Maybe you would like to announce it in conjunction with a national/international event that is happening, in hopes of gathering even more media coverage.įor example, you might want to announce the dramatic rise in the number of people in your city who are HIV-positive on December 1st, which is International AIDS Day. Other times, however, you might want to wait a bit.
When do you want to make this information public? Often, you want to make the information known right away. This also lets you examine the trends important to your group as they change from year to year. This helps you to keep on top of the latest information (always helpful for grantmakers, as well as for your constituents), as well as to determine your effectiveness, as we mentioned above. Later on in the lifespan of your coalition, you can track how things have changed, and determine how effective you have been.Īdditionally, many organizations find it a good idea to collect information on a regular basis, such as once a year. This latter information, sometimes known as baseline data, tells the scope of the problem before you started work. For what time period do you want to find information? Often, it's helpful to look for information either right now, or from the time when your coalition first got started. Determine when you want to use this dataĪnother important decision you need to make is when is this data important. The staff of the project may decide that information is useful for planning purposes, but may decide to publicly discuss a different topic, such as the number of babies who are born HIV-positive.Ģ. But why, exactly, does your group need this information? How will you use it? Will it be shown only to members of your organization, or do you want to make it public? For example, the AIDS project in a small community might come up against large amounts of prejudice trying to discuss the percentage of young people who practice safe sex. Agree on the value and purpose of the information that you will collectĪs we have said, we think there are a lot of excellent, general reasons to have the facts about your issue at your fingertips. Either way, there are ten steps you will want to go through, to help make your information collecting as efficient and as painless as possible. So, how do you go about finding this information? There are two ways to go about it: you can use information that's already out there (after all, there's no sense in reinventing the wheel) or, if what you are looking for just doesn't seem to exist, you can collect new information yourself. You can use the statistics you have found to raise community awareness of a number of things: how serious the problem is, how well (or how poorly) your community is doing in relation to other communities or to the nation as a whole, and last but not least: how well your coalition is attacking the problem at hand. Writing down those same figures (in greater detail, of course) as part of a grant application or project summary for potential funders and evaluators says that you are a well-run group who can get the job done. If you are able to talk easily in a casual conversation about the exact numbers of people affected by the issue you are involved in, you come across as knowledgeable, serious, and well organized. Gathering information from the time period before your organization got started (also known as baseline data) is an excellent way to show the magnitude of the problem. 
Knowing the facts is a stark way of determining the size of the gap between your vision of a healthy community and the reality in which you live. We think it's really a worthwhile task, for many reasons. The advantages of having this information at your fingertips, however, are enormous. Perhaps you, too, have found yourself staring at pages of figures and equations and decided it was a really good day for a root canal. Why should you collect information about the problem?
#Where were you now thati need you how to
This section discusses how to gather data through focus groups, public forums, and surveys, and how and when to implement the information into community planning. It can be a valuable tool in comparing community problems across geographic regions and across periods of time. Hard data analysis provides a concrete approach for assessing, planning, and implementing community projects. Quantitative information is crucial to building awareness and gathering support for community issues.
What are the limitations of using this information?. Why should you collect information about the problem?. Learn how to collect information on the problem or issue to develop credibility, knowledge, awareness, and to build support for action.
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