To begin our research, we read FWOC’s website. There wasn’t much to look at, as FWOC has not focused much on developing their social media interactions. We decided that in order to get a better idea of what FWOC was, we needed to figure out what kind of people were in its member organizations. From our interview with Michael McCloskey, we learned that the member organizations associated with FWOC have varied throughout the years, which made us question why this might be. We wanted to figure out what kinds of people were involved in each of the member organizations, but since we only had a few weeks to conduct our research, we decided to focus our efforts on FWOC organizations in Oregon. We were wondering if the demographic of all of the member organizations was the same as the FWOC leadership, or if there was a disparity between the leadership and the member population. It was difficult to come up with the different categories for the research survey. We decided to ask the different organizations for information on their members’ age, gender, length of membership, and race. While we were formulating this survey, we thought it would be helpful to conduct a parallel survey with Lewis & Clark students, since Lewis & Clark is made up of the younger demographic that FWOC seeks to appeal to.
We also created a GIS map of all the organizations in Oregon, and we were planning on changing the size and color of the data points according to differing demographic information. After collecting the data, we realized the information was not different enough to map anything significant. However, we did get to see the Oregon organizations spatially mapped out. We noticed that the organizations were located along I-5, in a north to south line up western Oregon. This was interesting because all these organizations have the potential to collaborate and network very easily if they ever decide to have joint events. This could be a good way to attract new members, since there is an increasing interest in being outdoors as a social activity to meet other people.
It was also interesting to get responses from various organizations because they were actually interested in the research we were doing for their own purposes. After they provided their demographic information, they asked to see the completed research. It definitely reaffirmed the fact that we were doing meaningful research that actually helps real non-profit organizations. Keeping that in mind has been a huge beacon of hope throughout this process since we know that the work we are doing will help FWOC.