In a justice-centered union like NJEA, members must drive the organization’s direction. Union leaders must use intentional, strategic systems to gather member input and guide the work.
Given the constant demands of our fast-paced modern life, many union leaders of NJEA’s local affiliates have often wrestled with the best ways to gather accurate member insights efficiently and systematically. Most leaders of NJEA’s local affiliates are, in addition to being full-time advocates, full-time educators, family members, coaches and/or club leaders. Building systems where members can share insights about pressing issues facing the union is often placed at the bottom of the priority list. When facing issues such as staffing cuts or healthcare rate increases, there isn’t time to think about building systems to capture insight and guide decision making. That’s where the NJEA Member Surveys Program
comes in.
Established in 2024, the NJEA Member Surveys Program is an internal polling and surveying program that provides local, county and statewide leaders with accurate, unbiased insights into members’ thoughts and ideas. The program streamlines how leaders understand members’ views and helps guide decision making.
“In the last 3 years, the program has collected input from more than 18,700 members.”
It starts with members
NJEA Member Surveys Program reaches out to members in a given local or county association to gather perspectives in an anonymous and secure way. The program offers local and county leaders a variety of internal polling experiences to choose from, depending on their association’s needs at any given time.
The NJEA Member Surveys Program builds custom surveys by working with NJEA Committees and other association leaders, with NJEA Bargaining Surveys and School Climate Surveys being the most requested research tools.
NJEA Bargaining Surveys are built in conjunction with local leaders, typically a local president or their designee, and the local’s negotiations team. These surveys are designed to elicit member opinions about the items a local association expects to bargain over at the negotiations table.
When leaders understand what their members want, they’re better able to win big at that table and, when needed, organize their members around important issues. In this way, the bargaining survey becomes a tool not only to understand members, but to engage, organize and build power within a local association.
Like Bargaining Surveys, the NJEA Climate Surveys are built in conjunction with local elected leaders. Often, subcommittee members are brought together to explore an issue they believe affects their members and the broader school community.
Like the bargaining survey, the NJEA Member Surveys team has designed questions and the overall polling experience to be unbiased and to provide tangible, actionable information for a local association and a school community to act on. As a result, many local associations share the results of their climate surveys with boards of education and other school leaders to drive change.
Simple process, secure data, clear results
The NJEA Members Surveys Program is an easy-to-use platform that prides itself on keeping member data and opinions secure while providing clear and relevant results to leaders in a timely fashion.
The survey process, which takes roughly six weeks, is built on the idea that when local associations reach out to members at their preferred contact points, members will respond and provide honest information. The program uses secure contact information housed in NJEA’s OneNJEA System. If, for instance, a member has outdated contact information in the system, local leaders will be notified about the potential hurdle, and the member can update their information (see page 21).
From a practical standpoint, the NJEA Member Surveys process is simple: Once a local association begins the process, which starts through their NJEA field representative, the NJEA Member Surveys Team meets with local leaders to discuss the process and answer questions.
From there, local leaders are given a question bank of research-based, unbiased questions to choose from. The team builds the surveys based on the questions that local leaders choose. Once the survey is built and ready for distribution, the NJEA Members Surveys team distributes electronic surveys to members through their preferred email address as identified in MARS.
Surveys stay active in the field for 2 weeks, and members of the local association receive reminders to complete the survey. At the end of the two weeks, the NJEA Member Surveys team reports the findings to local leaders. The reports offer an in-depth look into member sentiment on the topic of choice.
The reports are designed to be visually appealing and easy to understand. The reports also provide detailed, statistically significant results, where they’re found, that local leaders can act on. At the end of a survey, members are heard, and leaders are informed.
A growing program makes an impact
Since its creation in 2024, the NJEA Member Surveys Program has worked with 70 local associations across all four NJEA Zones.
Many public polling firms aim for a 10% response rate from any given audience, but because the NJEA Member Surveys Program is about members being heard, the surveys distributed by the team aim for a 60% response rate. Since its inception, the program has averaged a 60% response rate. In the last 3 years, the program has collected input from more than 18,700 members.
Beyond local associations
The program’s success to date is without a doubt driven by local association leaders and their support. However, the program also works with NJEA committees to provide detailed, research-based information to NJEA committee members that will eventually help guide NJEA’s overall direction.
Since its founding, the NJEA Member Surveys Program has worked with the members of the following NJEA committees: Working Conditions, UniServ, Urban Education, Representative Assembly, Professional Development, Convention and Leadership. In each instance, committee members used member voices to guide decisions that impacted members across the state.
Unions are strongest when members feel empowered and have an ability to use their voices to guide the direction of the collective. The strongest unions are built on the idea that every member’s perspective and opinions are valid and worthy of consideration.
If you’re interested in learning about or implementing the NJEA Member Surveys Program in your local or county association, contact Matt Stagliano at NJEAMemberSurveys@njea.org