Impacting governmental policies using data insights collected through community engagement

The Customer

The Aguda, Israel’s LGBT Task Force, is a leading organization in Israel for the empowerment of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community. The Aguda provides community services including legal assistance, an LGBT Hotline, clinic services, lectures and more. The organization is also deeply involved in social activism, striving to achieve equal rights and security for the LGBT community in Israel.

The Challenge

Given the community-oriented focus of The Aguda’s work, the input and feedback of the community play a significant part in determining the causes that the organization focuses on. For this reason, The Aguda needed a tool with which they could be in close touch with the community while simultaneously allowing community members to maintain a level of anonymity when sharing their opinions about sometimes sensitive and highly personal subject matters.

The Solution

The Aguda chose Segmanta as their tool to collect insights about their communities on various subject matters ranging from substance abuse to alternative families. Based on the subject matter being discussed and the goal of their research, The Aguda reaches out with a Segmanta survey to their email lists, social media following, event attendees, community members and more. This feedback is used to influence decision making, and understand where the community’s opinions stand.

With Segmanta, The Aguda is able to create professional surveys about meaningful and important topics that are still visually inviting, leading to a high level of community engagement and easy-to-understand data.

The Benefits

Much of The Aguda’s research, has been utilized to effect policy changes and determine causes of focus for the organization. One of the most notable of changes came in January 2018 where the Aguda’s research, collected using a Segmanta survey, was used to influence an important policy change made by Israel’s Health Ministry regarding blood donations from members of the LGBT community.

Based on results from a Segmanta survey, and in coordination with additional task forces and politicians, The Aguda was able to influence a groundbreaking policy change. The change allows gay men to donate blood, whereas previous policies had placed strict restrictions on the collection of blood from gay men who had sexual relations with other men. Prior to the change, gay men were often banned from donating blood or felt the urge to lie on donation forms. This policy change allowed them to donate while ensuring the safety of the blood units through additional steps in the donation process.

“The LGBTQ community is very diverse, therefore, we constantly need to keep up with the needs of all of our members. The insights we uncover using Segmanta shape many critical decisions we make. In many cases, the data that we gathered using Segmanta has contributed greatly to the advancement of equality in the State of Israel.”

– Ran Shalhavi

The Aguda conducted anonymous research utilizing a Segmanta survey where the community was asked to share their opinions on whether or not they were in support of the proposed new policy and associated processes. The results were used as part of the push towards the policy change which was presented to Israel’s Health Ministry. The policy change is being rolled out as a 2-year pilot after which, follow up research will be performed and the success of the pilot will be analyzed accordingly. The change makes Israel one of the most advanced countries in the world in regards to blood donation and equality for the LGBT community.