Evidence of need
You should have decided what the outcome(s) or benefit(s) of your proposed activity are in answering the question "What difference will you make by undertaking the activity?"
But what evidence exists that this activity is needed? There are a number of things that can provide evidence of need.
Identifying gaps in service and provision
Hard evidence from the beneficiaries
Statistics
There are now lots of statistics that can provide evidence. There is information about population, health, economics, employment, single parents, crime ...
For instance you might justify the need for a youth project in an area by identifying that the area suffers from significant or above average levels of antisocial behaviour or of car crime and high levels of youth unemployment.
Alternatively you may be able to justify the need for a sexual health project because of high incidents of sexually transmitted diseases or rates of teenage pregnancy.
Depending on your proposed activity you may need different bits of this evidence. Much of this information is now available over the Internet. For Leicestershire this information is provided through LSORA (Leicester Shire Online Research Atlas). This provides information from County level down to District, ward and even smaller areas.
You can access the database from here. You will need to register to become a user but if you do then you can get help on finding the information from the LSORA help team based at Leicestershire County Council.
Go to LSORA now.
Established Priorities
Many funding streams, particularly those from statutory organisations such as government, health service, European Union, development agencies, etc. fund projects and activities that clearly match with their agreed priorities. Even when you are not seeking funds from these organisations it is useful to be able to show how what you are proposing to do fits in with the priorities of significant organisations in your area.
Of course the problem is that there are a fair few documents to look through! These include Community Strategies, Sports Strategies, Economic Strategies, Play Strategies, Health Strategies...
We have tried to make this a bit easier by giving you access to the key documents in Leicestershire and the East Midlands on this site.
Identifying gaps in service and provision
In many areas of work from social care projects through to play and environmental projects it is possible to identify that while some parts of the County or District are well served others are not. Being able to say that a need is being fulfilled in one place but not in your place can provide good evidence of need.
Finding this out may prove quite difficult. However, there are many forums, partnerships and organisations that hold information about where services and projects operate that could be useful. These include Community Volunteer Services, Social Care Forum, Health Forums, Sports Associations...
Contacting these organisations might be a first step in identifying that there really is a gap in what you want to provide in your area that your activity will fill. Of course what you might find is that there is already a project that you did not know about and that you may decide it would be better to work with on the project rather than setting up something new.
We have provided a list of the forums and support organisations and their contact details that may be helpful.
Hard evidence from the beneficiaries
Another way of demonstrating that there is a specific need is to draw on consultation undertaken by other organisations or to undertake your own survey. A massive amount of consultation and research goes on in Leicestershire and Leicester some of which may be extremely relevant to activities you undertake or want to undertake, although it is difficult to access all this information. At present there is no one place to go to look at all this information but Leicestershire County Council have begun the process of developing a "Consultation Toolkit".
One way of trying to find this information is to approach relevant forums or networks who may be aware of relevant consultation results.
Of course you may feel the need to do your own survey or consultation.
