Kate Downing Khaled | Founder & CEO
What’s the best way to build a more equitable food system?
To help a regional non-profit answer that question, we turned to the experts.
And by experts, I mean the community members who were already using resources like food distribution sites to feed their families!
That led us to the next question — how were we going to meaningfully connect with busy food bank shoppers?
Take it from this mom of four… grocery shopping with kids in tow is not always the most conducive environment for a detailed one-on-one interview or QR code questionnaire.
Yet, we received insightful feedback from 377 shoppers across 23 sites, because we fully acknowledged what WOULDN’T work for our community.
Constraints don’t have to hold you back from engaging. In fact, they can inspire the best creativity!
To reach our shoppers, we knew our survey tools had to be colorful, eye-catching, and most importantly, EASY for our community members to complete while juggling grocery bags.
We used colorful survey cards with a few statements meant to surface shopper priorities in relation to their values and what they considered to be the most urgent.
To visually depict which option shoppers valued more (for example, availability of organic foods vs getting a low price) we asked our community to circle where they fell on a dotted line.
These cards worked SO well because it didn’t take long for shoppers to contribute, and even those without time to provide written feedback could leave a nuanced response.
Admittedly, this engagement method took more time, more staff resources, and a lot more standing in the cold to flag down shoppers, than it would to simply hang a QR code on the wall.
But I’m willing to bet that the majority of shoppers using those QR codes would be the shoppers with the most time, energy, and resources… aka not the community members with the wisdom we need to create a more equitable food system.
It’s important to consider the day-to-day challenges your community members might face when trying to engage with them.
In this example, the challenges were limited time, potential caretaking duties, and the circumstances that led them to use our food distribution resources in the first place.
Working around these challenges created the potential for truly meaningful connections.
When you know what doesn’t work, you can use this information to build effective strategies for connecting with your community.
Remember, you won’t uncover new insights by engaging in the same way you always have!
If you’re looking to shake up how you engage with your community — to tear up the rule book, as it were — I’m really excited to share a brand new resource from our team.
Our second Get Started Guide is a step-by-step guide to making a tactical plan to engage with your community.
In this guide, you’ll find questions and activities to help you decide where and how to engage, what questions to ask — and how to design those interactions to reflect your community’s unique identities, values, and constraints.
Download the Get Started Guide 2: Engaging Your Community with Equity and Empathy here!
And once you’ve worked through it, send me a note. I’d love to hear what you think.
