Market Research for Church Leadership
Smell like the sheep
Grow your parishes, accomplish regional goals
You know a lot of the challenges in your diocese. Maybe you've even conducted a study to identify them. But if you want to solve them, you need the "why".
Vinea goes beyond simply reporting findings and conducts comprehensive analysis to give Church leadership a holistic understanding of parishes and parishioners to facilitate effective planning and decision-making.
Leadership Challenges
Regional Diversity. Parishes and their associated communities come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. This regional diversity makes it difficult for Church leadership to plan and develop programs, make adjustments, and lead an organization that consistently and efficiently improves all parishes under its jurisdiction.
Lack of Action-Oriented Data. Regional and national studies are fairly common at the archdiocesan and Church leadership level. And while they can provide a lot of information, they typically only help identify problems, not solve them.
Church Leadership Solutions
Vinea Research offers strategically focused and action-oriented market research. We go beyond simply reporting findings to help you understand behaviors and underlying motivators. Comprehensive analyses translates the data and information to tell you a more complete story of the people you serve.
Landscape Studies
Identify problem areas and set and evaluate benchmarks with overall assessment of beliefs, drivers for these beliefs, and spirituality.
Messaging Research
Proven process with quantitative and qualitative research to identify the most effective wording for key messages.
Communications Research
Evaluate new advertising methods to evaluate if they resonate with your target audiences and convey the intended idea.
Case Study: Teen Vocations
A 2012 study on vocations found that male teens are different than those 69 and older: "Among men, Millennial teens (those ages 14 to 17) are less likely than never-married Catholics of the oldest generation (those born before 1943) to say they have considered becoming a priest or religious brother.”
So what do you do with that knowledge? Without further study, we do not know why teens are less likely to become priests. So why is it different? And how do you nurture teen vocations?
This study should dig more deeply into the spiritual mindset of Millennial teens to understand their motivations, their concerns, their dreams and aspirations, and explore how these can or could relate to a priestly vocation. It also would be beneficial to note the similarities between Millennial teens and those of the oldest generation, should they exist.
Ensuring Long-Term Success
Measuring progress is extremely important. To do this, Vinea can work with Church leadership to conduct recurring research on a regular basis. This allows you to keep up with the dynamics of positive or negative changes in behaviors, motivators and other factors, and adjust your initiatives accordingly.
Finally, the use of professional marketing techniques based on market research can add credibility to your efforts. This can be a persuasive talking point in making your appeal to potential and current benefactors.