Needs Assessment
Report Template
Directions: You will design and execute a needs assessment
for a non-profit organization (K-12 school or district, higher education
institution, hospital/health care facility, community-based organization, faith-based
institution). Your objective is to
figure out what types of new approaches or programming are worthy of
consideration in order to improve or expand services. Your report will consist
of three sections (Pre-Assessment, Assessment, Post-Assessment) and should be
5-8 pages in length.
Resource: University of Kansas Community Toolkit
Assessing Community Needs and Resources
Name:
Date:
Section One: Pre-Assessment (1 page)
Directions: You will conduct a pre-assessment by coming up
with tentative answers to the following questions: What are unmet needs of the
population served? Who is affected? What is currently being done to narrow the
gap between what should be and what is? You may revisit work that you did in
your research seminar during fall semester. You may already have thought about
these questions. You will find it helpful to review Items 1 and 2 in the
Assessing Community Needs Toolkit as you prepare this section. Start keeping
track of your field work hours during Phase One.
Section Two: Assessment (2-5 pages)
Directions: In this section you will describe your data
gathering. You will be utilizing qualitative methods: interviewing, conducting
systematic observation, running focus groups, and/or content analysis of
official communications/web site. Your notes in this section can be written in
a journal format (with date stamps) and should document both methods employed
and your findings. Feel free to use graphs, charts or visual displays to
illustrate your findings. Phase One and Phase Two should account for the 10
hours of fieldwork required in this course. For helpful hints, see Items 3 and
4 in the Assessing Community Needs Toolkit.
Section Three: Post-Assessment (1 page)
Directions: For Phase Three (post-assessment), you will
review your findings and identify one problem of practice that is of critical
importance to the organization. You then
identify who should be invited to participate in a stakeholder’s group to
brainstorm possible solutions and to develop an implementation plan. See Items
5 and 6 in the Assessing Community Needs Toolkit for guidance.