Stories of Home

To follow up with Flourish guests and collect stories and photos, I created and implemented day-of-service and long-term (6- and 12- months) surveys. These were the locus of impactful quotes and photos of furnished homes.

Background & Goals

Flourish furnishes homes for people overcoming housing insecurity through a 45 minute shopping appointment. However, once our guests left with their furnishings, we had no way of seeing what the finished result looked like or how they faired in the long-term.

I created and was responsible for the sending of a day-of-service and long-term guest survey. On the day-of-service survey, we measured our guests’ satisfaction with our service and used the results to adjust our program. We also collected stories - and gained invaluable insight into our guests’ circumstances and aspirations. On the long-term survey, we measured how our guests were doing - whether they still had the same furnishings, if they lived in the same home, if they were employed, and the impact of the furniture they received. We also collected stories, and heard some of the most incredible testimonies of resilience and success.

The guest survey outreach became a tool to collect long-term impact results and photos of furnished homes, providing invaluable insight into the impact of our work to share with donors, volunteers, and partners.

Results

Over a period of two years, we received 1,500 responses to the day-of-service survey and long-term surveys. We also received incredible photos and stories from Flourish families that became core images in our marketing and fundraising materials. The surveys also created a link to create enduring relationships with our former guests, resulting in several of them becoming regular volunteers. We also used the long-term data in to measure the greater impact of our services in combination with our nonprofit partners’ programs.