The FbRN Survey results - What you're telling us - 20th February 2014

Thank you to all who took some time out of your hectic social action schedules to tell us what you’re working on and how we can help you. You’re very busy people doing very interesting things! From Durham to Devon and many places in between, you told us you were involved in ‘community support’ (a category mentioned by over half who responded), campaigning and advocacy (a third of you) and a huge array of activities from alcohol and substance abuse issues to family support, anti-racism initiatives, food and fuel poverty and much more. In total, you’re working in nearly 40 different categories of social action across England.

We asked you what you wanted us to cover and some key themes emerged, summarised in order of response:

·        Faith - This is your biggest area of interest. Of all the suggestions we offered ‘Faith and public life’ was by far the most popular, closely followed by understanding values, faith and belief in our work and understanding multi-faith working. Understanding each other’s beliefs, what motivates us and how this impacts the work we do is something at the heart of the FbRN vision and we’re delighted you share that with us.

·        Community – Unsurprisingly your community contexts are vitally important to you! You told us we could help you with community development skills and advice on building sustainable communities. Health and building healthy societies was also interesting to you.

·        Rights and policies – Help with understanding public sector policies was a popular request, along with learning more about equalities and human rights. We understand the importance of keeping you up to date with what’s happening at government level and helping you work out how it applies to you.

·        Practical support – You wanted to know ‘how to’! You gave us a wide spread of answers across the spectrum of social action from innovation to leadership to building a volunteer culture to measuring impact. It’s clear that it’s not just about doing the work but about doing it well.

Your responses confirmed that our network is still very diverse. We loved hearing from Muslims, Zoroastrians, Christians, Baha’i, community groups, inter-faith forums, local authorities, youth organisations, women’s networks and many others. We’ll be talking more about what you told us and what our response will be but for now thank you for taking the time to talk to us and a huge thank you for all you do in your communities and beyond.