Take the survey
The 500,000 Voices of Southwest Washington survey is at www.500kvoices.org
What do you care about the most? What kind of future do you want for this region?
The Community Foundation of Southwest Washington, The Columbian and a host of other community partners want to know. And they want to make sure to include everyone — especially the folks who aren’t used to being asked, or typically get missed.
“We want to empower those voices that, all too often, go unheard in our region,” said Community Foundation President Jennifer Rhoads. “These voices — of immigrant, impoverished and disengaged residents — represent a majority of Southwest Washington and should be included in shaping the shared future of this region.”
A new, comprehensive “500,000 Voices” regional study of values and beliefs was just launched by the group, which also includes charitable agencies like the Northwest Health Foundation and the United Way of Columbia-Willamette, broadcast media and marketing companies like Oregon Public Broadcasting and AHA!, consultant DHM Research, and local schools Washington State University Vancouver and Clark College.
The target area is all of Clark, Cowlitz and Skamania counties, with a combined population of approximately 500,000. If you’re at least 18 years old, the foundation hopes you’ll devote 15 minutes to an online survey that zeroes in on general values as well as pressing issues like health, jobs, the economy and the environment.
Maury Harris, spokesman for the Community Foundation, said DHM Research has already wrapped up an intensive telephone outreach campaign via both cell phones and land lines that was aimed particularly at younger and lower-income people. It was partially successful, he said.
“There’s definitely an under-representation of younger people,” Harris said. “That’s the hardest segment to reach.”
That’s why the Community Foundation has turned to Clark College and Washington State University Vancouver to help spread the word among their students. Plus, it’s also asking the charitable and nonprofit community that it’s especially connected with to spread the word to its lower-income constituencies, Harris said.
The deadline for finishing the online survey is Aug. 1. Realistically speaking, Harris said, it’s not expected that the survey really will come up with 500,000 participants in that time frame — but if the survey continues as a periodically updated exercise, it may well get there in the end.
Five hundred thousand voices “is what we want this survey to become,” he said. Respondents have some fun incentives to complete the survey: a random raffle of 45 prizes, including five $200 cash cards and 40 commemorative blocks of four postage stamps each: 20 are 1989 Washington Statehood blocks, and 20 are 1954 Lewis & Clark Expedition blocks.
Harris said this survey is based on the Oregon Values and Beliefs Study, which is administered throughout the state once every decade.
“We figured that could leverage the work that had already been put in,” Harris said. “We could do a similar study for less than if we started the whole thing ourselves and came up with out own survey.”
Survey results will be assembled into a report this fall, he said, and provided to local policy makers, leaders and institutions — including the Community Foundation itself — as they shape future programs and policies.
“We’ll have it as a guide as we move forward and continue to fulfill our mission,” Harris said.
Learn more about the Community Foundation at http://www.cfsww.org.
