APS Survey Report Posted

Al,
Understood, but when I took the survey I listed myself as disabled not because I feel disabled but because I am on Disability (a source of income) due to ESRD (End Stage Renal Disease).
Don

I definitely agree chasing a mythical youth group is money wasted. One is up against change (communication methods and the need for stamps). There are plenty of easier to reach people who actually collect that are not members. If USPS cannot get them for all they spend, there is not much APS can do and even if they start collecting only a percentage will want to join APS.

The library will not attract a lot of new members for the money spent unless the resources are available online. That is, not that much payback in new membership. There are other intangibles but not easily measured in assessing the relative importance of the library.

The aspect of survey I got was it seemed to be show centric crowd and I am one of those more solitary types (no need to go to a show often, been there, done that).

As for the disabled, I assumed they were looking for people who want to work but disabled. I did not take the survey (got busy and forgot about it).

I think the survey tells us that APS members tend to be more advanced collectors; hardly surprising results. In my opinion I think it would have been better to have done this in two parts; one survey for members and one for non-members.

I feel the survey was too large and too encompassing; felt a bit like it might have been a situation of 'hey, we only do this every now and then so let's glean as much as we can'. Or perhaps it started smaller and grew as folks added more and more questions. Smaller, easier to take (like answering in less than 2 minutes) surveys with a greater frequency and with a more situational context would seem to be a better approach.

In other words, when someone joins APS, sent them a short survey on why they joined, what they expect, etc. Renewal time also seems to be a good time to query members. Ditto on when an existing member leaves; poll them to better understand their thinking. I would love to see APS do a free, monthly online contest for non-members; offering some 'starter stamps/albums' as the prize and require completion of a short survey as part of the entry process. (Get non-members in the habit of going to the APS website and doing online communications with APS.)

As the first page of the report noted, caution must be used in extrapolating conclusions from the non-member data. While I agree that understanding how existing members feel is very important; I was hoping it would supply a better understanding of what needs to be done to capture new members. This survey didn't get that job done, we got some data but are warned to use it with 'caution'. So if anyone tries to use the non-member data from this survey others may dismiss it as incomplete or unreliable.

APS faces a delicate balancing act; trying to retain existing members while attracting new members. Looking at the survey demographic data, it appears trying to retain exiting members might need to include figuring out how to make human beings live longer. And while I agree that chasing 'young' collectors (young = those under 18 years old) is probably a more difficult long-term objective we should not confuse the term 'new collector' with an age bracket.

My fear is that APS has evolved into an 'advanced collector' organization and this survey appears to bear this out. When I read the Delphi forum it certainly seems like there are powerful advanced collector personalities influencing APS. Nothing wrong with this if APS feels this is the best way to maintain the organization. But if the objective is to grow the membership then it will need to be more inclusive of less experienced collectors. (I guess there could be a large population of experienced collectors who do not already belong to APS but it seems unlikely.)
Don

The results may seem that way, but the information collected focused on a smaller set of strands than the number of questions implies. You gather less valuable information when you ask for it in bite-sized chunks because there is no context behind the question. I did not design the survey, David, who has a good bit of experience in the field, developed the questions from focus groups of collectors. I did not want there to be bias in the questions because polling a preconceived notion or project tends to give you predictable answers. There were some clarifications needed about definitions of different level shows, that sort of thing. The information I gathered from it was helpful.




I spent 25 years having to explain and debate polling data in the public realm. Too often a single nugget of information is pulled out and used to make some point. The problem is that it does not bear out the real mood. I always love those news stories where they report, "XX percent of Americans support XX issue." My favorite was increasing the cigarette tax because you would have an overwhelming number of people for it. What that number actually reflected was the number of smokers versus non-smokers and a better indicator of it than asking people whether they smoked. At the same time, if you simply asked, "How important is this when voting on a political candidate." The answer dropped off a cliff. The reality was that 20 percent of the people feel passionately about the issue (more likely smokers than non-smokers) and the rest of us were somewhere in between. When looking at this, there will be information that is more useful because we can contrast it against members and some that may not prove valuable at all. I am positive that if we used the survey alone to make any point, someone would rightfully question it.




A legitimate concern. I don't discount the value of advanced collectors, but we have been integrating more applied collecting information into the AP and in other platforms. We've also substantially increased education offerings in 2017 over the past five years and will build out our on-demand programs for less advanced collectors. Note the use of the library by intermediate and beginning collectors, it is substantially down. Advanced collectors see the need for using it. When I first came to the Department of Education, our travel budget was through the roof because all staff wanted to go to professional development offerings all over the country. While I believed in professional development, I could not sustain a $3.5 million annual travel budget - so I flipped the script and started demanding more active participation as presenters. The funny thing is that we managed to get the travel budget down to less than $2 million annually, most of it for monitoring visits in-state and my staff found the professional development opportunities to be more rewarding because they actually had to engage in the program. Our advanced collectors are highly-intelligent, self-directed, and do not need active services in the same way as less advanced collectors, they can, if asked, be a great resource for the rest of the collecting base. All we need to do is ask - and that is how you strike the balance.

Scott, thank for taking the time to reply.

Respectfully disagree with the statement above. Waiting for a survey which might come around every X number of years means that you are more likely to get those folks which feel very strongly (either end of scale).

The size of the survey also mades it much more tedious to participate, towards the end of the survey it could be people just starting answering with less thought. It is generally understood that the more survey questions you ask, the less time the respondents spend answering each question. And asking how people feel at the time they are pulling the trigger to join, or renew or not renew, seems to me to have all kinds of context and the perfect time to get feedback.

But I am not a survey expert, nor a marketing professional. Frankly, I never had much tolerance for a lot of marketing hand waving throughout my career. So I'll sit down now and let other folks offer their input.
Don

Don --

We're not as far apart as it might seem. When I was in the political realm, I was typically the cold water on the polling data because many people tend to draw the wrong conclusions.

I don't discount the value of shorter surveys but we needed a baseline first and now we have one. If you read my column and/or the strategic plan, we emphasized using more frequent surveys to gauge interest in specific items. The caution to that survey is the same as I stated before, it is a reflection of the people that answered at the time they answered it.

In a vacuum, surveys give you a skewed perspective of the world. Think of their accuracy as somewhere in the television meteorologist realm. That does not make it invalid, it is just a another way to look at an issue or a challenge.

For me, the big takeaway is that the APS should be focusing on catching the 30-50 year old collector. As others have said, youth is important, but we need to bridge that gap from the kids to the old heads.

If the APS is composed of mostly advanced collectors, maybe a way to increase membership would be to turn those beginners and intermediate collectors into advanced collectors. Maybe there should be a survey for advanced collectors that is focused on determining how and why their collecting progressed the way it did.

Cheers to the APS for sharing this data (and prioritizing a high quality research project like this).

It's interesting to see just what an outlier I am -- I just joined the APS for the first time at AmeriStamp Expo in Reno. I'm 39 years old (~95th percentile youth!) and was motivated to join by the circuit sales and the literature review, both among the least popular APS services.

I am discouraged by the domination of the membership by males (97% of advanced collectors!), specifically older males. I know that the aging of the collector population has been a problem for decades now, and I'm hopeful that Mr. English and others can find a robust future for this hobby / culture.

Scott, I have seen the strategic plans but what I am interested is in the actual implementation plan.

For example, when you say there is more online education, can you actually be more specific on actual goal such as a specific number by a certain or or will have all the slide shows converted to DVD and available by a certain date? I had asked APS the status.

My observation is that I heard is that "we will give an update at whatever the next show" but not in a quantifiable manner. For example the goal is 30 course (able to define each), how many done, how many in process, when it will be done. In my day job, this is how I have to present project status. To me all the departments should be presenting status this way and should be public record to the Board and the members. Is there a published report by the technology committee or the membership committee along these lines as well? When you have more work than people, then you have a backlog list with priorities, estimated dates, etc - just not a wish list.

Al --

The strategic plan is not a wish list, it has specific targets aimed at getting items done.

The example you used of converting slide shows to DVDs. That is not something that has been articulated as a project in the entire time I have been here. Why convert a dated technology to a dying technology?

In 2017, our focus was growing out the On the Road courses - offering at least 5 classes to 80 people. We will double the number of classes this year and likely have more than 100 people before the end of the year. The best year ever offered by APS

Conversely, we were supposed to have digitized APs online dating back to 1990 by last December and we did not make that target. I had to switch platforms for hosting the journal so the conversion was delayed unexpectedly. We will catch up and surpass our targets by year's end.

Online courses in 2016 sadly missed the mark due to lack of enrollment. As a result, we've shifted the focus from synchronous to asynchronous (on-demand) in 2017. We will have a beginner's course completed by August in Richmond and another course on buying and selling before the end of the year. I will have to make a final decision on a platform by the end of April, but that will likely happen faster. 30 courses is unrealistic - each course is module based - the beginner course has 10 modules, each has to be completed before you move on.

Not to belabor the point, but I update the Board at every meeting and when we have in-person meetings, we do physical presentations of different items, for instance, we did a demo of the online course at Reno.

Wish lists are just that, which is, if all of my problems were solved tomorrow, I would do these things next. There does seem to be a list that has items that someone thinks are important and they've been told we might get to that one day. I don't operate that way.

Scott, Thank you for the response.

I had not seen these details when I was poking around the APS web site. I may not be looking in the right place.

As for the slide show conversion, I would have guessed these would end up on DVD for local use and the web since APS was in the process when I had asked about it. Dying technology? The presentations may be dated.

The dying technology is putting them on DVD. Some are a bit dated, but for those that can be used, we should provide them via the website so that we don't simply have clubs 'ordering' them like the old school Netflix circulars. We are working on the website revision and before we add substantive new content, we will convert the site and evaluate the 300 pages or so of material we have already.

I cannot comment on the communication since the conversion plan was, at best, pretty informal prior to my arrival. Your anecdote is in line with some of the feedback I get from members on the road. Part of the purpose of the strategic plan was to focus the priorities rather than try to do many things without much success. Hopefully, we have been able to lessen that in the past 18 months.

Does this mean that all the APs are now digitized and waiting on the new platform? Or that the digitizing was suspended while staff/volunteers worked on something else?

We've scanned and stored all of the APs dating back to 1887. We are going through the quality assurance process, which will be completed by July. This is making sure all of the pages were scanned and in the right direction, etc. The next step is conversion to a platform for searchability. We will have a better report in the months to come, but I expect to be at 1990 by the fall.