Case Study: Improving Needs Assessments with Customized Training and Tools
In 2021, the Community Service Block Grant (CSBG) team members (part of Connecticut Department of Social Services) talked with us about a challenge. The nine Community Action Agencies (CAAs) in Connecticut, which receive the federal CSBG funding, are required to conduct a Comprehensive Community Needs Assessment (CNA) every three years. These assessments are very data-heavy, and the staff who complete these assessments are not necessarily trained in data skills.
Through our initial consultations with the CSBG team, we developed a three-year project whose goal was to improve the quality of the CNAs by providing skill-building, data support, and a CNA template for CAA staff.
Element 1: Assess the Data Needs to Design the Intervention
Through our initial assessment, we sought to identify the elements of our intervention that would truly result in higher-quality, more useful, more informative CNAs. This included identifying what skills the data staff needed related to developing these data-intensive reports, as well as the challenges and strengths in the current instructions and templates for the reports (provided by the CSBG team).
To develop our plan for data training, we needed to understand 1) what CNAs look like (requirements, examples, etc.), and 2) what data skills CAA staff already had. We utilized our data literacy skills pre-survey, which we provide for all workshop participants, to understand CAA staff comfort with using different kinds of data skills.
We also read through the most recently submitted CNAs (which were from 2020) along with the feedback sent from the CSBG team (who always provides feedback for improvement of the CNA) and identified the kinds of data that were used, as well as some of the challenges staff seemed to face interpreting and communicating the data.
To develop a CNA template that would truly be useful to CAA staff, we held focus groups and key informant interviews to learn about their experiences with creating the CNA. We analyzed all of the data collected and listed the challenges that we had identified, and our proposed solutions for addressing those challenges.
The design of our intervention included:
Provide workshops to increase specific data skills
Offer technical assistance around data areas that are more complex
Create a CNA template and instructions
Part 1: Custom Training
The workshop topics we identified as most useful for those developing CNAs were:
Intro to data literacy - Learn to evaluate data quality, become a critical consumer and creator of data, and improve your data work.
Survey design - Learn how to craft surveys that gather meaningful insights
Quantitative analysis - Confidently analyze and interpret numerical data to gain insights and make data-driven decisions.
Data visualization - Create impactful charts that communicate insights and engage your audience.
Intro to public data - Learn how to access public data sources that are relevant to your projects.
Over the course of two years, we offered some of these workshops once, but others we offered several times. During this time, we had the chance to work with some staff people for almost every workshop. Among those, participants we could see both a desire to create useful assessments that would benefit their communities, as well as an increase in data skills and comfort in applying those skills.
Part 2: Technical Assistance
We recognized that while the skills the staff would learn in the training would be useful, we also knew that this training would not provide all that they would need.
This aspect of the intervention was not as successful as we had hoped, but it may also have been less needed than anticipated. We set meetings for the first TA session, which every agency participated in. After that, we reminded people in workshops and sent emails asking people to sign up for TA if they needed, along with these examples. Ultimately, only about half of the agencies utilized any TA time. This was likely due to capacity – staff simply did not have time to take advantage of TA due to their full workloads.
Addition: Data Spreadsheet
One of the challenges that arose from our initial data collection, which was said over and over by staff members and leaders alike, was the amount of time it took the agencies to pull the large number of data tables from the American Community Survey. There were five required data elements (prevalence of poverty by gender, race/ethnicity, age, …). There were also many data elements that were common across agencies.
Jason Cheung, our Senior Data Analyst (and Excel wizard) compiled 18 data tables from ACS data by Town and created a filter so each agency could filter in only their towns. The goal was to reduce the time the agencies would spend on some of their data gathering.
Part 3: Comprehensive Community Needs Assessment Template & Instructions
Agencies that receive CSBG funding are required by federal statute to create CNAs every three years (and updates each year). There are some elements that are included in these reports that are required in order for the reports to be considered “(complete).” However, the CSBG team hoped that creating a template would allow CAAs to satisfy that requirement, but more importantly, to inform their work so they could have a better idea of how they could address poverty in their catchment area.
CNA Template
One of the basic ideas behind the CSBG CNA is that it is meant to identify the conditions related to poverty in order to identify the causes of those conditions. By intervening at the causes of poverty, individuals living in poverty may be able to experience wellbeing. The interventions at the causes may already exist, so CNAs are meant to identify the current assets, as well as the gaps that have not yet been filled to address those causes. Ultimately, CAAs look to these assets gaps in their strategic planning process to identify changes to their programs and services. In addition, these reports can be utilized by nonprofits in their region to improve their services as well.
Portions of the Template
CNA Template Handbook
In addition to the template, we create a step-by-step handbook for how to use the template. This provided examples of what completed sections of the template could look like, additional resources and information that agencies could use related to those sections, and also reinforced the training that we had provided.
Portions of the Handbook
CNA Template Training
The final piece to the template was offering two webinars, which we recorded and then linked to from the Handbook. During these sessions, we walked through each section of the Handbook, the Template, and showed some examples.
Final Comprehensive Community Needs Assessments
The next round of CNAs were due to the CSBG team in June 2023. These reports are meant to be made available online so the public can also utilize the insights gleaned through this process. Here are just a few examples, which demonstrate the use of pulling all of this information together:
For More Information
To learn more about our custom solutions to meet your data needs, you can explore the articles here, or contact us via this form for a free consultation. Click here to explore the resources we provide, or sign up to receive information about workshops, data releases, blog posts, and more in our newsletter. For training and tips on how to use data, register for one of our CTData Academy workshops or browse our blog. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.