Strategic Communications ...
Table of Contents
Assess Nonprofit Needs
Appendix 1: Focus Group Protocol
Appendix 2: Resource Mapping Questions
Appendix 3: Conducting Community Assessment
(published with permission from NPower, requires Adobe Acrobat to view the PDF)
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Community Toolkit: Assessing Nonprofit Technology Humanware Needs
Previous: Defining the Target Assessment Community
A needs assessment will determine what kinds of technology capacity-building support the community’s nonprofit sector needs and what the sector can find money for. An assessment will also help build awareness among nonprofits that will lead them to advocate technology support. The discussions nonprofit workers have in interviews and focus groups can serve as the groundwork for participation in later community efforts. Meeting technology needs is not an end in itself. Discussion of needs should always be rooted in the ways the technology can serve the mission of the nonprofit.
Choose a Needs-Assessment Approach
Focus groups, interviews, and surveys are the three main methods for obtaining qualitative information about nonprofit needs and use of resources. Most efforts from two to all three, depending on the time and money available. For instance, Joan Fanning in Seattle did not use a survey because she had only two months to conduct the assessment and draft a business plan. She did, however, send out letters in advance of her one-on-one interviews, explaining what she was doing. The Michigan assessment, though, consisted solely of a survey. The East Bay MAPP project and the Washington, DC project used all three techniques. Jennifer Keller Jackson also benefited greatly from existing research, studies, and interviews with people who had undertaken similar efforts.
Identify Assessment Participants
To identify participants for your interviews, focus groups, and surveys, turn to your own contacts as well as those of the funders and the advisory-group members. Your funder can open doors, especially those of senior management. A good rule of thumb is to leave each interview with the names of at least three more people to contact.
Joan Fanning and Jennifer Keller Jackson stress the importance of talking with nonprofit decision-makers, so they targeted executive directors. If possible, obtain input from a range of nonprofit staff. Information Technology (IT) staff may have a more specific understanding of needs but may not immediately see how these needs are tied to the mission. Administrative support staff may similarly have a narrower view of needs. For example, Joan Fanning found that speaking with people outside of the director level often resulted in expressed needs for a help desk. “I found this to be more reactive to what the individuals were facing on a daily basis,” she points out, “but it did not reflect bigger-picture thinking nor recognize the importance of assessment and planning.”
The diversity of the people you interview will be a key to accuracy. Some of the factors to keep in mind follow:
Questions to Ask Nonprofits
Regardless of the assessment approach, the goal is to obtain useful and precise answers that will lead to a promising action plan. You may also draw from previous studies and tools to design a set of questions about nonprofit technology needs. Two recent studies include:
Models and grids of different types of technology assistance can stimulate discussion in interviews and focus groups. Consider visual illustrations of technology needs and assistance. Think about the needs assessment as a way of leading the nonprofit toward its technology vision statement. If it were using technology effectively to further its mission, what would that look like? An executive director may not be aware of all the possibilities, but your prompting can help solicit a more precise answer. Once a vision is reached, you can then explore the current challenges in achieving the vision. At that point, ask which resources the organization has tried and what kinds of assistance it would be prepared to receive. Be sure to address financial challenges. Has the organization been able to get its technology needs funded? If so, how? If not, what was tried?
Interviews
In most cases, interviews will be the core of your assessment process. Be careful not to lead the interviewee toward a particular statement of needs. Identify and put aside any preconceived notions you may hold about what the nonprofit’s needs should be.
Shape the information you receive by continually bringing the discussion back to the organization’s mission. Doing so helps people to think of technology—and rephrase their statements about it—in terms of its utility, not as an end . For example, an executive director may keep saying that her organization needs a Web site. Keep bringing her back to the question of why a Web site will support the organization’s mission and goals.
You will probably need to provide information to your interviewees as you go in order to get informed responses. For example, having easy-to-understand language about local area networks, intranets, and the like may help provide more revealing answers. An interview is probably the best format for educating the nonprofit about the context and possibilities of technology capacity building. The primary purpose of the education is to get more accurate information in the interview, but it also can lay the groundwork for later nonprofit community-organizing efforts.
Focus Groups
Focus groups can combine the best features of interviews and surveys. Participants can mull other’s ideas, resulting in a more in-depth brainstorm than is possible in an interview or from a survey. In the interests of impartiality, it is best to bring in an outside facilitator with experience in the dos and don’ts of the process. “It’s a science,” says Jennifer Keller Jackson. “All my instincts were completely wrong. … I learned a lot sitting on the sidelines, watching.”
Dan McDougall of the Michigan United Way feels strongly about using an outside facilitator for another reason. He believes it is important that researchers not come across as pushing the United Way or its particular projects. He also sees the focus groups as a space for nonprofits to begin to discover their own voice. “Nonprofits have felt like technology was happening to us,” Dan points out. “This is an opportunity for folks who might feel overwhelmed to have some say and take charge.” In Seattle, Joan Fanning conducted two focus groups herself due to time and money constraints, but she advised that using an outside facilitator is the optimal approach.
One option to consider is setting up separate groups according to size, location, role in the organization, or mission. The East Bay MAPP project conducted five focus groups in the major geographic areas of the East Bay, with four to eight participants in each group. The challenge with this approach is not to spread efforts too thinly. Focus groups with widely varying participants may not provide enough material in each session to come to solid conclusions. Technology Works originally intended to set up separate sessions with IT staff and executive directors, but their focus-group consultants thought it would be too much. Balancing depth and breadth of assessment is the ongoing challenge.
See Appendix 1 for more specific focus-group suggestions adapted from those used by Jennifer Keller Jackson in Washington, DC.
Surveys
A survey can reach a larger group of nonprofits and provide easily quantifiable data. As with focus groups, there is a science and methodology to surveys that may be best handled by an expert third party. Surveys also pose significant statistical challenges.
The coordinators of the Michigan study thought that it was important to hire an outside consulting firm to conduct and analyze the survey, believing it would consume them if they tried it themselves. They also believed that an outside consultant could make the survey more impartial. They considered mail vs. telephone surveys, and came to the conclusion that phone surveys are very expensive and are often not answered. They also felt that it would be difficult to reach an IT person or an executive director by phone.
The coordinators used statistical software to draw a random sample of 1,973 organizations out of the total 4,614 target organizations in the state and mailed them a written survey. When they received a disproportionate level of response from organizations with assets of more than $250,000, they sent a second mailing to 300 randomly selected smaller organizations to balance the response. To get the information they sought, the consultants helped them craft the survey and clarify questions. Even so, Dan McDougall found that United Way, with its experience in nonprofits and technology, needed to dialogue with the consultants on how to analyze the results of the survey. Its anecdotal background was necessary to make sense of the findings.
Next: Mapping the Existing Technology Resources
Last updated: 1 August 2001 mff |