Posted on November 14, 2024by rotaryservice
By Claudia Urbano, Rotary Service and Engagement staff
Service is the heart of Rotary. It’s one of the main reasons people are part of our organization. We use the Conducting Community Assessments and Rotary Impact handbooks to help us plan projects that prioritize long-term positive benefits to the communities we serve. These are essential resources that provide the framework, guidance, and best practices to plan and execute projects that create lasting, positive change.
Why community assessments matter
As we continue to focus on increasing our impact, partnering with communities is crucial. This collaborative approach empowers communities and enhances the success of our service projects. Understanding a community’s priorities is the foundational step toward making a lasting difference. The recently updated Conducting Community Assessments handbook (formerly known as Community Assessment Tools) provides guidance on how to work with community members to identify their priorities and design projects together. By actively involving local individuals and institutions in this process, we ensure that our efforts align with their goals.
The handbook also covers data privacy and diversity, equity, and inclusion—ensuring our projects respect the people and environment where they take place. By conducting thorough community assessments, we can gather essential insights that will inform our project plan and focus on long-term success.
Measuring our impact
Another element of increasing our impact is our ability to measure our project outcomes. The new Rotary Impact Handbook helps us incorporate measurement activities within our service project so we can demonstrate project progress and results. It provides guidance on various measurement methods that can be applied to every club or district project. Because we are committed to making positive change in communities, measuring our work and prioritizing quality outcomes is equally relevant to projects funded directly by clubs or districts as it is to projects being funded by The Rotary Foundation. The Impact Handbook also explains the “building blocks to impact” framework, which helps us outline and visualize our investments in a project (our project’s inputs), project outputs, outcomes, and long-term impact.
Incorporating this framework into our project strategy ensures that we’re not only setting clear goals but also establishing a roadmap to achieve them. Measurement isn’t just an afterthought; it should be woven into every stage of your project. Measurement should be applied to every project we undertake – regardless of how small or large the initiative may be – so that we can ensure we are progressing towards the project goals. This approach enables us to make necessary adjustments along the way, ensuring that our efforts remain aligned with community priorities and objectives.
Plan effectively
Combine these two resources to develop well-structured projects that align with community priorities and incorporate measurement to understand their outcomes. We can create lasting and positive changes through our club and district-led service work by developing evidence-based projects with measurable and sustainable results.
When planning a service project, start by identifying a specific goal – the change the community wants to make. From there, develop activities that are directly linked to that goal, and prioritize measurement. This allows to compare our project’s outcomes with the baseline data gathered during the community assessment, providing a clear picture of what has been achieved.
By utilizing the Conducting Community Assessments and Rotary Impact handbooks as tools in our service project planning, we can increase our impact, build stronger relationships with communities, and inspire others to join us in making a positive difference. Let’s work together to build a better future, one project at a time.
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