Interviewing Greenville Residents, the Efficient Way
When working with a client, knowing the audience they want to reach is critical. When Trey Meredith at Triune Mercy Center told us that while they are receiving lots of traction with adults above the age of 40, they are struggling to reach Gen Z and Millennials. In our research, Trey hoped that we could identify the issues surrounding the lack of awareness for young Greenville residents.
Reaching the right audience
While we knew we could cherry pick Greenville residents for our survey in spots like Main Street and Falls Park, we figured that there must be a better way to seek out our generation directly. On Reddit, r/Greenville, a subreddit dedicated to Greenville, South Carolina. Reddit is a social media platform that typically skews towards younger people, and it also leans left on the political spectrum. Despite Greenville County tending to be red, r/Greenville’s members take frequent jabs at conservative policies in effect in town and rallies during election seasons to vote out conservative politicians. Blue voters are typically more progressive and are more likely to financially support and volunteer at a homeless center like Triune Mercy, which is why Reddit was the best place to gauge the awareness of Triune Mercy for their target demographic.
Sure enough, a Reddit post with our survey attached did big numbers. It was viewed over 4.5 thousand times, shared ten times, and yielded over 120 responses! Over half of our respondents, nearly a hundred to be exact, were under the age of 34, exactly the age demographic that Triune Mercy was trying to capture. We also got a nice mix of duration for how long people have lived in the Greenville area with responses ranging from less than a year to over twenty.
Analyzing our data
We had our responses to the survey automatically populate in a Google Sheets document where we were able go beyond the pie charts and look at what certain demographics answered. We found that 57% of all respondents were interested in donating their money and 64% volunteering their time to Triune Mercy Center.
However, that number only dropped a marginal six when isolating respondents 24 or younger, which is very impressive considering this demographic is often the most financially inflexible. Perhaps it may be young adults’ lack of time with school or other employment, but only 41% surveyed expressed interest volunteering at the Triune Mercy Center.
Across the board we found an overall lack of awareness regarding Triune Mercy, despite being based in a high traffic area. This was not just limited to the center itself, but also its mission, and the messaging behind the mural visible from the street.
Surveying in the future
For the future, I have found the value in using the internet for receiving responses for surveys that are for certain causes. Given that ours was well-intentioned, there was a lot of positive feedback regarding the survey, and none of the responses seemed to having joking responses. That may be less possible in different applications, but it helped us catch a much wider net across the Greenville community than the sample size we got in Downtown. Overall, I found this to be an effective strategy in addition to boots-on the ground, and am excited to use these interchangeably in the future.
