We care about our SHRUB community, which is why every three months the Monitoring and Evaluation group asks to hear your concerns, ideas and suggestions through our Quarterly Member Survey. This time we only get 10 responses (we can do better than that next time!) but they were priceless.

1. There are clear positive behavioral changes from being a member.

40% of you reported you throw away less food.

30% said you buy less food – another 30% said you buy less clothes.

60% said you have tried to mend clothes instead of throwing them away.

2. Our fellow SHRUBbers feel sufficiently engaged (out of those of you who responded – we realise there is going to a bias).

90% of the respondents felt a part of the SHRUB community and reported that SHRUB has a positive impact on their well-being and happiness.

70% felt more engaged in tackling climate change through your participation at SHRUB.

3. … But only 50% felt empowered to take part in SHRUB decision making.

On the last point we got some insightful feedback. A few people brought up the need for better internal communication activities, such as communicating and celebrating our achievements, being clear on our goals and structure. The latter point is especially relevant for any new members we work with.

A few people signaled the need for improved distance engagement. We will be looking into providing options for participating over phone or video calls, and for better sharing of ideas before or after meetings over email, comments or special programmes designed for distance working. We will also look into different forms of decision-making processes for major decisions, where all the members can participate, even those who might not be able to attend meetings.

We always value your feedback!

Thank you to everyone who took part in the survey this time around, we’ll run the survey again in the autumn, but in the meantime, if you have any ideas or feedback, you can always send them to hello@shrubcoop.org or pop a postcard in our feedback post boxes in the shops.