April 2005 Featured Article
Conducting a Community Needs Assessment
Pat Bohse, President of Bohse & Associates, Inc.
Happy Spring!
This month’s article is on the importance and the how-to’s of conducting a Community Needs Assessment. We are recommending that local municipalities consider conducting a Community Needs Assessment because it will provide them with valuable information that could be used in a variety of ways such as justifying grants, designing new local programs, promoting collaboration among local agencies and businesses, and supporting funders in decision making.
The results of a Community Needs Assessment can provide your municipality with good information about what services are needed in the community; how the citizens of your community view present services; what their recommendations are for improvements; and, identifying any new needs that the community may need to address.
Steps to Conducting a Community Needs Assessment:
- Appoint a task force/committee to oversee the project and determine the timeline, the focus of the assessment, the tools and how the outcomes will be reported.
- The task force/committee will identify the stakeholders who will be part of the assessment. These stakeholders can come from the following:
•Local elected officials •Paid municipal staff
•Community volunteers •Community members
•Educational organizations •Business groups
•Social/cultural/recreational organizations
•Environmental groups •Senior group
•Churches/Synagogues •Other
3. |
Once the stakeholders have been identified the next decision will be deciding upon the focus of your Community Needs Assessment. Is it going to be a general assessment versus specific (e.g. general would be any concerns of the citizenship - specific would be individual
topics such as crime, safety, housing, etc.)? |
4. |
Next, you will need to develop the questionnaire/survey and decide what forum will be used to capture the information (i.e. public meetings, focus groups, questionnaires, telephone surveys,
mass mailings, and/or interviewing key community representatives). |
The following links are good examples:
Links to tools on how to conduct a Community Needs Assessment:
Links to completed reports as a result of Community Needs Assessments:
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Next steps:
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- Implement the plan with a timeline
- Generate a final report with recommendations
- Leverage the final report for future growth of the municipality
- WOW your future funders!
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Full version of April Article in Adobe PDF format for printing |