1. Community assessment

2. What are community needs?
Community needs are gaps between what services currently exist in a community and what should exist.
It may be helpful to categorize gaps based on these four types of community needs—
perceived needs,
expressed needs,
absolute needs, and
relative needs.

3. Perceived needs
Perceived needs are based on what individuals feel their needs are.
Perceived needs are very subjective, and the standard may change based on each point of view. However, it’s important not to dismiss perceived needs as just opinion.
Taking into account the feelings and concerns of community members is an essential component of your assessment.

4. Expressed needs
Expressed needs are defined by what individuals have already voiced as a need.
For instance, community members may have complained to local officials about broken street lights.
These complaints are expressed needs and can help guide you to what needs to be accomplished.
However, make sure you’re mindful of the false assumption that all people with needs seek help.

5. Absolute needs
Absolute needs are deemed universal, including those for survival (i.e., food, water, safety, and clothing).
If community members don’t even have clean, running water, this absolute need should be a top priority to consider

6. Relative needs
Relative needs are rendered necessary based on equity and depend on current circumstances and the norm.
The standard may also vary based on population differences and social context.
For instance, providing students with access to computers isn’t necessary.
But with digital literacy now so important to education, the lack of computers might be deemed a relative need.

7. What is a community needs assessment?
“A community needs assessment identifies the strengths and resources available in the community to meet the needs of community members.
The assessment focuses on the capabilities of the community, including its citizens, agencies, and organizations.
It provides a framework for developing and identifying services and solutions and building communities that support and nurture children and families.”
Put simply, the outcomes of a community needs assessment guides how your organization and volunteers help the community.

8. Outcomes of a community needs assessment
The outcomes of a community needs assessment usually fall into one of three main categories:
Policy Change. This involves laws and regulations designed to guide or influence behavior. These can be both legislative or organizational. Policy changes can include raising the age limit to buy cigarettes.
Systems Change. This involves a change that affects all aspects of the community. This includes the social norms of an organization, institution, or system, and often goes hand in hand with policy change. These changes can include prohibiting smoking in public places.
Environmental Change. This involves physical, social, or economic factors that influence people’s practices and behaviors. Physical includes structural changes, like building specific smoking-only structures. Social factors include changes in attitude and behavior, like a need for more no-smoking areas. Lastly, economic factors include financial disincentives or incentives to encourage a desired behavior like raising the price of cigarettes.

9. Importance community needs assessment
By conducting an assessment before you develop a program, you ensure a firm grasp on a community’s gaps. After all, your program works to fill those gaps through resources and services.
The assessment plays a critical role in guiding decision-making and priority-setting for your program while involving community members in the process.
By following this method, you’ll build your program around the most vital services for your community members.

10. Who should be involved in the community needs assessment?
When you begin conducting the assessment, you need to figure out exactly who to reach out to in your community to help facilitate the assessment. Here’s who will likely be involved:
Community members who feel the direct effects of a gap in services or resources. Make sure you hear a myriad of voices and concerns in your community to better serve them. 
Expert community leaders, like members of a school board, local government officials, human service providers, and other professionals in the field. 
A team of stakeholders, including community members, to oversee and carry out the assessment and guide your program planning.

11. The Basic Steps of a Community Needs Assessment
Define your community.
Decide on scope.
Identify assets.
Make connections.
Collect data.
Analyze your findings
Present your findings
Design and communicate the program

12. Define your community.
Defining your community can give you a sense of why gaps may exist. It also helps identify the group(s), or sub-communities, that tend to feel the effects the most.
You can define the community with:
Population. While the lives of those in your community are unique, needs are often felt by groups of individuals.
Your goal is to understand the culture and social structure of your community to better target your program.
If you’re addressing mortality rates among women, you’ll want to analyze those who are the most at-risk like pregnant women. Doing so will help you delve deeper into the systemic issues that contribute to a need felt by the community. Further analyze your population through demographics such as age, gender, race, income level, ethnicity, and more.

13. 2. Place. Communities and sub-communities tend to center around place: where people live, play, work, and gather.
Places can include schools, senior centers, shelters, parks, religious establishments, and other infrastructure. Consider the physical places and attributes that matter to members. How will your program address and respect those important places? What infrastructure exists? Is there an attribute of the place that should be addressed or improved?
3. Attitudes and Values. This is about what drives your community.
What do the people you serve care about? What beliefs are important to consider and respect? What are the local attitudes toward certain issues? What biases may some hold?

14. Decide on scope
Community needs are often interconnected and complicated. For instance, homelessness has many underlying causes and effects.
The types of community needs you choose to address will ultimately depend on your organization’s expertise and core mission. Does your organization address gaps in community health? In education? You may want to address homelessness and its many causes, or you may focus your resources on a smaller group that is disproportionately affected by a gap in services.
It can be tempting to want to assess and address all the needs in your community. But by identifying community needs based on your available expertise and resources and narrowing your scope accordingly, you can better concentrate your efforts on what will achieve the most impact. That’s why it’s important to define the intended reach or scope of your program from the outset.

15. 3. Identify assets
It’s important to figure out the types of assets you’ll need in your community needs assessment to create your program. These assets, also referred to as resources, are necessary for your program’s success. Assets can include:
Organizations
People (volunteers, community members, and experts)
Funding
Policies
It’s helpful to start by identifying the assets that are readily available to you. This can include community organizations and individuals who already provide services or financial support to assess needs and address them.
Nonprofit and other service-learning organizations also often look to other communities with similar demographics that have successfully addressed similar needs. Look at the resources that drove their progress and consider taking a similar approach.

16. 4. Make connections.
To pull off your community needs assessment, you need to know the right people. As you learned above, some of your greatest assets are just people, from students to governors.
To get started, you should gather your contacts and reach out to community leaders.
Let’s say your organization is looking to develop programming for veterans. Reach out to leaders by visiting the gathering places of your community’s veterans, contact the congressional affairs office, and get in touch with a VA health center.
These connections can help you assess needs and play a key part in helping you address them. It’s important to have resources, support, and ample expertise available to you before implementing a program.

17. 5. Collect data.
To conduct a community needs assessment, you need data.
Your data will include statistics, but the numbers aren’t enough, especially when you’re dealing with real people who have real needs that go beyond what is quantitative. You should also collect qualitative data, like the thoughts and knowledge of community members.
Considering qualitative data in conjunction with quantitative data will give you a broader sense of the types of gaps in the community. You’ll be able to better identify whether needs are perceived or relative, for example, and therefore shape your program more effectively.

18. Interviews, focus groups, and surveys: Speak to those at ground level, experts, and community leaders about what they observe and experience in the way of needs.
Listening sessions and public forums: Listening and participating in community gatherings like town meetings are top ways to learn about perspectives on local issues.
Direct or participatory observation: Visit your community’s spaces, like senior centers, shelters, and schools to observe, speak with those at the ground level, and participate in programs that already exist.
Existing quantitative data. gathering quantitative data can be especially time-consuming and costly. Luckily, there is plenty of community-based data available to you already. You may look for statistics regarding demographics, as well as incident rates, prevalence rates, and growth over time specific to the needs that emerge

19. Analyze data
Take that data and try to look for patterns and trends. For the best analysis that can help you plan your program, separate your key findings into the following groups:
Strengths. What are the existing strengths of your community? For instance, let’s say you find that robust community partnerships are successful with low-income youth as graduation rates increased 22% over the past five years. This can give you a starting point for your program.
Gaps. Where do you see lags in your findings? Identifying gaps can help guide the creation of your new program. For instance, you may see that youth programs tend to halt after graduation, and there is a lack of follow-up support for low-income women above school age. Perhaps your program focuses on post-graduation mentorship for women.
Challenges. Are there any common challenges that affect your community’s needs? For instance, you might notice that time constraints for working individuals lead to disinterest in public programming. How can your new program combat these challenges? 
Opportunities. Are there any known opportunities that you can take advantage of? For instance, you may find that programs directed toward low-income women in similar communities experienced an increase in funding last year. Maybe your program should focus on low-income women since you know that has found success before.

20. Present your findings
After conducting a needs assessment, organizations typically produce a community needs assessment report.
This report is used to demonstrate findings and make the case for program funding.
The report generally includes the following sections:

21. Key Players: Overview of needs assessment participants and program partners involved.
Methodology: Description of the methods used to collect data. 
Participation: Describe the demographic and number of individuals represented in the data collected, i.e., How many individuals responded to your survey? How many focus group sessions were held? 
Strengths and Limitations of Assessment: What are the strengths of the needs assessment and its results? How are the assessment and results limited? What challenges were faced during the process of conducting a needs assessment? 
Key Findings: This section should make up the bulk of your report. Discuss the gaps, strengths, and challenges discovered in the community needs assessment results. Present data and case studies. What opportunities did you uncover?
Recommendations and Next Steps: Based on your results and key findings, what are your recommendations for addressing community gaps and needs? How will your proposed program address these needs? What information do you want to communicate with stakeholders?

22. Design and Communicate your program.
You’ve listened to what’s important to your community. You’ve developed a plan. Now it’s time to implement your program!
Gather volunteers, reach out to donors, issue a press release, and discuss your new program at the next town meeting or on your social media channels. Bolster engagement with your cause, and you’ll hit the ground running.