In recent weeks, the staff, board of directors, and select members at Dyck Arboretum of the Plains have been looking inward through a strategic planning process to help better guide our future. We are in a process of filling out staff personality profiles, collecting survey data from members and volunteers, hearing from the public through round table input sessions, and will soon be having a strategic planning retreat in early 2018 to make sense of all this feedback. We are working together with Legasus Group, LC to guide us through this process.
Kids are good at examining the world close to them. Strategic planning is helping Dyck Arboretum look more inward to strengthen our future.
We hope this process will help Dyck Arboretum maintain relevance in an ever-changing society and culture, stay aligned with the values of our mission, remain sustainable well into the future, and keep our staff passionate about our vocations.
We have had good participation from our passionate and dedicated board and members during this process. They have been active taking the survey and attending round table sessions. A summary of the round table sessions is still forthcoming, but highlights from the survey are as follows:
- 187 individuals completed the survey with 70% of respondents being active members
- 68% of survey respondents participated in at least 3 different Arboretum sponsored activities with the FloraKansas Plant Sale being the most attended
- 45% of respondents live less than 11 miles from the Arboretum
- Respondents agreed that the Arboretum is a very valuable resource for the community and its facilities are well maintained, however, respondents knowledge of how they could support the Arboretum may be an area of improvement
- Respondents seem to value the educational opportunities and having a beautiful space for events
- 78% of respondents are highly likely to recommend the Arboretum to others, while only 3% of the respondents wouldn’t be as likely to do so
I love data and do tend to geek out on these kinds of number summaries. My personality profile tells me, after all, that I am a “thinker”. . . what I apparently lack in imagination and humor, I make up for in logic. So, it makes sense that I would tend to salivate at the lessons learned from this survey. Doesn’t everybody think that a spreadsheet conference sounds like a great time!?!
I obviously can’t convey all of the survey findings to you in this short blog post. But I can leave you with a few survey summaries of age demographics, events attended, and a Dyck Arboretum “word cloud.” The Wordle word cloud was generated by an analysis of the five pages of open ended responses of what people value most about the Arboretum. The word cloud gives greater prominence to words that appeared more frequently.
Age of Participants
- 18-25 years old 1%
- 26-34 years old 2%
- 35-54 years old 27%
- 55-64 years old 30%
- 64 or older 40%
Events/Activities Participated in the Last 3 Years
- Plant Sale 73%
- Luminary Walk 54%
- Prairie Window Concert Series 46%
- Winter Lecture Series 24%
- Summer Soiree 17%
- Landscaping Classes 15%
- Spring Symposium 12%
- Leprechaun Run 12%
Below is a Wordle word cloud analysis of the responses to the question: What do you value most about the Dyck Arboretum of the Plains?
