Community Inventory and Needs Assessment

When it comes to community risk reduction, taking community inventory can help neighborhoods identify their needs and put themselves in a better position to create a stable environment. As the Compassion Capital Fund National Resource Center (2015) states, “In order to effectively serve a community, it is important to understand the community” (p. 4). The problem is that understanding a community and identifying its needs can difficult, as there are often so many of them to remember. That is why using a strategic approach like the community inventory and needs assessment can help organizers better track the state of a community and provide the basis for adequate understanding.

The value of conducting and utilizing a community inventory and needs assessment lies in the work that it enables organizers to do: “The findings from an assessment will define the extent of the needs that exist in a community and the depth of the assets available within the community to address those needs” (Compassion Capital Fund National Resource Center, 2015, p. 4). What this means is that the community inventory and needs assessment not only looks at what a community is lacking in terms of requirements for safety and health; it also looks at what the community has that can help it to fulfill those requirements. Moreover, once this understanding of what needs and assets exist in the community, it “can be used to strategically plan and deliver relevant, successful, and timely services” (Compassion Capital Fund National Resource Center, 2015, p. 4). The goal in this process is to find gaps that exist in a community where its needs are not being met and to see how those gaps affect the community’s stakeholders. For example, if a community is suffering from a high rate of high school dropouts,... Another gap that might turn up in a community inventory could be the finding that elderly persons are living longer but lacking the funds need to cover their cost of living, such as medical care, medicine, assisted living costs, and so on. The needs assessment would indicate that the community needs to find a way to support its senior citizens in a more effective manner.
Identifying a community’s needs is something that impacts all people in the community—not just a single segment or population. In a community, everyone is connected even if it does not first appear evident on the surface. If dropout rates are high in the local high schools, the rest of the community will experience that burden in various social, economic and political ways. If senior citizens are struggling to make ends meet, the rest of the community will suffer as well via the same social, economic and political channels. This is because in a community there is no such thing as real isolation. Every segment impacts another segment. This is why the community inventory is taken—so as to identify segments that are in need that can have their needs satisfied by the assets that are held by a community in another segment.

A community inventory and needs assessment is not always about looking for problems that need fixing. It is also about looking for opportunities to just simply make things better. In other words it offers a way to reduce risk in a community. This is especially true for non-profit organizations like the Rotary Club: “By taking time to learn about your community, you can discover the most relevant opportunities for projects and maximize your club’s ability to make a…