Community Needs Assessments for Library Grants Grant projects should serve as an answer to a demonstrable compelling issue or problem that exists in the community your library serves. Needs assessments and/or needs statements are often requested in grant applications and are an excellent way to prove the necessity of your proposed grant projects. Funders attest that there is no shortage of wonderful ideas. But behind that idea, there must be a documented and compelling problem or need that exists. Aligning your grant project to your community needs will demonstrate to the funder why your grant is vital and deserves to be funded. With thorough planning, your grant proposal will be much stronger than other applicants, your grant project will accomplish more and you will fulfill a community need. Through a needs assessment you examine your environment and truly understand your library and community. Changes in politics, society, and economics impact our libraries. Libraries are in the business of providing information and must respond to the changes in our communities, keeping up with new and different community needs and reaching out to new populations. An analysis of the community will reveal important information that the library director, staff, and board should know about, including what people need and expect from their library. A community needs assessment determines how well your library is currently meeting the needs of your community and what other types of resources and services it can provide in the future. Results of a needs assessment study can be used to determine: •
how extensively the collection and resources are being used and to identify gaps;
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who uses the library and ways to reach non-‐users;
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how successful library services are and how they can be improved to reflect the community's needs;
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whether the space and physical building are adequate for providing library services;
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how the user community is changing (e.g., socioeconomic status, demographics, etc.);
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whether staffing patterns and library hours are adequate.
By identifying community needs, you can discover opportunities to improve infrastructure or to deliver services in a new way. Focus on finding out how can the library help improve and support your community, whether it is to focus on literacy, job seeking skills, educational support, school drop-‐out rates, providing a safe place for teens, or closing the digital divide.
Example Community Need • • •
In the last year, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of requests for health-‐ related information from senior citizens. They have a need to understand more about their health conditions, medications and their side effects, and alternative medical treatments. The amount of staff time it is taking to address these information requests is on the increase, and something has to be done to meet this growing need in the community.
What's Already Been Done? Your library may have already conducted a community needs assessment as part of a strategic planning process. If the planning process has involved the community, then your library may have already solicited input and have a good understanding of community needs, priorities, stakeholders, and potential partners. Track down any type of needs assessments or community profiles that have been recently completed. Your city, town, county, or other local organizations such as nonprofits may have also conducted needs assessments that could prove helpful for your grant planning.
Who Conducts Needs Assessments? Needs assessments can be carried out by outside consultants, library volunteers, or library staff. Your available resources, time frame, and comfort level with performing this type of research may influence your decision. It is best to use a combination of these methods. For example, you might hire an outside consultant to help you set up the needs assessment study and design surveys, but then use volunteers to actually complete a telephone survey, and staff to interview community leaders. •
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Outside consultants will have expertise in how to conduct research studies. They provide objectivity by offering an outsider's view. Since consultants are experienced at performing research, this option makes better use of your limited time. The primary disadvantage to using outside consultants is often the cost. Volunteers are another possibility. Volunteers are free and save library staff time. However, they may present a biased interpretation of what the community needs. It is important to select volunteers who reflect a broad array of the community and to select volunteers that have experience in performing needs assessments. Volunteers will also need to be trained and managed, so some staff time will also be involved. Library staff can also perform needs assessments. While library staff are less expensive than hiring outside consultants, they may be inexperienced in needs assessments or not have time to perform a needs assessment on top of their regular library responsibilities. However, basic needs assessments can be done through interviews and research, as outlined below.
Target Audiences Connect with groups not being properly served by your library. Consider targeting specific audiences and developing services and resources to meet their needs. For example, if one of your library’s goals for the current year is to increase public access to technology, think about who most needs to use technology in your community. Is it job seekers? Retirees? Is there equipment currently available that might help? What about software or hardware? Classes or training? Are there organizations in the community with which the library could partner? A certain amount of planning must always focus on the needs of the general population. Devoting time and resources to targeted audiences, however, can take the library’s services to a higher level. These groups might include: • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Teens Parents Single parents Homeschoolers Seniors Persons with disabilities New Americans Job seekers Genealogists Spanish speakers Politicians and government officials Community agencies Small business owners
Collecting the Data Decide what you want to learn about your community and what kind of information you plan to collect. For example, will you perform a broad-‐based study or one that is focused on a particular area or issue? Some categories of information you might be interested in collecting include: historical, demographic, economic, social, cultural, educational and recreational. Some libraries perform a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis or use Appreciative Inquiry or other strategic method to identify the challenges and opportunities facing their community and library. Then they prioritize the issues and use the needs assessment to focus on addressing those specific issues. Once you decide on the types of information you want to collect about your community, you need to determine how to collect that information. You can collect data by interviewing key community leaders in the community, holding a community forum, researching demographic
data from public records and reports, and performing surveys. It is best if you can use more than one of these data collection methods. Interviews (or even quick chats!) By interviewing key members of your community, you can better understand their impressions of the community needs. Interviews may also yield future partners that could support grant projects. However, this method provides subjective data since it is based on opinions that may not reflect the needs of the entire community. If there is a target audience you are interested in, such as Spanish speaking members of your community that aren’t using the library, you can contact leaders that work with that specific population, such as church officials, healthcare workers or teachers. If you have two staff members to assign to this task, they could split up and each conduct five interviews or they could go together so that one could take notes while the other asks the questions. A volunteer could also help with note taking. You could begin with a simple exercise of meeting with a few ministers, educational leaders, directors of service organizations, government leaders, business owners, nonprofit directors, and other leaders that have an insightful understanding of what your community is facing. When you talk with these leaders, focus on identifying the existing problems in your community. This will be much more helpful than asking what the library can do to improve or what the library can do for the community. The answer to those questions require that the individual interviewed really understands what the library is already doing or what it is capable of doing, and often this is not the case. Just let them talk about the needs they know of among the people they serve. What do they hear are the biggest worries among the people they serve? Focus Groups Focus groups can provide very honest and useful information. Members can be selected by age, gender, occupation, or social interests and groups can be organized into manageable numbers. Focus groups can be conducted in person, via conference call or online. If the participants are comfortable, they may give very helpful feedback. You will need to have a facilitator for each group. This information is also subjective, and it could be time consuming to compile the data. Community Forum or Town Meeting A community forum involves holding a group event and inviting your entire community. This can provide a lot of good information, give visibility to your library, and even raise its status within the community. However, these forums require a lot of planning and publicity. The majority of the attendees will probably be active library users, rather than those who do not use the library. This can make it difficult to determine the needs of the entire community. Another disadvantage of this method is that it tends to provide subjective and impressionistic data about the community's needs. Also, the less vocal and participatory segments of your community may not be represented.
Public Records A more objective method of data collection is to use public records to research secondary data such as the social indicators or demographics of your community. A well-‐known source that is reliable and available for county or city level analyses is the U.S. Census Bureau. Using these records, you have access to such community information such as ages, genders, languages spoken, education levels, income levels, and marital statuses. Several data sources are listed on the last page. Surveys Surveys can be distributed by mail, phone, in the library, or online. While mailed surveys are the most expensive option and get low response rates, the mailed survey method requires very little time to implement and is easy to coordinate. Some utility companies will include surveys with their bills for no charge, so this is an option to explore for some types of libraries. There are several online surveys that are available for free or little cost. These are easy to develop, implement and compile. Take a look at Survey Monkey (www.surveymonkey.com) or Zoomerang (www.zoomerang.com). Both have free versions for smaller surveys. Some libraries have links to online surveys available on their websites to gather information from online users. Information gathered from surveys is only as good as the questions asked. If you are performing the needs assessment yourself, you might want to consult an experienced surveyor as you design the questions. The shorter a survey, the easier it will be for a busy customer to complete. Be sure to provide confidentiality to your survey participants. Reassuring your participants that their survey responses will be kept confidential and anonymous might help improve your response rates, especially in a small community. Current issues and local media Your community needs are probably being showcased by local media. What are the hot topics in the local newspapers, newcasts, and radio shows? What is being discussed at city council meetings? What is the buzz? What are the most asked reference questions? By compiling this type of information you can get a good sense of what issues are important to your community.
Prioritize and Focus on Solutions Once you have a clear picture of your current situation, you can begin to think about any areas of improvement and/or specific needs that are not being met. How can you create an environment that is even more effective and valuable to your community? Your grant project will essentially be the specific solutions by which your library will meet the community need. For example, if you discover that a major issue in your community is unemployment; your grant project should focus on solutions to this problem that would support the library’s mission. This may involve strategies such as computer classes on creating resumes, online videos on interviewing skills, seminars by local Job Corps programs, GED classes, or a website that links to current local job opportunities. Your library’s leadership and grant team should determine what library activities can best serve the community in solving
this problem. Along the way you will investigate what local resources are already available, and find out what community groups may be potential partners. As you prioritize your community needs, think about how the library can have the greatest impact. Are there needs that you can meet with existing resources and services? Are there community groups you can partner with to ensure the widest reach of your efforts? Remember to:
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Tie to your library's mission, goals and the people served Address universal problems/issues
Data Sources US Census Bureau Fact Finder Source for US population, housing economic and geographic data. Statistical profile of communities based on several censuses and surveys. American FactFinder American FactFinder is a fundamental source of information to identify or confirm the education, health, economic, or other needs of individuals, families, and communities. Public Library Locator Managed by the IMLS Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE), this program uses the U.S. Census and the State Library Administrative Agencies to collect uniform statistics from more than 9,000 public libraries. Data are available for individual public libraries and are also aggregated to state and national levels. IMLS Data Analysis Tools National, state, and county-‐level statistics on a range of public policy issues including education, child and family well being, labor and employment, and small business development. ALA: Research and Statistics Lists numerous library statistics sites. California Sources: USA.gov For statistics about your state and your community. California State Department of Finance California Association of Councils of Governments California State Library Research Bureau United Ways of California
