Assess Your Community and Connect Its ResourcesAssess Your Community and Connect Its Resources

Why Is It Important to Do a Community Assessment?

The center of a small town is shown in this aerial view. A church and its steeple are visible.Community needs and resource assessments can help you focus your efforts to help young people in your community. Before you can bring about positive change to help youth, you need to have an accurate understanding of what’s happening in your community.

Often communities come together because a particular event, such as a school shooting, inspires action. While important because it motivates people to get involved, this approach may not lead communities in the most effective direction. Without a full understanding of the nature and scope of the problem before beginning an intervention, communities run the risk of spending their limited time and resources in ways that are unlikely to produce results. So, even though you may feel like you already know what the needs are in your community, it is important to conduct a comprehensive community assessment.

A comprehensive community assessment will help you identify:

  • The problems you would like to address in your community;
  • Where those problems occur;
  • Which youth and families are most affected by those problems; and
  • What resources and strengths your community has to address those problems.

Below are several tools that can help you conduct a comprehensive community assessment.

A community assessment will show you how to take a step-by-step approach to learning more about your community that will help you choose the right strategy for action.

Using the online mapping tool will provide useful census data about your community, help you see where the people you would most like to serve live in your community, and show you what Federal resources are already available. For information about additional funding opportunities available through the ten collaborating Federal agencies partnering in Helping America’s Youth please visit www.grants.gov.

The Community Resource Inventory provides you with a database tool to help you with your community assessment and strategic planning. You can identify and include partners, community programs, and assets that are already available in your community.