Community Needs Assessments 101

1. Community Needs Assessments 101 Practical pointers on conducting a Needs Assessment that adds value to the community work you do

2. What will cover in this session • Scope of what is involved in completing a Community Needs Assessment • Considerations before starting • Practical Tips for conducting • What to include in gathering information • Lessons learned on what does and doesn’t work • How to decide if ready to do this internally at agency • Tips to consider if choose to contract for some or all portions of your community assessment

3. Two Key Steps in Process for a Community Needs Assessment • Planning • Plan Scope • Plan data collection • Doing • Doing the data collection • Using and analyzing the data collected • Preparing the final Assessment- Choices of • Content • Format

4. Where to Start… • Decide what you most need to know about clients & community – this will drive the decision of how and what data to collect • Decide how you want to use the data • Decide, given what you want to learn and the purpose for the gathered information, whether you have the time, and expertise to do either the collection or use of the data.

5. 1st Decision: What do you want to learn? • Ask these questions first- • What are you constantly being frustrated that you don’t know about clients or your local community? – Finding out that information is a good place to start an assessment • How much do you need to be the first in town to identify emerging issues in the low-income community? – Your data gathering can be designed to capture this if it is important to your agency • Who do you need to influence and on what? –What you want to learn is slightly different and will direct what you collect and analyze. • What direction did last strategic planning point your agency in that you need to learn more from clients or community about, even if not currently a programing priority

6. Next Steps in Doing the Community Needs Assessment • Need to collect data • Collect from internal and external sources • Lots of public databases available now to include in any community needs assessment • Bigger problem in collecting data is deciding how to limit and understanding if is really relevant to what you want to accomplish with assessment • Need to analyze data • After collect useful data need to analyze it for a community needs assessment to have an added value to your organization or community • Analysis includes; understanding trends, emerging issues, implications of changing client profiles

7. Sources of Data Available to Collect • External Public Data • U.S. Census and American Community Survey ( ACS) estimates • State, County and School District level Education data – • State and County Health Data • State, County and larger cities Employment Data • Internal Client Data already collected • From client assessments completed by program requirements (Housing, HS/EHS, WorkFirst, WIC) • Client demographics in database • Client satisfaction surveys(?) • Program waiting lists

8. Collecting data for assessment can include creating new data to analyze Sources include: • Surveys • Of clients • Of target stakeholders • Of program staff • Focus Groups • Of clients, target stakeholders, staff • Community Forums

9. 2nd Decision: How to use the great data you have collected? • Minimum is to meet the CSBG requirement to assess the conditions and causes of poverty in your community, and thus, give support for programs choose to spend CSBG funds on • Can also use to build community support or awareness for your anti-poverty initiatives or program development • Can use to inform community of emerging issues low income households face in moving out of poverty • Should be key data used in agency’s strategic planning

10. Data Analysis- How to Use what Collected • Need to customize reporting public data and demographics to your community and your priorities • Need to report what found- include trends over time when have multiple years of data available • Need to add implications of what found • Need to integrate various data sources used

11. Lessons Learned on What Works • Good enough vs. perfect • Show and tell • Compare and contrast • Plan ahead • Plan to do (mostly) same data collection over time- allows for trends to be part of the analysis • Be flexible- something will go wrong, what works is knowing how can fix it timely and creativity • Be realistic on how big you want to start

12. Example of using Show and Tell

13. Example of using Compare and Contrast

14. Lessons Learned on Pitfalls • Being paralyzed by too much information, and or choices • Some times the problem isn’t failure to start, but failure to stop • Missing key steps in the planning process • Not anticipating how much time it takes to do right; lots of planning and then needs close oversight during all steps of implementation • Test tools used the first time out

15. Example: picking the right chart type

16. Example: testing a chart first

17. Are you Ready to Conduct the Community Assessment you Really Want? • How complex or comprehensive of assessment do you want? • Do have the resources to complete a assessment of this size? • Technical expertise • Staff time

18. Are you Ready to Conduct the Community Assessment you Really Want? • Kinds of Technical skills needed to consider • Can create a survey tool in planned format? • Can create database to collect responses in planned format? (Example options Online/website/Access/Excel • Data analysis skills • Ability to use software to do cross tabulations? • Ability to use GIS software to geocode and map data? • Can facilitate focus groups? • Can facilitate community forums? • Can create custom reports to pull data from client assessment databases within agency?

19. Tips on Project Management of a Community Assessment • What is the same in the process- whether completed by staff or contractor • What is different • What to watch out for

20. Questions • Contact Information for further questions or worksheets Kate Martin Principal, KMartin Works Email: KMartinWorks@Yahoo.com Phone: 517.392.6231