Needs Assessment

A needs assessment is a crucial element of your programming cycle, informing decision-making processes and intervention options for addressing identified challenges. A quality needs assessment helps to determine an effective response that can have a lasting impact on the effectiveness of project interventions, level of funding and quality coordination/partnerships while contributing to improved stakeholder engagement and beneficiary ownership.

What is a needs assessment?
Simply put, needs assessment is a process of asking a group of people or community about their most important need and actions they think can be taken to address them. Findings from the assessment can then be used to develop appropriate response for addressing the needs.

A needs assessment should not necessarily be formal; it can be done informally and within a reasonable time, budget and human resources. For example you can informally ask people you know in the community where you are planning your intervention, women in the market, attendants at petrol station, church or mosque members etc. what they think about the issue and document that. Or you could do a structured survey that is administered professionally. Whatever forms your needs assessment will take, we recommend taking into consideration these common elements:

Pre-defined set of questions to be asked
Pre-determined number of responses (people) expected
Pre-determined types of people in the community to answer the questions
Findings analysed in easy-to-understand format and discussed with the community
Findings used for project development and planning

A need assessment if properly planned and executed helps you to know more about the issue you are trying to address and document properly your needs (justification) as is required in funding applications including in developing advocacy and campaign strategies around the issues. It also helps to build community ownership and buy-in for your interventions. Note that a need assessment is not necessary before every action especially if there are other surveys and reports that provide you adequate information for planning your projects.

We however think that it is good to do a needs assessment if you:

Are a nonprofit that is just starting out and want to make meaningful impact
Want to really show your stakeholders and prospective funders or supporters that you are addressing the most important problems of your beneficiaries
Want to generate community or stakeholder participation in your activities.

In understanding the needs of a community we recommend these five steps:

Identify a problem situation - Speak with stakeholders to see if they think it is a problem
Consider every aspect of the problem situation
Map out the core problems (prioritise the problems or issues)

You can follow these steps:

Identify key person amongst the XYZ staff team to serve as the Project Lead and Focal Point
Set up a XYZ Needs Assessment Committee and determine a reporting schedule
Host a first meeting of the committee to identify concerns, goals and desired outcome for the needs assessment including determining the indicator, data sources, target groups and priorities.
Develop data gathering tools based on the outcome of the committee meeting.
Data gathering and analysis phase.
Hold 2nd meeting of the committee and other critical stakeholders to validate report and develop a plan of action.

See sample needs assessment plan used by the Network at http://bit.ly/34yy4JK
When undergoing a needs assessment, take note of the following:

Always respect the community and its members.
Take into consideration cultural sensitivities
Aim for simplicity as you conduct your research
Do not raise unnecessary expectations. Be clear about what you can do and cannot do
Share the outcome of the research with the community and listen to their feedback.