Need Assessment
Understanding the Organization
Step One:
The first step in Need Assessment is understanding the organization or situation you are going into.
We accomplished this by writing an executive summary for the Community Foundation and our role within it, as well as researching the Community Foundation's background.
You can read that report here:
Step Two:
Planning The Assessment
The second step is to plan your assessment according to what you found out while seeking to understand your organization. This includes creating objectives and milestones.
Our Need Assessment Objectives:
1. Understand who is served by the Community Foundation
2. Learn who among those served intends to come to this training
3. Evaluate their base knowledge in social media practices
4. Understand why they are interested in coming to this panel
You can read our entire need assessment plan here:
Step Three:
Gap Analysis
The final step of conducting a need assessment is actually to do a gap analysis. This is a way of comparing the department's current level of competency vs. the desired level of competency.
Our gap analysis was conducted as a survey via Google Form, the link to which was e-mailed out by our Community Foundation partner Amanda Bomfim.
The survey is embedded below. Scroll to see more.
Results
We received 17 answers to this survey.
22 people eventually RSVP'd for the event, so a majority of participants answered the survey, creating a representative sample.
Graphs were created with the answers we received to most questions. You can view those below.
The short answer questions and answers were as follows:
Who is your organization's target social media audience?
Although each organization answered differently, three trends were identified. Their goal audiences were: Harrisonburg residents, middle-aged, and donors/volunteers.
What are you hoping to gain from a social media workshop?
The answers to this question were even more varied. However, common answers were:
general increased knowledge of social media, how to create good posts, and how to market better/reach more people.
We incorporated these answers and all the graphics results as well to
create our final training plan and presentation.
