FoE members and supporters feedback, October 2008
Every two years we ask our members and supporters to provide feedback about the organisation and the campaigns we are working on.
Attached is this years form, we would greatly appreciate your time in answering as little or much as you want of the questions below.
Please tell us some basic details about yourself:Â
Male/ female
Are you a FoE member? Yes/ No
If yes,
* Why did you initially become a member of FoE?
* What are the main reasons you have continued your FoE membership?
If yes, roughly how long have you been a member
What suburb/ town do you live in?
Are you a member of other environmental groups? If yes, which ones?
Are you a member of other social justice groups? If yes, which ones?
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OUR PUBLICATIONS
email bulletin
FoE Melbourne produces a fortnightly email bulletin (the melbourneebulletin list). We like to advertise other groups events in this as well as FoE events and action alerts.
What feedback do you have on this newsletter? (eg, what sections are useful, what aren’t, is the frequency good, format, etc)
FoE Melbourne newsletter
We produce a quarterly paper newsletter that is sent to members and people in the regular giving program.
It is fairly 'in house', covering the FoE Melbourne campaigns, including the bookshop and food co-op, whats happening in the building, as well as broader issues in Victoria.
Do you have any feedback on the newsletter (what is useful/ interesting, what isn’t, comments on its layout, regularity, are there things you would like to see in it?, etc)
Chain Reaction
This is the national FoE magazine and is sent to members. It is produced three times a year. What feedback do you have:
* on the themes (including suggestions for future editions). Themes for 2008 have included food and mining and sustainability
*Â on the regular sections: the feature essay section, letters/ feedback, earth news, FoEA and FoEI news, the inspiration section (profile of local activists and groups), book reviews
* as well as general content, layout, etc
* we have been introducing more and larger images over the past two years – do you have any opinions about this?
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OUR CAMPAIGNS
FoE campaigns generally start where a member proposes a new campaign, and then gets a campaign collective going. We also seek to intervene in issues where there is a clear need for action on a particular issue. We start and maintain campaigns because we believe they are important, not because they are popular or easy to raise funds on. In real terms this often means we struggle to build our financial capacity for our campaign activity.
Our current campaign areas, apart from the food co-op and bookshop, are:
- forests and land management – including our involvement in the Strezlecki ranges and work on pesticides,
- the Barmah - Millewa campaign (working with the Yorta Yorta community to gain protection of red gum ecosystems – this has expanded considerably since the last questionnaire and now has coverage across the southern section of the Murray Darling Basin),
- climate justice (with a new focus on coal developments in Victoria as well as ongoing work on climate refugees),
- nuclear (which has branched out into a stronger focus on renewable energy over the past year), and
- a real food/ local food project.
What do you think of this mix? Do you have feedback (good or bad) on any specific campaign? Are there other issues you think we should be working on?
In terms of our support for local campaigns around the state, our main focus has been to collaborate with the community group opposing the desalination plant near Wonthaggi and a range of local and farming groups affected by pesticide use.
Do you have any thoughts on which other local campaigns we should be working on? (and would you like to be involved in any of them?)
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the FoE building
We are located at 312 Smith street, Collingwood.
Do you have any feedback on the FoE building, the upstairs campaigns office, the food co-op, café or bookshop?
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THE ORGANISATION
What do you like/ value about FoE?
What don’t you like?
Do you have suggestions about how we could improve?
Are there any ‘whole of organisation’ events you would like us to put on? (members nights, conferences, etc)
Do you visit the various FoE websites ?
Melbourne: http://www.melbourne.foe.org.au/ (which was re-designed a few months ago)
Australia: http://www.foe.org.au/
International: http://www.foei.org
What general feedback do you have? With regards to the Melbourne site, do you have suggestions about useful additions?
Is there any other feedback on FoE that you want to provide?
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We will summarise the feedback into a report in order to better inform ourselves about what our members and supporters think about us. If you’d like a copy of the report, please add your email address below.
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Please return this to Cam Walker: [email protected]
(or, to remain anonymous, you can print this out and mail to us: members feedback, FoE, Box 222, Fitzroy, 3065).
Many thanks!
Please return feedback by October 31, 2008