# Member Interest Survey

**When to send:** ~30 days after someone joins. Long enough to know they're staying, short enough that they haven't drifted yet.

**How to send:** Action Network form (free tier supports unlimited forms). Email the form link. Tag responses automatically.

**From name:** A real human on the membership team.

**Subject line options (pick one, lower-case):**
- "what brought you to [org name]?"
- "five questions, three minutes — promise"
- "[first name], we want to know what you care about"

---

## Email body (cover for the survey link)

Hi [first name],

You've been with [org name] for about a month now. We're glad you're here.

We do one thing differently than most groups: we don't decide what the campaigns are without our members. So before we ask you to do anything else, we want to know who you are and what you came here for.

Five questions. About three minutes. The link is below.

**[Link to Action Network form]**

What you tell us shapes:

- Which campaigns we pick up next quarter
- Which committees we open
- Who we invite into leadership

You'll hear back from a real person within a week — either me or someone on the membership team — to talk about what you wrote.

In community,
[Your first name]
[Your role], [org name]

— *Base Building From Scratch*, Module 4

---

## The survey (build this as an Action Network form)

### Page 1 — Who you are

**1. What's the issue or community you most want to fight for?**
(Free text, 1–2 sentences)
*This is the most important question on the form. Read every answer.*

**2. Which of these describes you? (check all that apply)**
- [ ] Directly impacted by [the issue your org works on]
- [ ] Family member of someone impacted
- [ ] Faith community member
- [ ] Student
- [ ] Worker in [relevant sector — healthcare, education, service, etc.]
- [ ] Retiree
- [ ] Formerly incarcerated
- [ ] Immigrant or child of immigrants
- [ ] None of the above / prefer not to say

*Use this for constituency tags in Action Network. Lets you build authentic spokespeople lists later — never extract a story, but you'll know who to ask.*

**3. What part of [city / county / state] do you live in?**
- [ ] [Neighborhood / district 1]
- [ ] [Neighborhood / district 2]
- [ ] [Neighborhood / district 3]
- [ ] [Other — write in]

*Geographic tags let you organize house meetings by zip code later.*

---

### Page 2 — What you can offer

**4. What kinds of things are you open to doing? (check all that apply — no commitment yet)**
- [ ] Come to a monthly base meeting
- [ ] Host a house meeting in my home or community space
- [ ] Have a one-to-one with another member
- [ ] Phone bank or text bank
- [ ] Knock doors in my neighborhood
- [ ] Show up to public hearings or town halls
- [ ] Speak to media or share my story (with my consent each time)
- [ ] Help with art, design, photography, or video
- [ ] Help with translation ([list languages])
- [ ] Help with childcare or food at meetings
- [ ] Bring food / cook
- [ ] Drive other members to actions
- [ ] Donate (one-time or monthly)
- [ ] Something else: ______________

*The first three are the highest-priority asks. Everything else is real organizing labor too — name it, value it, log it.*

**5. About how much time do you have in a typical month?**
- [ ] An hour or two
- [ ] A few hours
- [ ] A weekly commitment (5–10 hours/month)
- [ ] More than that — I want to be in deep
- [ ] It varies a lot

*Don't use this to gatekeep. Use it to match the right ask to the right person. People who say "an hour or two" get a one-action ask. People who say "in deep" get a 1:1 within two weeks.*

---

### Page 3 — How to reach you

**6. Best way to reach you?**
- [ ] Text
- [ ] Email
- [ ] Phone call
- [ ] Signal
- [ ] WhatsApp

**7. Anything else we should know?**
(Free text, optional)
*Access needs, language, schedule constraints, things you've been burned by in other orgs — anything.*

---

## What to do with the responses

**Within 7 days of submission:**
1. Tag the contact in Action Network with everything they selected (constituency, geography, role, language, access).
2. Assign the contact to an organizer for a 1:1 follow-up call or text (use the `1-1-invite-text.md` template).
3. If they said "in deep" or selected hosting a house meeting → fast-track to the `house-meeting-host-invite.md` template within 14 days.

**Quarterly:**
- Pull a report of all "what issue do you want to fight for?" answers. This is your campaign-selection data, straight from the base. Don't override it with what a foundation funder wants you to work on.

---

## Why this is structured this way

- **The free-text issue question is first** because it's the most important. Ella Baker said the people closest to the pain are closest to the solution — the survey enforces that.
- **Constituency self-ID is in the member's own words** with a "prefer not to say" option, because nobody owes you their identity to join your org.
- **Time availability is asked without judgment.** Someone with one hour a month is still a member; the survey just helps you not waste their hour.
- **Skills like cooking, driving, and childcare are listed alongside phone-banking** because they are organizing labor — the SCLC and SNCC ran on the kitchens of Black women whose names rarely made the papers. Name the labor.
- **Every response triggers a 1:1**, not an auto-reply. This is the relational backbone the course teaches in Module 3.
- **Consent is named for stories** because story-extraction is one of the fastest ways nonprofits lose Black and brown members. Helen Butler's twenty years at the People's Agenda were built on never burning a member that way.

— Module 4, *Base Building From Scratch*