Dear members, We're in the process of creating a social enterprise that aims to find home for thousands of shelter dogs in Hungary.
We're following the instructions in the lesson(s). We have a list of 130+ animal shelter, and we're almost ready to interview them. At this moment we don't have the option for participant observation, but we can use our previous volunteer experiences. For this reasons we designed our interview questions by mixing what we learned about contextual and empathy interviews. We will be ready soon to get in touch with interviewees, but our organization is not officially registered. We're afraid, that it is more difficult to build trust as individuals. What do you think, should we wait until our organization is officially registered or should we try to get in touch now? Thank you for your support, and if you're interested about our project please feel free to contact me. We're at the beginning, but we want to accomplish great things. Any help would be appreciated.
Hi Norbert, Nice Soical enterprise idea that you have. For starters, i think conducting formal interviews may not be so lucrative and might be a waste of time and energy on your side. While interview is always a nice approach, the most important activity for collection of feedback and further participation when it comes to establishing any social enterprises, is the actual work itself. What work have you done so far? How can the organizations you are willing to interview, see the process and progress of your work? From experience most people and organization are willing to always share more and help, if they can already see the work and activity that you are doing. The design thinking method always blends in well with ideas like this, and if you can already start to use your social media and linkedin to carry out shelter activities, post videos of your work, record the dogs, share the stories and progress of saving these dogs, creating awareness starting from your street, community, etc. if you continue in such method and people can see that some work is being done actively and already in the process, it will also help in motivating other shelter homes and organizations, to communicate more freely and open with you.
Also by joining focus groups, it enables you to communicate with more people who share thesame ideas in the group and you can share surveys with them, with can really speed up the feedback collection process and in the process you might also have the opportunity to meet potential co workers to work on your enterprise with, so this is usually a win win method. In summary i'd suggest you focus more on getting started with your activity rather than having formal interviews with these organizations :)
Hi @Norbert Bogdán a lovely idea for a social enterprise. I agree with @Zsolt Bugarszki and @Antonina Petrovic. You do not have to wait to be registered before collecting data and doing your research. I am also in the process of collecting data for my project which is related to organic farming. I chose to make use of an online survey to collect data on consumers of organic farm produce in Nigeria, from which I plan to interview those that fall into the category of my planned project. I think the most important thing is that you are transparent about your process as Zsolt Bugarszki has pointed out.
Hi Norbert,
I agree with Zsolt, that it's better to create groups by categories. It's very useful at the beginning.
You might conduct 50 interviews and just send questionnaire for other shelters.
I would start with interviews even before registration. Even maybe to have few interviews for each group. The information you will receive might help you to make the interview better and then you will continue with other participants.
Hi Norbert, let me ask first what made you to decide conducting interviews? Why not surveys or Focus Groups? To answer your question, I suggest communicating in a transparent way. You introduce yourself as a developer of a new program who is conducting a pre-liminary research as part of your product/service development process. You also can refer to Design Thinking which is the method you are using if you follow our courses. In this method the actual service and the legal framework of it is a result of a thorough research and active communication with the target group. You can share with the respondents that their answers will help you to select the right organizational form and service structure. Make your person transparent, use your full name, insert your LinkedIn profile to each email, let people to check on you. Write posts on LinkedIn or open a social media account (FB, Instagram, TikTok) where you expose yourself as someone who is dealing with this topic (take an expert position) and share relevant content. When people see you authentic, they will trust you without a formal organization behind you.