The success of community-based organisations to respond and deliver to societal needs is becoming increasingly important through times of greater need for more humanistic responses to our challenges. Community-based organisations, public sector organisations, local authorities, non-profit organisations, and many other individuals and organisations have been heroic during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. We here at Kingfisher Commons are doing academic research to explore the success of the community sector from the perspective of being responsive to community wants and needs, demonstrating impact, and evaluating the services they offer. Essentially do organisations have the research skills in-house to be able to carry out these activities?

Why is it necessary to have research skills?

The ability to systematically collect data is becoming increasingly needed in a world of greater reliance on the community sector to respond to societal challenges. Knowing and understanding the needs and wants of communities are at the heart of this. Funders and supporters of non-profits are requiring greater evidence of the capabilities of organisations to be more responsive and people-led. Furthermore, the types of research data required to log impact and evaluate projects can be highly complex and time-consuming for non-profits wanting to focus on the delivery of supporting those in need. Therefore, making it crucial for organisations to have research skills.

Important yet elusive

Research skills are a neglected consideration when considering the success factors of non-profit organisations. The lack of understanding of the research needs of non-profits is having significant consequences on the success and sustainability of organisations. Not only is this focus overlooked in practice, by funders and public sector organisations, but it is also often an underexplored area by researchers and academics.

Of course, there are pools of literature on community needs assessments, asset mapping, participatory engagement practices, etc. But where this lack of understanding is apparent is how non-profit organisations are, on an ongoing basis, using tools to collect, manage, analyse and use research data (including feedback, beneficiary data, and local statistical information), to progress and sustain their organisations. Given there is a drive from funders to be people-led, co-produce projects, and utilise evidence to inform decision-making, there appears to be a lack of support in the sector being able to or confident enough to make this leap.

In many functions of non-profit work, research is not overlooked. Community organisations often participate in challenging policy creation and implementation processes and therefore need to learn about the research methodology involved in the creation of social policies (Fox, 2001; Appleton, 2003). It is found that the process of monitoring and evaluating, and the management of data, has commonly been explored from the context of research skills within the literature on non-profits (Mancini, Marek, Byrne, & Huebner, 2004).

Indeed, the increasing focus on Social Return on Investment, social investment models, and social prescribing is requiring greater efficiency in collating data on impact and evaluation. We witness organisations being at the mercy of funders that determine the way in which schemes are evaluated, which often does not reflect the way beneficiaries are able to effectively utilise these tools, leading to unreliable and invalid data. Requirements to focus on outcomes and impact as opposed to outputs lead to a real challenge for the sector to record and log information in a valid and reliable way, particularly with little understanding of what contributes to validity and how to ethically carry out research. 

Impact of Research on organisations

There is evidence within the literature on the success of participatory research in increasing community and general public involvement. The core features of such participatory approaches to research are found to be collaboration, mutual education, and implementing actions identified in the research. Community resources, knowledge, and expertise are extremely valuable and are considered as being key to the success of such projects (see Macaulay, Commanda, and Freeman et. al., 1999). 

Indeed, from an internet search, there are a few community research toolkits that are lengthy and complex to unpick, but nonetheless, highlight that there is a need to change the way community organisations perceive the research process. For a non-profit supporter (perhaps trustee, director, member of staff, or volunteer) it is tricky to consider how to add additional practices to their already sometimes overwhelming experiences of responding and acting upon their community needs.

What skills do organisations really need?

Our investigation into the literature, and from the experience of working with and advising community organisations, demonstrates a focus on processes rather than the ways data is collected and analysed by these organisations and how these methodologies can affect the success of nonprofits. This leads us to question what research skills do non-profits have and/or need to be most successful? 

Further questions also are raised:

• What data do non-profits collect and how do they collect it?
• How do they use that data? i.e. does it inform change in their organisation? Do they use it to challenge/lobby?
• What challenges do they face in collecting data?
• What challenges do they face in using research data?

Our specific focus is on how their research skills might influence the way in which they engage with their communities as well as log outcomes and impact. 

Upon initial investigation, we are curious about the following where research skills might be important to organisations’ success:

• Business planning
• Collecting and analysing evidence of wants and needs
• Being people-led
• Beneficiary engagement
• Volunteer empowerment
• Monitoring and evaluating
• Impact logging
• Lobbying and campaigning

What do we aim to do with this?

With this research, we aim to

• Identify what research skills community organisations have and need
• Clarify in what situations research skills contribute to community organisations’ success
• Understand barriers that are in community organisations’ way to carrying out effective community engagement and monitoring and evaluation
• Identify how people in community organisations can be better supported
• Present to funders and umbrella organisations the findings to demonstrate the need to invest in community research

What will we be doing with this research?

By collecting all data and analysing it, we will create an insight report on England’s community organisations. Along with that, we will use this data to design our offerings well so we can serve you with the best service in the sector.

We are carrying out independent research on this by interviewing representatives from organisations that support the community sector (including locally based organisations as part of the NCVO, ACRE, and Community Foundations networks). We are also surveying community organisations during the month of July 2022. 

Please support us in this research process by completing this survey. Your contribution is immensely valuable.

Thank you very much for your time. Please subscribe to our mailing list for more such blogs and remain updated about our offerings.

References

1. Macaulay, A.C., Commanda, L.E., Freeman, W.L., Gibson, N., McCabe, M.L., Robbins, C.M., & Twohig, P.L., (1999) Participatory research maximizes community and lay involvement. British Medical Journal, 319, 774–778.  
2. Appleton, L. (2003). The contribution of NPOs to family policy formulation in EU member and applicant states. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations. 14, 79-103
3. Fox, J. (2001). Vertically integrated policy monitoring: a tool for civil society policy advocacy. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. 30, 616-627
4. Jay A. Mancini PhD, Lydia I. Marek PhD, Richard A. W. Byrne MS & Angela J. Huebner PhD (2004) Community-Based Program Research, Journal of Community Practice, 12:1-2, 7-21

Research has been the basis of decision-making based on facts and data for a long time. It is a way of finding and gathering information in a systematic way that can help you to review how you are doing and to plan for the future. Research done with the aim of facilitating decision-making to increase engagement and achieve evolving and impactful change by a community organisation is generally termed community research.

Community researchers are often from the communities they are researching, or they represent a charity or community organisation to focus on a particular project or theme. They have a greater level of trust and communication with members of the community and can lead to not only carrying out excellent quality research, often better than qualified researchers because of trust dynamics, but also proactively co-create solutions and community projects to solve problems.

Why is community research necessary?

There are various reasons why community research is necessary. At the heart of many functions of a successful organisation are research skills. Understanding beneficiaries’ wants and needs, as well as monitoring and evaluating impact, utilise research skills. In order to capture data in a valid and ethical way, good research skills are drawn upon. 

Funders are increasingly asking community organisations to demonstrate the need for their services by offering proof of their efficacy, statistics on the number of users, or information on the benefits of those users. They must also answer to funders, the larger community, and their users. They must also demonstrate to funders that they are engaging with and sometimes consulting with their users.  In a climate of tight control on local government spending, each service needs to show its unique value. The drive for being more people-led and evidence-led will mean that community organisations are utilising research skills more often. 

What are the benefits of community research? 

Community researchers can create a better evidence base for the needs of a community and present tailored solutions to the community under research. Research carried out by a community group can help to assess the particular needs and wants of a group of people or local community by identifying trends in services, mapping existing local services and organisations, and finding out what others are doing. Communities can then plan their resources well and develop strategies to make the best out of given constraints. They can also find out if people’s needs are being met by monitoring and evaluating a service or a project by measuring some key metrics.

Community researchers explore their community through, often creative, engagement activities. They can identify deeper insights into perceptions, beliefs, needs, and challenges, getting better quality understanding than other researchers or what quantitative surveys cannot deliver – the ‘how’ and ‘why’ behind the what – there are important stories behind statistics – it is time to find them, share them and use them to inform decision making. 

Knowing and understanding their community, community researchers can adapt the research design and process according to the requirements of the community they are researching – increasing the quality of the questions asked and the information collected. 

Co-creation of public engagement and consultation

By forming partnerships and collaboration with other organisations and sectors, community researchers can get deeper into communities and reach those who are often labelled hard-to-reach, and are often marginalised or not included in important decisions that affect them. Community researchers contribute to a greater sharing of knowledge. 

Public sector organisations would do well to work with and commission the community sector to increase quality participation in their community engagement and consultation activities. 

We here at Kingfisher Commons are obligated to serve the community and the public sector around the world to create a greater impact and achieve desired goals by providing training and consultancy services. 

We are creating an implementation program on community research that provides community organisations with everything they need to develop their research skills and apply them to their community engagement and monitoring and evaluation activities and processes. The ultimate goal is to help them become more people-led and make more informed decisions. 

Thanks for reading!