Education & Not-for-Profit
Issues
One key to measuring the impact of
services provided by educational institutions and not-for-profits lies
in gathering accurate information from the recipients of those services.
Pioneer has been very successful in designing and managing ongoing
programs to obtain timely and honest assessments from those end-users -
data that is often critical to their missions.
Pioneer offers a wide variety of
market research options to organizations in the education and
not-for-profit sectors. Those services include managing both outbound
and inbound call centers, providing web-based data collection, and
monitoring stringent quality control protocols. Our client list includes
major metropolitan school systems, nationally chartered public service
organizations, performing arts groups, United Way supported
organizations, universities, as well as a number of private
institutions.
Pioneer takes pride in the diversity
and tenure of our professional interviewers. We have cultivated a
specially trained corps of senior interviewers (most with university
degrees) who are dedicated to research for not-for-profits. Because our
interviewer team has an average tenure much longer than that for most
suppliers, we can provide consistency of interviewing not typically
available from universities or other non-specialists.
Service Organization Quality
Assurance
Pioneer currently operates the quality assurance center for a major
metropolitan social service organization. The center is responsible for
calling 3300+ volunteers and program participants to get feedback on the
working relationships among those involved. Our responsibilities also
include providing critical problem alerts to management and updating the
program database with new information. In addition to outbound calling,
Pioneer handles inbound calls from volunteers and participants on
toll-free lines dedicated to the program. Inbound callers' concerns are
handled by specially trained Pioneer staff or, if necessary, referred to
staff professionals. As part of the inbound service, Pioneer also
manages integrated voicemail and e-mail response systems.
Employee Exit Surveys
For the past five years, Pioneer has partnered with a nationally
recognized human resources firm to manage an employee exit survey
program for a major metropolitan school system. Our trained interviewers
call each voluntarily exiting employee to assess their attitudes toward
the system. Issues analyzed during the research include: reasons for
leaving the system; factors liked most/least about their jobs; job
satisfaction; and perceptions of supervisory support, fairness of
treatment, morale in the department or school, and quality of
communications.
Federal Program Evaluation
Pioneer has been heavily involved with research to support the
Federal Tobacco Use Prevention Program in Georgia. We conducted four
major projects encompassing 2300 follow-up telephone interviews to gauge
levels of awareness, usage and satisfaction for county-wide non-smoking
programs. One of the projects involved completing 400 telephone
interviews with Hispanic and African-American residents of the targeted
counties. An important outcome of this assignment was a series of
reports detailing and synthesizing research results by county and
population segment, compared to achievement goals.
Image and Visibility Studies
Pioneer conducts annual tracking studies for several local service
organizations supported by the United Way. Typically, these studies
focus on measuring the general public's awareness of the organizations,
their programs, program messages, awareness/usage of collateral
materials, and the accompanying program outcomes. In addition, we
analyze data on media habits and demographic profiles of key supporter
segments.
