By Chris Bavender
The Community Foundation of Boone County has launched a community-wide needs assessment and is seeking input from residents. The initiative is a result of the organization’s Lilly Endowment community leadership planning grant.
“The idea of the needs assessment is for the community to help us, CFBC, understand the current needs and opportunities in Boone County,” said Julie Reagan, CFBC development and communications director. “The ultimate goal is for CFBC to identify a need, based on the survey results that we can take a leadership role on.”
A side goal of the assessment, Reagan said, is to raise overall awareness of the “real needs and opportunities identified through the survey.”
“The more people are aware of the current and real needs in Boone County, we are hoping to see an increase in collaborations between organizations and nonprofits to come together and fill the needs,” she said. “We have already started seeing the rise of collaborative partnerships to fill the needs, which is great and so exciting. We can’t wait to see what happens as new partnerships are formed and the existing partnerships develop further.”
The survey takes 5 to 10 minutes and includes questions such as: Where do you live in Boone County? Tell us how happy you are with certain items in Boone County (neighborhood, job opportunities, arts and cultural options, volunteer opportunities). What could be done to make your community better?
“Results will be used to help us identify the current needs in Boone County,” Reagan said. “It will also help us identify the way certain populations are facing different issues than other populations.”
CFBC also is looking for community partners.
“Community partners for this survey will be viewed as empowered needs assessment advocate. They will take the survey to those in their lives to help CFBC have a larger reach,” Reagan said. “We know that we are limited on how many people we can reach. We also know that when you empower local residents to become advocates, they take ownership and want to be more involved, which ultimately then helps us as an organization have a much larger reach, which will translate to a better depiction of Boone County.”
Open forum meetings for residents are being scheduled. When the dates are set, they will be available on CFBC’s website.
Boone County residents can access the survey on CFBC’s website at communityfoundationbc.org or a paper copy is available via mail. Survey responses will be gathered through October.