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Monitoring and influencing policy trends ensures an initiative’s ability to adapt and thrive over time. Resources on assessing community needs and advocating for change are below.
Community Needs Assessment
Assessing Community Needs and Resources
The Community Toolbox, University of Kansas
This toolkit includes sections on planning and conducting different types of surveys and focus groups to collect information, analyzing problems, and weighing strengths and weaknesses. It also includes an outline for compiling needs assessment results into a useful, compelling document.
The Civic Index: Measuring Your Community's Civic Health, Second Edition
National Civic League, 1999
The index is based on capacities that well-functioning communities have in common when addressing difficult issues in a competent manner. It is designed to help communities identify and measure key indicators and benchmarks. Index components include: community vision; citizens; non-profits; businesses; reaching consensus; community leadership; and ongoing learning.
Know Your Community: A Step by Step Guide to Community Needs and Resource Assessment.
B. Samuels, N. Ahsan, J. Garcia. Family Resource Coalition of America, 1995.
This guide is designed to assist community-based planning bodies in completing a comprehensive community assessment. It includes customizable sample surveys, data-collection worksheets, and progress charts.
Mapping Community Assets Workbook
Diane Dorfman. Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory,1998.
Readers are guided through a process of taking stock of personal and community assets and utilizing those assets to determine the future needs and direction of the organization. A series of questions and worksheets guides users through the assessment process.
Advocacy
Building Strong Communities: Crafting a Legislative Foundation
The Finance Project, 1996.
This toolkit is intended to assist state and local leaders who are writing bills and formulating legislative strategies to create state/community partnerships that will facilitate the development of comprehensive, community support systems. It presents sample state legislation and a guide for tailoring bills to fit states’ particular needs and conditions.
Child Advocacy Primer: Tips and Tools for Improving Your Child Advocacy Skills
Julie Cohen. National Association of Child Advocates, 2000.
This resource offers in-depth guidance on many aspects of child advocacy including: assistance in setting an advocacy agenda and building an advocacy coalition. Chapters topics include: legislative and electoral advocacy, monitoring program administration, working with the media, and mobilizing the community.
How--and Why--to Influence Public Policy: An Action Guide for Community Organizations
Center for Community Change, 1996.
This resource is a guide to effective advocacy, selecting issues, understanding how much and what kind of lobbying and voter work your group can do, and what more power for states has meant for community groups.
Lobbying and Advocacy Handbook for Nonprofit Organizations
Marcia Avner, 2002
This guide is a road map to shaping public policy at the state and local level. It gives detailed, step-by-step instructions for developing an effective plan and putting it into action, including how to initiate, support, or defeat bills, develop effective lobbying skills, and gather and mobilize.
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