Community Needs Assessment: Data Resources and Mapping Tools

Data is one of the primary “capacity forces” that sustains all nonprofits.  Nonprofits depend upon population, social and economic indicators to, among other things, increase their understanding, improve their operations and programs, and advance their public policy and public awareness initiatives. 

In order to make a meaningful impact upon their neighborhoods and communities, nonprofits must take time to assess the community’s strengths, weaknesses, needs, and assets as an essential first step to building organizational capacity – whether that’s tweaking existing programs or creating new ones and approaching funders and donors.

Participants will be introduced to national and local data tools for collecting relevant indicators.  The training course is designed to help answer the following questions: (1) Where do I find the data?  (2) How do I extract the data?  (3) What does each data set tell me?  And, (4) What are the data’s limitations?  Participants will also learn how to easily map statistics and employ the data based on the organization’s defined parameters.  Learn how your organization can use data to continuously learn, adapt, and improve.

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