SanCap Resilience to launch community survey
An online survey will launch this week and the islands community is encouraged to participate.
Through the city of Sanibel, SanCap Resilience was recently awarded a 2025 City Catalyst Grant for $2,500 from the Florida League of Mayors. The group’s mission is to lead a community-based initiative to build resilience and protect the vibrancy of the sanctuary islands. The grant funds will assist in its efforts to provide education and resources to support the community’s need to build back more resiliently from the recent hurricanes, including the new survey to assess current needs and concerns.
SanCap Resilience’s Steering Committee Chair Bob Moore voiced appreciation for the funding.
“And particularly for the support of Mayor Mike Miller, who helped us submit the grant and advocated in favor of SanCap Resilience receiving support,” he added.
Moore explained that their first community survey was done after Hurricane Ian, but prior to Helene and Milton. One component of the grant application was a follow-up survey to the 2024 one. They felt that it was important to get updated information on recovery efforts after the more recent hurricanes.
“The survey is going to cover a variety of topics. Many of them are going to be similar questions to the ones we did in 2024 — to see if people’s experiences and perspectives have changed since Helene and Milton,” he said. “But, there’s some additional categories, as well.”
New this time, there will be sections specific to different groups in the community.
Moore cited full-time and seasonal residents, business owners and business managers, and those who work on island but do not live on the islands as examples of the group-specific types of categories.
“As well as some questions that are for everybody,” he added.
The topics will include recovery, such as where people are at in the process and how they were impacted by Helene and Milton, and what they have done to recover more resiliently following the most recent storms and what are some of the changes they have invested in to be more resilient.
“What might be useful for the community to have more resources in support of, such as online or community programs,” Moore added. “So we have an understanding of how we might design our programming going forward to be more responsive and helpful to the community.”
There will also be questions looking forward.
“There’s people’s concerns about going into the future, so we want to understand their perspectives there,” he said, noting that the initial goals with the creation of SanCap Resilience was being a community resource to help build back more resiliency and how the group could advocate for policy and decisions for the community to be a model of resilient, sustainable living.
Available online only, the survey will entail about 20-25 questions.
“It will be open until the end of February,” Moore said. “The goal is to have it be a survey that takes 10 minutes or less to complete.”
In developing the questions, SanCap Resilience received feedback from the entities within its coalition, along with the city’s departments and Sanibel Solutions, which created an online recovery dashboard.
“So it was kind of a collaborative effort putting the survey together,” he said.
Community partners will help to get the word out, including the city, Committee of the Islands, “Ding” Darling Wildlife Society-Friends of the Refuge, FISH of Sanibel-Captiva, SanCap Chamber and Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation (SCCF). In addition, FISH staff will be available to provide assistance with taking the survey for those who need it.
“We got almost 900 people to respond, which was fantastic,” Moore said of their first community survey. “The bigger number we get, the more confident we are that it is more representative.”
He noted that islanders will receive a lot of surveys this season, including a water quality one from SCCF, one from FISH after this closes, and possibly one from the city on updates to the Sanibel Plan.
“It’s a lot that we’re asking the community, but their input is critical on all of these channels,” Moore said. “So we really want to hear from folks.”
The community is urged to hop online and complete it.
“We want to understand what’s important to the community right now, so that we can be supportive in terms of helping to provide online resources or prioritize planning around the speakers that we bring in,” he said. “The more we hear from the community, the better we’ll be able to provide support.”
To take the survey, visit https://bit.ly/3KDr60q.
Since its founding, SanCap Resilience has engaged the community in a number of ways to support recovery from Ian and promote efforts to plan for future resilience. Activities have included community surveys, dissemination of educational materials, presentations by experts on a variety of resilience and sustainability topics, civic engagement on policy, and more.
For more information, visit sancapresilience.org or contact info@sancapresilience.org.