Services - External Affairs

Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is the process of defining the goals and direction of an organization for a set period of time. A strategic plan provides guidance and outlines where the organization is going. Conducting a strategic plan outlines how the organization will reach its intended goals, and provides a timeline for completing the tasks that will lead to the eventual goal attainment. Creating a strategic plan is a crucial step in ensuring your organization grows and develops as the organization progresses. The Burruss Institute has an extensive background in assisting organizations with developing a strategic plan that meets the needs and desires of the organization.

Benefits of Strategic Planning

Strategic planning will provide your organization with a roadmap towards a desired outcome. Integrating the strategic plan into your organization allows each person to understand how they function in the plan, and how their work will help move the organization towards reaching its goals. Most importantly, a strategic plan ensures that your organization is able to provide a direction for the organization, and adjust as the organization continues down its path towards reaching its goals. Contact us to implement strategic planning at your organization.

Needs Assessments

Needs assessments should be your first step prior to introducing a new program or implementing new changes to an existing program. It is easy to assume what a particular person or group of people need in order to overcome an obstacle in life. However, it is actually difficult to identify what is actually needed by a group of individuals, or how the impact of one program will affect them. A needs assessment will help identify actual obstacles that prevent individuals from striving. Once the issues are identified, it is then possible to create a program around alleviating that issue.

Benefits of Needs Assessments

Needs assessments provide detailed information on what is affecting the community or group that is difficult to ascertain from general observation. Conducting a needs assessment will prevent wastefulness in your organization from focusing on issues that are not actually affecting your clients. The completion of a needs assessment will allow your organization to tailor programming to meet the needs of the organization's clients. Contact us to implement strategic planning at your organization.

Program Evaluation

Program Evaluation is vital to ensure your organization is meeting its goals and mission. Measuring the success of a program is often the focus of many organizations. However, the success of the program is often tied to the number of people served, or the amount of items donated. This focus prevents organizations from understanding how effective their program really is. The Burruss Institute is particularly suited to help organizations identify the areas of their programs that should be measured, and provides impactful results that can be used to gain further insight into the program. Armed with this information, organizations are then able to scale or adjust their programs to better meet the needs of their clients.

instructor using white board in classroom

Program Evaluation Benefits

Program evaluations help prevent waste by identifying the successful aspects of the program and weeding out unnecessary aspects. In an economy where funds are scarce, it is imperative that organizations strive for efficiency. Program evaluation can also lead to increases in clients served by revealing areas for expansion and improvement. The more efficient the program is, the more likely that it can be scaled up to meet a greater demand.

Program evaluations are also a good tool to demonstrate organizational effectiveness. Successful program evaluations will highlight where the program is succeeding at meeting the mission of the organization. This is excellent material to show potential donors or investors the benefits of your organization, and that you are actually meeting your intended outcome. Contact us to implement strategic planning at your organization.

Telephone Surveys

Survey Research Lab

young woman wearing headset in a call center

The Institute conducts telephone surveys of citizens, government officials, and members of nonprofit and professional associations on a host of public issues. We conduct public opinion polls for newspapers, magazines and other media, on critical issues facing the citizens of Northwest Georgia, as well as supporting Kennesaw State University's outreach service centers in business, education and science with their survey research needs. The Institute has conducted numerous public opinion polls statewide and throughout the southeastern United States and the Nation.

The value and range of the work of the Institute is attested to by the diversity of funding it receives. Federal, state, regional, and county and city agencies as well as nonprofit and profit-making organizations have contracted services provided by the Burruss Institute.

Technical Specifications

The Burruss Institute has a state-of-the-art telephone survey lab with 23 networked stations. All stations are equipped with Dell PCs using Pentium Processors and a Windows 7 operating system connected to uninterruptible power supplies, and backup for data security and protection. Our interviewing software, WinCATI® 4.2 from Sawtooth Technologies, includes visual monitoring capabilities as well as the ability to handle complex interview schedules. During an interview, interviewers can back up to review and, if necessary, change answers. The system allows both verbatim open ended responses (long or short) and interviewer notes to be recorded by question. An interviewer must enter a response to move forward in the survey administration and cannot jump or skip over intervening questions. In addition the software incorporates features such as random ordering of large question sets, the ability of interviewers to access help/information screens, detailed record keeping of timing for each question, total interview time, and detailed disposition reports.
Our software allows for in-service project evaluation and in-house and off-site supervisory methods. All interviewing stations are connected to the Viking Service Observation Unit allowing supervisors to silently monitor employee phones without disturbing the activity at their workstations. In combination with the Super View feature, supervisors are also able to shadow the interviewer and the respondent on-screen during an interview to monitor data entry. Supervisors are always on-site while a survey is in progress and can access any interview in progress at any time. Training is customized for each project and includes pre-testing the instrument, continuous supervision, role-taking, and periodic review.

In addition, the WinCATI system provides excellent sample management, including the generation of detailed daily and cumulative productivity reports providing ongoing assessment of the survey administration. These reports indicate refusal rates, disposition of each call dialed, conversion rates, average time for asking/answering each question, verbatim input of respondent comments and other evaluative data. These features allow for assessment of specific interviewers and items on the survey.
CONTACT US TO FIELD YOUR TELEPHONE SURVEYS

Mail Surveys

In cases where your population may not have access to the Internet, or where you need to conduct a mass mailing to unspecified respondents, the Burruss Institute can format and distribute a traditional mail survey.

Just as it is with a web survey, it is very important, for the success of a mail survey, that the instrument be attractive, easy to read and understand, and easy to return.
The Burruss Institute has extensive experience in all of these areas, and will put every effort into achieving the highest response rate possible for your project.
The Institute will coordinate and carry out all aspects of the mailing, including personalized letters to each respondent, where appropriate.
We will gather completed surveys as they come in and coordinate all data entry, utilizing our experienced data entry staff.
All collected data is stored on our secure server, at all times.

Web Surveys

The Burruss Institute utilizes one of the most advanced and versatile software programs on the market to create your web survey.

It is very important, for the success of a web survey, that the instrument be attractive, easy to read and understand, and easy to navigate. Our experienced programmers will ensure that all of these qualities are in place.
Our ability to send out personalized email invitations and multiple reminders requesting participation, significantly increases response rates.
Each invitation contains a link to the survey, allowing the respondent to instantly access the survey.
A respondent may be assigned a unique identifier (login name), allowing only that person to access the web page. This also prevents a respondent from taking the survey more than once.
Questions are programmed so that non-applicable questions can be skipped.
List items can be randomized, thereby eliminating order effect within a list.
Information obtained from one question can be "piped" into a separate question. This can be very helpful in reminding a respondent how he or she responded to a previous question, or even used to create a separate list of questions based upon their answer to a previous item(s).
We can also import any information you provide, specific to a respondent, into a survey. For example, a name or region can be inserted to make the survey more personal or focus the respondent's attention on a certain area.
Graphics, images, or videos can be placed inside of a survey.
Web surveys eliminate the need for data entry when completed surveys are collected. This reduces error, saving you money by eliminating a step in the data collection process.
All data is stored on a secure server, at all times.

In the case where you do not have email addresses for respondents, the Burruss Institute can coordinate standard mailings and reminder postcards to your selected population.