Needs Assessment - What’s your story?

Before you commit to a case study think about your club, group or facility.

Test out the potential benefit of the case study, and think about some issues around its size and scope.

• • Think About

• • Question

    • Who are you?

  • Consider

    • Make a few notes about your club, group or facility:
    • What’s your legal structure, ‘assets’ in terms of facilities, club/group membership and its place in the local community?
    • Create a word picture
• • • What’s your story?
  • • Make a few notes about your club, group or facility:
    • What is your history to date? How did you come to be?
    • What have been the key achievements or developments of your club, group or facility?
• • • Why do you want to tell it?
  • • Do you have a key anniversary coming up?
    • Are you about to go through a significant change?
    • Are you seeking more funding or securing the funding you’ve got?
    • Do you have plans for development that need some solid foundations?
    • Are you preparing an award nomination?
• • • Who is interested?
  • • Is this for your members or past members?
    • Do you need to communicate with your local authority councillors, community trust or other investor?
• • • What’s the scope of the project?
  • • Get clear about the boundaries of the project. It will help work out what resources you need to get the case study done.
    • Are you planning on doing a case study of the whole club or group, or just the part that deals with a certain group of members or users?
    • Are you thinking about the value to a specific geographical community?
• • • Who is going to be involved?
  • • You will need an 'in-house' champion to ensure the case study happens, and sees it through to the end.
    • Is development of the case study just your job or are you going to use a range of others as part of the process?
    • Are you the champion, planner and co-ordinator, or are you going to be collecting the information, doing the analysis and preparing it for sharing with others?
    • If you’re going to use others, what’s their role? How committed and engaged are they?
    • Do they have the skills and enthusiasm to make this a priority?

• • Checkpoint

  • •  
    • ☐ You have a great story to tell.
    • ☐ A range of people would be interested in finding out more.
    • ☐ There are benefits that a range of stakeholders will receive through this process.
    • ☐ The boundaries of the project are clear.
    • ☐ There are a number of people available to help plan, implement and document the case study, who have a good set of skills.