Join. Executive Summary

Executive Summary

At the request of Upper Arlington Lutheran Church (UALC) leadership, two focus groups were conducted.

Objective 1: Motivation for seeking a new place of worship and methods for searching:

Objective 2: What new members are looking to obtain from UALC

Objective 3: Reasons that new members continue to attend UALC

Recommendations:

* Consider starting an outreach program where members are encouraged to bring in friends and family to attend a service, once the visitors enter the church, consider holding a monthly visitors reception to allow new members greater opportunity to meet with established members and other new members.

* Consider starting a peer mentorship program for new members to encourage a greater sense of inclusion. Also create a program to help struggling or in-transition individuals within the church, while continuing all the current community outreach programs available for people who are struggling and in-transition.

* Consider creating a bible study group that relates real life experiences of members to scripture, while continuing structuring sermons around every day events and experiences

* Consider conducting focus groups of former members to determine reasons for attrition.

* Evaluate programs regularly to ensure they fit with current members needs.

* Consider promoting programs to members through internal advertising campaigns.

PURPOSE/PROCEDURES

On Jan 15, 2011 the Marketing Director from Upper Arlington Lutheran Church requested the assistances of the Consumer Behavior class at Capital University to conduct focus groups to help to determine why and how new members are discovering UALC. Based on UALC request using the exploratory research was the best method, so several focus groups were conducted to determine reasons why new members are attracted to UALC, as well as the new members general impression of UALC once inside the doors of the church.

Marsha Cross, Marketing Director and member of UALC, selected a list of volunteers from the church database. The participants were selected base on new memberships of 1 year or less, or regular attending non-members. Two focus groups were conducted; three participants showed up for the first session: two males and one female. The second session was much larger; there were 8 members in attendance 5 males, 3 females. The participate ranged in age from __ to over __, members in the first session all attended the Xalt at Mill Run services, while the members of the second session attended several different services at Mill Run.

Each focus group was conducted by two moderators