Community Need Project Final

Template for Community Need Project This template is designed to provide the general framework to complete your Community Need Project. You do not have to follow this template as it is a guideline, but if you deviate, please ensure that you capture the main elements shown below in your document. Overview of the Four Sections This project can be divided into four distinct sections. Section 1 Description of the Community and Key Stakeholders Section 2 Description of the Need/problem to be Addressed Section 3 Description of the Plan to Meet the Need. (Plan to Solve the Problem)1 Section 4 Description of the Assessment Plan While this document does not show specific headings and subheadings for each section, you may find it helpful create headings and subheadings in your project. The section titles are in bold above. Creating Section Headings and Subheadings will serve to do two things: help the reader follow the proposal and help keep you organized when writing the proposal. Description of Each Section in Greater Detail

1) Community and Key Stakeholders a) Provide a brief, general description of the community. b) Provide demographic information about the community. This can best be done within

the general description of the community. You can use bullet points to describe the various demographic factors you observe. For our purposes, you do not have to have quantifiable data. You can use pictures and images to assist in this. (Demographic information refers to descriptors of the community such as age, gender, ethnicity, income, etc.)

c) Provide values/beliefs information about the community. What are the common values and beliefs associated with this community? You may want to use bullet points here as well. You may want to use a quote from a member of the community. Some communities may not be tied by values, e.g. a neighborhood or apartment complex which is tied together by geography. It is still important to find out what their beliefs are about their neighborhood or apartment complex.

d) Who are the key stakeholders with the community? (A stakeholder can be thought of as someone or a group that has an interest in or will be affected by an organization, entity, or outcome.) It is important to identify the community leaders and key opinion leaders with the community. Briefly discuss their role in the community.

Note: This first section will likely be drawn from your experiences with a community with which you are familiar. Even though you are familiar with community, you should spend

1 If you focus on fixing a problem rather than addressing a need, use: “Plan to Solve the Problem.”

some time interviewing people within the community. Because this is not a formal, in-depth community assessment & needs analysis, two questions might generate some additional insight and provide specific quotes for this and the next section:

1) “What are three things you value most when thinking about (fill in the descriptor of the community)”

2) “If you could do one thing that would make a difference (fill the descriptor of the community), what would that one thing be?”

When you are developing the first section, please use examples from your interviews to support your assertions about the values and beliefs of the community. You may quote them anonymously if you need to. You may also want to use pictures of people (should you use a picture, you will need to get their permission to include this in the paper; see Appendix A for a simple permission form.)

2) The Need/problem to be Addressed a) Develop a statement of the need/problem that needs to be addressed. This can be

shown in the following format: Core Need: A statement that focuses on the need. If you want to phase this as a problem, then preplace the word “Need” with Problem.

b) Expand upon this statement. This may take several paragraphs. i) Describe this is a need/problem within the community. Think about the underlying

nature of the need/problem. Is the need resource based (the community/members of the community need(s) some tangible thing or need a set of skills), behavior based (the community or its members need to change a behavior), attitude based (the community or members of the community need to change an attitude or opinion), opportunity based (there is an opportunity which the community does not have access to), or is it a combination of the three? Though you will have stated the need succinctly in the statement above, this should address the underlying nature of the need or problem.

ii) Describe why this is a need/problem for the community by explaining why this is worth addressing.

iii) Depending on your project you may wish to describe the severity of the need/problem. (This section may be omitted or folded into 2bii.)

iv) Describe who is most impacted by the need/problem being addressed.

3) Plan to Meet the Need. This section of your proposal details what you plan to do to meet the need you have identified above. In this section you will also need to address the outcomes that will occur, in other words, the changes that you anticipate seeing. Think of this is what you are going to do and what the results will be. a) For many needs or problems, the solution may be quite complex. First, provide a

general description of what you plan to do. Then focus on the specifics.

i) If multiple things (or steps) must happen for the problem to be solved, identify each of these things. You may have to use bullet points here or separate paragraphs depending on the complexity or the plan you are proposing.

b) List key stakeholders that will help you implement your solution. What role will they play in addressing the need?

c) Finally, provide the outcomes (the results) in general terms. These outcomes will form the basis for your assessment plan. In this section, you are going to describe what should happen once the need is addressed. What are the differences that we will see having this problem solved or need met?

4) Assessment Plan. This section addresses what you are going to assess (measured in the form of a goal for some sort) and how you are going to assess it. An assessment plan can be really quite complex, but our goal here is to develop a simple way to look at assessment that helps you introduce you to the concept of assessment planning. It is critical to successful social entrepreneurship (and really to any effective organization). a) First identify three goals for your Community Need Project. You have already defined

the need and what you are going to do to meet that need, and the outcomes that you expect to see. Here you want to describe them in a way that we can measure them. The table presented below can help in this process.

Outcomes & Metrics Measuring Progress. Outcome # 1 Data needed to evaluate outcome # 1 Example: Graduates of Café Momentum will have a recidivism rate of less than 15% during the five years after graduating from the program.

Example: Number of Café Momentum graduates for rolling five-year period who have been incarcerated in the Texas Juvenile Justice system

Outcome # 2 Data needed to evaluate outcome # 2 Outcome # 3 Data needed to evaluate outcome # 3

b) Concluding paragraph that summarizes your goals, the data needed and how you will use that data to help improve the lives of others.

5) Conclusion to the Community Need Project

6) Reference Section

Appendix A Permission to use the photo/quote with attribution. I am granting (fill in your name here) permission as indicated by the checked boxes to

� Use a picture of me in their class project. I understand that this picture will be shared with other students in the class and the professor. Initial_________

� Use a quote with attribution to me in their class project. I understand this quote will be shared with other students in the class and the professor. Initial_________

If the box above is not checked and initialed, the student does not have my permission to use the image or to quote me with attribution.

Signature _____________________________ Date ________________________

Printed Name _____________________________