Community Needs Assessments Made Doable: Centering Voices, Driving Impact by Sophie Marts

Date: Sunday, May 17, 2026

Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.

My name is Sophie Marts (she/her), and I am an Evaluation Analyst for the New York State Sexual Violence Prevention Resource Center (the Resource Center), a project of Cicatelli Associates Inc. (CAI). CAI is a nonprofit organization based in New York City that works on a range of public health and community engagement projects. I’m a dedicated public health professional specializing in evaluation, capacity building, and using data for impactful storytelling.

Today I’m excited to share lessons learned from the “Communities Mobilizing for Safety” project, funded by the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH). As the Resource Center, we provide training, technical assistance, and evaluation to grantees on preventing sexual violence at the community level by focusing on root causes of violence. This is a significant paradigm shift for many organizations who may be used to treating sexual violence as an individual-level issue rather than a community-level one.

In the summer of 2025, we started work to support six community-based organizations in conducting Community Needs Assessments across the state of New York. Community needs assessments provide necessary insights into the range of strengths, challenges, and opportunities that exist within a community, and provide critical data and information to inform program planning and implementation.

The community needs assessment consists of a three-step process: 1) defining the community, 2) data collection, and 3) data analysis. The goal of this process is to support planning and partnership by identifying key community strengths and challenges. The organizations completed their assessments in the fall of 2025 and will use the findings for future program planning.

Ideas and considerations for each of these steps are summarized below:

Step 1: Defining the Community

1. Start with an open mind: Use conversations with community members (rather than just demographic data) to help identify a population of focus.
2. Listen to numbers AND stories: Encourage the value of both qualitative data and storytelling to build a fuller understanding of community strengths, challenges, and priorities.
3. Focus on community strengths: Use appreciative inquiry to ask questions that build on what is already working well, rather than jumping straight to challenges.

Step 2: Data Collection

1. Design questions thoughtfully: Encourage staff to ask broader, strength-based questions and avoid stigmatizing language.
2. Consider ethical practices: Build in checkpoints to review survey questions or interview guides to ensure they are written with the goals of the project in mind and minimize personal information requested.
3. Create easy-to-use note-taking guides: Develop tools are simple to use by staff who may not have experience in research or evaluation.

Step 3: Data Analysis

1. Set big-picture analysis goals: Encourage programs to focus on the key questions they most want answered through the process.
2. Provide sample tools for analysis: Share practical strategies to analyze findings for staff who may have limited time, resources, software, or capacity.
3. Share findings with community: Return to community to make sense of results and collaboratively identify next steps.

Community members hold a wealth of knowledge about their own experiences and the experiences of their neighbors. When organizations effectively partner with community, programs can better shape their work and ultimately lead to more meaningful and successful initiatives.

I hope that these takeaways spark ideas for future community-led evaluation for work in many different settings. Thanks for reading!

Further Resources and Examples of Community Needs Assessments

• Community Assessment Tool Kit: Nutrition and Physical Activity (Vermont Department of Health): https://vnrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Fit_and_Healthy_Vermonters_Community_Assessment_Toolkit.pdf
• Guide to Conducting Community Needs Assessments (UT-Austin School of Social Work): https://txicfw.socialwork.utexas.edu/2805-2/
• An Introduction to Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) (Community Commons): https://www.communitycommons.org/collections/An-Introduction-to-Community-Health-Needs-Assessment-CHNA

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