Research is one of the most important practices that can significantly help in improving the performance of an organization, both in the short run and the long run. It helps an organization in making the most appropriate decisions when faced with difficult circumstances.
Similarly, research can significantly help The Food for the Hungry to solve its current problem. The organization is being faced by a problem of funding from low level of donations. Meanwhile, the demand for its services has been increasing.
Therefore, there is a need to come up with the appropriate strategy to expand the level of donations. However, the organization can increase its donations by having an effective marketing strategy. This can only be achieved by a clear understanding of the things that motivates its donors.
By conducting a research, the organization will be able to come up with results that will facilitate the understanding of the main things that motivates donors. Through this understanding, it will be easier to come up with the most appropriate strategies that will attract more bequests from the donors.
Before conducting the research, it will be advisable to formulate the objectives of the research. In this case, the research objective will be to understand the factors that have a significant impact on the donor’s decisions. Consequently, this will lead to recommendations that the organization must adhere to in order to increase the level of donations.
In order to achieve these objectives, the organization will be required to conduct a survey to collect information from different individuals. In this case, questionnaires can be an appropriate tool in collecting the desired information.
Questionnaires is one of the major tools which can help an organization in coming up with the most reliable information (Fowler 2006). For Food for the Hungry to be able to retrieve the necessary information, structured questionnaires will play a significant role. Questions will be formulated which will help to retrieve information from the donors.
In every survey research, the sample plays a significant role in determining the reliability of the data collected (Taylor, et al. 2008). It is always advisable to have a significantly large sample in order to avoid bias. It is necessary to have a representative sample that can represent the entire population.
In this case, the sample size taken should represent all the donors who support the organization as well as its potential donors. The reliability of the information can also be increased by selecting a random sample (Fowler 2006). A random sample helps in reducing the sample bias.
As noted earlier, the sample size plays a significant role in determining the reliability of information collected. It is therefore necessary to have a right number of completed surveys. This will largely depend on the characteristics and size of the population.
In order to have reliable information that can be useful in understanding the factors that determines the decisions made by donors, it will be advisable for the organization to have about 100 completed questionnaires. The results of the survey can then be analyzed in order to convert the data collected into a more useful form that can be used to make the necessary recommendations and courses of action.
There are several ways which the organization can use in analyzing the collected data. In this case, the data collected will usually be qualitative. The main objective here will be to understand the factors which determine the decisions by the donors.
This will be done by analyzing the information retrieved from different individuals. In this process, certain patterns will be identified as well as connections and similarities. This analysis will also identify any deviation from what is expected. In this case, the researcher will be able to identify some critical factors which will pave way for the course of action to boost donations.
Reference List
Fowler, F. (2006). Survey Research Methods. U.K.: SAGE.
Taylor, et al. (2008). Research Methodology: A Guide for Researchers in Management and Social Sciences. New Delhi: Prentice Hall.