Every day, around 20,000 to 30,000 people come to Scarleteen online. We already know some basics about who our users are via backend site logs, Alexa, Google Analytics, the direct ways we engage with users daily and some demographics from years ago. This summer, we created a new demographics survey as part of a potential partnership with a fellow organization, and to get an additional, fresh source of information for ourselves.

Many of users mentioned they'd be curious about the survey results, one reason why we're sharing them with you here. Our supporters and potential supporters also often ask us about who our users are. In addition, we wanted to see these results too, to help us keep doing the best job we can. I'd like to share, then talk about some of the results with that aim.

We decided to limit our survey to 2,000 participants who completed it, a number that was manageable but also statistically significant. So, we cut the survey off once we had that number. We recruited for...

Just a quick update about a change starting at Scarleteen, for those who use our direct services.

With both our message boards and text service, we have told our users for many years now that they can expect a reply from a staff member or volunteer within 24 hours, though most have usually received replies more quickly than that, often even within minutes at certain times of day.

We need to make an adjustment to that timetable. Starting today, users of our direct services should be prepared for a window of waiting as long as potentially 48 hours (but more realistically, a few hours rather than within minutes).

Over the last year, we've been more short-handed with volunteers than usual. Some of our core volunteers have been winding up working more hours than volunteers should be expected to work. Per usual, our very modest budget also does not allow us to hire additional staff. Being shorthanded here is often especially typical during the summer months. Alas, that also happens to be th...