What you told me about you
During July, I sent out a survey to my facebook friends and those who are financially and prayerfully investing in this project, to see what people’s current involvement with charity and justice projects are, and to see what people know about ethics in this area.
The good news is that 42.4% of respondents to the survey said that they might want to learn more about how to do effective community work and 44% said that they definitely did.
So here is a learning community to help you out!
This month I am going to share with you two posts about the results - this one as an introduction to who you are - and one next week about what you told me about how you understand the sector. Next month, we will look more deeply at how religious beliefs shape these understandings.
So here are some pretty graphs that show you what sort of activities you are currently involved in:
I have given money to charity
I have given physical donations to charity
I have written to a Member of Parliament about an issue I am interested in
I have signed a petition
I have taken part in a protest or solidarity march
I have built a relationship with someone from a different cultural background than me
I have been involved in volunteering or service in my local community (not including religious services)
My takeaways:
We are a generous group of people! Giving resources was the most popular form of engaging with charity and justice work, whether that is to a charity, a missions organisation or with physical donations.
We give of our time as well. Despite Covid restrictions, nearly 60% of respondents had volunteered in their local community somehow in the last year.
We aren’t afraid to get “political” - within reason. 65% of people had signed a petition in the last year and more people had written to their MP in the last year than those who had never written - but few of us had taken to the streets in protest.
Around 60% of my respondents had been on a short-term mission trip and 27 people had built relationships with someone from a different cultural background in the last month. Both of these numbers are much higher than the Australian average.
And these themes were reflected in our motivations as well.
Common motivations
he most common explanations for why you take part in these activities were:
To give back because God has given to me (9)
To align with my faith or values system (8)
To share what I have with those who don’t have it (7)
To be Jesus’ hands and feet (5)
To give of my time and skills (4)
A desire to help others (4)
Because of relationships with people I had (4)
Other responses included to make the world a better place, because of God’s love, to share our common humanity and because of a sense of calling.
I loved how these responses were so similar to each other - even if some used religious language more than others. It is evident that we all have the same desire to care for those who we feel have less than we do and to use the resources that we have.
Lack of motivation
Reasons why people don’t do as much as they would like in this area were also consistent.
28 people said time, work and family commitments made them less involved than they would like to be and a further 8 people (all over 80) said that age was a factor. 6 people identified Covid restrictions and covid burnout as a reason to not engage.
I appreciated people’s honesty at what a toll the last 18 months of the pandemic is taking on them and the strain that many feel they are under with balancing family, work and uncertainty at the moment.
There were a few reasons that were much smaller numerically which stood out to me on the list. 5 people said apathy was a major demotivating factor. Let’s face it, keeping motivated when “causes” are out of sight and out of mind is very challenging!
Another 4 people identified that not knowing how to help or how to sift through the competing choices and priorities were demotivating, and 2 had concerns about how the sector worked and accountability. I think this highlights how tangled a conversation this can be as we seek to figure out what happens in the sector.
3 people said that they had either been actively discouraged in exploring these things by church leaders who didn’t encourage their leadership or provide opportunities. Leadership and valuing others makes a difference.
My conclusions
Obviously, a self selecting survey doesn’t give as much information about the state of wider society as we would like it to. However, I am grateful to those of you who did fill it in! I am grateful to be part of a community who reflects and thinks about what motivates them and what they believe. I look forward to digging deeper into these results as we go along.
In the meantime - what stood out to you from these results?
