Valuation of the Northern Grapes Project Webinar Series

The Northern Grapes Project was funded in 2011 through the USDA Specialty Crops Research Initiative, and has successfully delivered a wide range of outreach products to the target audience, the most popular of which is the Northern Grapes Project Webinar Series.  Webinars are presented once-monthly from November through April, and recordings are archived on the project website.  Twenty-four webinars have been delivered to a live audience of over 2,300 people, with over 6,500 views of the recorded webinars.  Post-webinar surveys show that viewers are satisfied with the series. When asked if the logistics of the webinar were satisfactory, 90% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed. Participants also indi­cated that they’re finding the series to be educational: an average of 84% said their awareness and 80% said their knowledge of the subjects increased at a moderate or higher level.  However, placing a dollar value on the webinar series would allow us to better estimate the impact of the series.  Therefore, we modified two models published in the Journal of Extension, one which estimated the viewer time investment and the other which calculated the green savings of participating in webinars instead of attending presentations in person.  Together, these two models indicated a $420,000 value of the series.  Further, we surveyed the users of the webinar series, asking them how much they’d pay to watch a live webinar and access the archived webinars, as well as how much money they had earned or saved from the webinar series information. The models and the responses from the survey allow us to generate an idea of the real dollar value of the webinar series.