of support. Over 100 people filled out the survey, and almost 80 percent of respondents left their contact information, which allowed me to send some followup questions. Everyone was extremely generous in not only filling out the survey, but in sharing it with others, which helped me get a more diverse pool of respondents.

Here’s my analysis of the responses:

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below! You can also download the anonymized data and do your own analysis. (If you decide to do this and want to help me do pivot tables in Excel correctly, let me know! I had to use all sorts of spreadsheet hacks to find what I was looking for.)

My goal in doing this survey was to listen to as many changemakers as possible and to explore possible ways that I can help empower them further. I don’t have any new ideas yet, but I do feel like I have a better grasp of the obstacles that changemakers face as well as the opportunities to help them. I also felt like the results helped validate my Changemaker Bootcamp experiment and gave me language to help describe it.

Thanks to everyone who filled out the survey, and special thanks to all of you who went out of your way to share it with others. Thanks also to those who took the time to answer some followup questions and to those who reviewed early versions of the survey (partial lists in the deck above).

Finally, many thanks to Amy Luckey, who was invaluable in helping me think through and analyze the survey results!

2 replies to “Changemaker Obstacles and Help”

  1. Thanks for sharing this Eugene. Fascinating stuff! Some comments (using Slideshare's numbering scheme, not the numbers printed on the slides themselves):

    On slide #4 and again later, what does "ELT" stand for? Executive Level something maybe?

    On slide #8, wouldn't it be more accurate to say "Middle aged respondents found lack of resources a bigger obstacle than both younger and older respondents"?

    The title of slide #12 doesn't help me understand what it's about — I had to puzzle over it for a minute (and relatedly, here and on the next couple slides, there is a problem of the graphics crashing along the X axis).

    1. Thanks so much for the feedback, Pete! ELT stands for "Executive Leadership Team."

      I've gotten a ton of great feedback from others as well, and I may do a second version of the PowerPoint as a result.

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