President’s Column: Public Meeting Survey

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has changed quite a bit about how Minnesota Atheists does business.

Some of those changes made it harder to meet our community’s needs. We suspended all in-person meet-ups for a time. Not all of those activities have returned, and not all of those that have returned can be made safe enough for people with higher medical risk or lower risk-tolerance to attend. Not seeing friends doesn’t get any easier even as the pandemic stretches into years.

Some of the changes have been good for Minnesota Atheists. Moving our board meetings online has opened up opportunities to recruit outstate board members and others for whom the commute made the commitment too time-intensive. Though we’ve always had members across the state and even across the nation, having board representation from areas outside the Twin Cities can only make us more responsive to these members’ needs.

Then there are the changes with effects that have been hard to define. Bringing our public meetings online is one of those changes. We know it’s changed our audience for these meetings. What we don’t know is how it’s affected our community as a whole.

Rather than trying to tinker with the meetings and waiting to see what happens, we decided to collect some data. That’s where we need your help.

We’ve put together a short survey to find out how the community served by Minnesota Atheists uses our public meetings. Whether you’ve attended meetings before the pandemic, attended once we moved them online, or have seen the announcements but never decided to attend, please spare us a few minutes and give us your opinions.

Thank you!