If you're at the range sighting in your rifle, there are some best practices you can follow to ensure that you hit your mark. Developing an R3 effort is no different. There are many best practices surrounding R3 that are constantly evolving, but there are five universally agreed-upon practices to keep in mind when developing a new effort.
The first of the five practices that we're going to discuss is collaboration. Much like your experience at the range is enhanced by teaming up with your friends, our R3 efforts are also enhanced by collaborating with partners. Before you know what's needed, you have to know what efforts are currently being implemented. This takes collaboration within your organization, within your state partner group, or region.
Many times, this happens at a statewide R3 summit or stakeholder meeting. And once you have an understanding of what's being done, who's doing it, and where the gaps are on the Outdoor Recreation Adoption Model for your organization or your area, you're ready to consider developing a new R3 effort.
The second practice we're going to discuss is setting goals and objectives. If you think back to the range, whether you're there to sight in your rifle or just get some practice, you have a purpose for being there. When developing an R3 effort, you also need to have a purpose. That's why setting narrowly defined goals and objectives will help inform your decision-making.
Your exact goals and objectives will vary depending on what was revealed in your collaboration phase. Do you want to diversify your participant base by bringing in new people? Are you interested in retaining those that you already have? Once you have your goals and objectives set, you'll be ready to start in on the next practice.
The third best practice we'd like to talk about is the importance of identifying a target audience. This allows you to reach out and build a meaningful relationship with whoever you're trying to reach. And once you do that, you can include them in the process of developing an effort that addresses their specific barriers.
Especially when you're engaging with people of color and women, it's really important that you don't make assumptions about what their barriers and specific needs might be. When you're designing an effort, you want to make sure that your resources are being used well.
Some of the areas where you could invest your resources and have a high rate of return would be populations that you can really move the needle on. Research indicates that those audiences could be food-motivated individuals, college students, or folks with an increased interest in self-defense.
Part of being efficient with your R3 efforts is also making sure that the folks you are working with have access to wild spaces and wildlife. Either you can help increase opportunities in the areas where you're providing programs, or you can hold your programs in areas with high levels of access.
The fourth practice we're going to discuss is evaluation and tracking. These are critical to the development of any new R3 effort. Evaluation is not something that you should simply think of as an afterthought. It actually needs to be designed into the effort from the beginning.
This is going to provide you with subjective measures of how people feel about the effort you're putting in before, during, and after engagement with it. When you pair the subjective measures that you get from your evaluations with a tracking system, your R3 effort will be that much more successful.
When we talk about tracking systems, some examples would be a registration system for your events that pairs with your licensing system so you can look at license purchasing behavior before and after your event, or a customer relationship management system for your organization that tracks all customer engagement.
And the data that you get from these evaluation and tracking systems will set the stage for the next practice that we're going to discuss.
The fifth and final best practice we're going to share with you is communication. Communication is a tool that helps you to enhance your relationship with folks you've engaged through your R3 efforts.
When you reach out to them through surveys, email, or social media, you have the opportunity to identify ways that you can help continue them down their pathway in the ORAM.
If the ORAM and best practices were developed by key organizations and agencies over decades, it makes sense that their success is tied to your success. And that's why those organizations are part of your R3 family and community of resources.