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Survey Results and Initatives

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PatrickGrehan
Jan 28, 2018 at 11:12 PM
Kissena sent out our first-ever membership survey at the end of 2017. Here are the main results, as well initiatives inspired by the responses. Here is the link to the full results. Join in the discussion about the results, initiatives, and other ideas to improve Kissena on this thread. 

WHO ARE WE?



Forty seven members completed the survey which was about 65% of membership in November. We all loves bikes, racing culture, with half the respondents living in Brooklyn and a quarter in Manhattan.




Eighty percent ride at least three times a week and 90% indicate that it is at least moderately important to become faster riders.

Marc Bertucco
Dec 08, 2010 at 12:29 PM
Dear Kissena Cycling Club,

In efforts to grow the overall level of awesomeness of our club, myself and Leonard Klipper have designed a brief 10-question survey to solicit your valued thoughts and opinions as to the state of the Kissena Cycling Club.

This survey is 100% anonymous (I've even turned off the feature that saves IP addresses, not that I would have any clue as to how to identify y'all even if I had your IP address), and the results will come to me. I will collect the results--which includes a number of areas in which you may type your thoughts in case check boxes aren't really telling your story--and provide the club officers and board members a summary report. I will also provide the club with a summary report in order that you might know if others are thinking like you--or if you truly are the lone-wolf bad-ass you think you are.

I truly believe that our current officers and those running for the 2011 term want to have the best cycling club in NYC and with your feedback, you can be sure that you have a voice in the club.

Click on this link to get started. I look forward to reporting on all the great ideas and thoughts that come from this survey.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XJRM8L6

Sincerely,
Marc Bertucco
Marc Bertucco
Dec 16, 2010 at 01:58 AM
Dear Kissena,

On behalf of Leonard Klipper, myself, current and future officers, current and future board members, I want to thank everyone who participated in this year\'s Kissena Cycling Club Customer Satisfaction Survey (say that 10 times fast!).

I\'m told that Kissena has roughly 130 members. We had 44 respondents to the survey. (FYI, it appears that of our total membership base, 76 have signed up for the new forum).

I\'ve attached a word document that reports on and in some cases summarizes the results for all to see. It\'s 13 pages long, but there are a lot of graphs that are easy on the eyes.

As you know, there were several questions which offered you space to free-type responses. And in those cases, I mostly quoted your thoughts exactly, or paraphrased them as bullet points. There was quite a bit of cross-over in responses between the \"If I were King/Queen, I would allocate funds towards\" and the question that simply asked what you wanted the club to do in 2011. I think maybe next year I\'ll combine those questions!

In the case of the \"king\" question, I was able to read your responses and consolidate them into a pretty legible graph. The other question, I simply used a bullet point format to paraphrase or post your comments as direct quotes.

And while I would probably fail out of one of William\'s business school statistics classes for some of my work here, you\'ll start to notice patterns and familiar \"wishes\" as you page through the document.

For example, the recruitment of more women and junior riders was high on many of your lists. Also the area of training was a hot topic. Whether that be requests for individual training plans, warm-weather training camps, harder group rides (fyi, those folks need to head out with JP and Keith some nasty winter Sunday), easier group rides (these people need to go riding with me more), etc. Plus, based on the results of this survey and the chatter that\'s brewing on the forum, the idea of race captains is pretty well accepted by most respondents.

Anyway, I don\'t want to be like the first minute of a TV show where you see everything that\'s going to happen in the episode, so I\'ll stop editorializing and let you plow through the results yourself.

Thanks again,
Marc Bertucco

P.S. If you are looking for the word document summary...email me directly and I'll send to you. The forum isn't allowing me to post here because it's too large.
mperlberg
Dec 16, 2010 at 11:16 AM
eek typed a long reply the lost it. here is the short version.

what strikes me is we had 4 women and 2 under 23 riders reply to the survey. Does this reflect their level of club membership?

If not, the future planning for the club may be skewed towards the views of the 30-50 year old male segement, and might make it difficult for our club to appeal to female and young riders in the future, if that is what we want to do.

Is there a way to reach out to women and young riders more specifically to get their point of view included?

my 2 cents.

Michael
eragot
Dec 16, 2010 at 11:48 AM
In terms of percentages of membership, 4 and 2 is, I think, a higher response rate than the rest of the club.

You are also spot on, the club is composed of males aged 30-50.
Marc Bertucco
Dec 16, 2010 at 12:03 PM
Statistically speaking, I'm not sure if we had a similar response rate for our women members. If 130 riders is accurate, then roughly 1/3 replied overall. So if 4 women replied, and if we have 12 women overall on the club, then that's in line with the overall average response rate.

Recruitment of both juniors and women has always been an issue across the sport. A few years before I got involved with the sport, junior fields were stacked with 100s of riders. Now you're lucky if you get a handful to show up to a race.

Enter the "chicken/egg/if you build it--they will come?" part of this discussion. Lots of people, I'm sure, are thinking, "well, I don't race that much because everytime I show up to a race, I have to race in mixed fields with older masters aged men or Cat 4/5 men." Both are terrible options generally speaking I think. And so then you get a promoter to put on a women's only race and you get 5 women to show up to race when it takes (I don't know, I'm guessing here) 20 entry fees to break even on the event?

But...for the good of the sport, do we as a club commit funding to hold a consistent, regular Junior/Women's races for an entire season, no matter the losses? In the hopes that this will help grow the sport? It's well known, in the magazine industry for example, that most magazines will not make money in the first 5 years of their existence. There might be a one exceptions, like O Magazine for example...but whatever...that's not pertinent to my point.

Do we ask Charlie, on behalf of our club to combine the cat 4/5 race and use the cat 5 slot for a Junior/women's race? Can he/we afford to give up say 40 entry fees (because the field limit at PP is like 100 per race, the 4s seemed to routinely fill, and in one race I looked at there were 40 entrants in the cat 5 race). And figure there might be days were there are less than 10 combined Juniors and women racing?

If he can't afford to run races that way, then do we allocate club funds from membership dues towards subsidizing such a series? And is racing in such small fields fun enough to keep new women and juniors training during the week and coming back weekend after weekend?

But maybe it's not about the racing. Maybe it's about training and group rides and general camaraderie. On any given weekend during the MAC series there were enough women to have pretty healthy 1/2 AND 3/4 fields, no? What's going on there? What's the dynamic there that makes that successful? Or is it? Are promoters losing money on women's races?

These are some of my thoughts, but I bet the actual women on the club will have some good thoughts to share. Plus we've got members with junior-aged kids who don't race...I bet they've got some good insight as well. Of course I'd like to hear Charlie I's and Myles R's take on this too, as they are kings of NYC race promoters!
Dan Reiners
Dec 16, 2010 at 01:16 PM
Marc & Leonard,

First I want to say thanks for doing this survey for the club, and giving us an excellent pulse of what the needs/desire of the club for 2011.

It appears the top priorities are:
* Recruitment/Retention of Women & Juniors specifically, as a means of expanding the club and maintaining sport.
* Better communication about club sponsorship deals and how to take advantage of them
* Race captains
* Regularly scheduled rides/training (maybe just better communication about what is available).

I agree that some of these are more challenging than others but it is nice to hear that most of the membership is excited about the club, happy with how it is being run and looking for ways to volunteer and help the club. We will be looking to you.
mperlberg
Dec 17, 2010 at 07:06 AM
Good summary Dan. Thanks Marc and Lenny for putting this together, it gives a nice snapshot of the club.

I think this forum will be a great place to continuously gather feedback from the club and guide our future efforts.
Marc Bertucco
Dec 18, 2010 at 01:42 AM
I should have made the following point in my original posting/emailing of the recent survey results:

Because we did not get 100% response rate to the survey; nor did I survey a random sampling (online calculators had that number for our population of 130 members around 97 people for results that would have been accurate within a 5% margin of error) from our club, the results of said survey cannot be considered valid, accurate or reliable predictors of the entire clubs' responses to the questions contained in the survey.

Apologies for any confusion.

-Marc Bertucco
PatrickGrehan
Jan 28, 2018 at 11:14 PM


We have members of all ages with the largest cohort being between 35 and 44 years old.

Members range from those who have raced less than a year to those who have raced over 10 years with equal numbers across those ranges. Eighty percent of respondents plan on racing this season and the remainder are former racers who are not planning on racing this year but nevertheless love to ride regularly.



Most racers plan on racing on the road, but other disciplines are popular as well. 



Members value and engage in a wide range of different riding styles ranging from structured to unstructured,  easy to challenging, solo and group rides, both in and out of season. Unsurprisingly, structured training rides become more common during racing season. 
PatrickGrehan
Jan 28, 2018 at 11:15 PM
WHAT WE VALUE
In regards to what members find important in a club, there was a strong an consistent sense (in data and open ended responses) that the inclusivity of the club as well as friends and vibe/culture of the club are important.


Most members state that having good friends in the club is important to them.



Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that the vast majority also value being able to ride with teammates on a regular basis.

PatrickGrehan
Jan 28, 2018 at 11:17 PM



In addition to having good friends and teammates to ride with, the items gaining most value were being able to pursue racing goals (1st chart above) and fitness goals (2nd chart above).

The majority of members also value being connected to the larger cycling community and the sense of tradition in the club. Of moderate importance were keeping the club dues reasonable and maintaining access to discounts. Of lesser importance were not having to marshal at races, being able to volunteer to race for free, the design of the kit, and subsidies.
PatrickGrehan
Jan 28, 2018 at 11:23 PM


The topic of coaching saw a split in opinion. Half rated it as important or very important while there other half rated it as moderately important or less. Most members were not using the club coaching program at the time.  Members who don’t use coaching cite the reasons as being that they do not race enough to warrant it, don’t have enough time, or do not like structured plans. The survey did not ask those on the plan what they liked about it, but informal discussion tends to be positive. One complaint was that the club coaching was too generic, which was echoed in the survey by members who had tried but discontinued the coaching plan. This was a factor in the board working with Tim Cusick to offer more options in coaching plans. 

PatrickGrehan
Jan 28, 2018 at 11:24 PM












Quite a few members note they want to see increased racing clinics and organization of teammates. Specifically, 60% of active racers think that a racing tactic clinic would be very valuable (top most chart above) and 70% think it very valuable to have skills clinics (2nd chart above) well as to have teammates plan and practice tactics (last chart above).
PatrickGrehan
Jan 28, 2018 at 11:24 PM

SUMMARY
There are notable differences between members. Some respondents appreciate not having to conform to a race schedule while others lament that they wished more members were serious about racing. The strength and weakness of the club is that it is inclusive enough to be open to anyone who is interested in racing regardless of their ability level or time commitment, but also tries to encourage and support those who want to race and train together regularly.

INITIATIVES
The board wants to encourage policies that support the varying needs of club members. The survey leads me to want the board to focus on the following initiatives for the club. Some of these ideas come from the data, while others from open ended comments. 

Group Rides:
The group rides are the cornerstone of what connects members with each other and the club. The board would like to encourage increased participation in group rides and promote them more effectively. We would like to start a discussion on the forum of what, if anything, could help increased engagement in group rides. 

Ride Sharing:
One issue that was noted in the open ended comments was that organizing transportation to out of town races was a challenge for city dwellers without cars. The board is organizing a subcommittee to explore how to address this issue. We would like to get a discussion on the forum to better understand the challenges and possible solutions to this issue. 

Race and Skills Clinics:
The board is exploring ideas for race and skills clinics this year. Along with local events, I want to propose a weekend away this Spring for riding and team building. I'd love to hear whether this would be of interest to members.

CAN YOU HELP?
Do the results give you ideas for other improvements to Kissena? We'd love to hear them. The board are all volunteers and while we can try to move these initiatives along, their success depends upon the engagement of our members. If one of the issues raised here is important to you, head to the forum and say so. Help take part in seeing it come to light. 

FULL RESULTS
The complete survey results are available here. Note that some items were branched - which means that not everyone answers the same questions. For example the eight members who indicated they were not planning to race this season had some different questions than the 37 who planned to race. Each question indicates how many people answered the questions. Keep that in mind when reading the charts.  

FINAL THOUGHT
Its been a cold winter but the hints of nice weather should get us excited about a great year of racing and riding ahead. Share your thoughts below about the survey and initiates. While you are at it, don’t forget to renew your membership.

Jules
Feb 02, 2018 at 02:48 AM
Gymkata. You guys rock.