Ask residents what their community actually lacks — problems, priority and willingness to act — before you design the next program.
Quick answer
Use it before program design to ask residents which problems they name, how urgent those are, and whether they would help act — giving planning a base rate across the community instead of one focus group's opinion.
Programs designed from grantor intuition miss; programs designed from one focus group overfit. A needs survey gives planning a base rate: which problems residents name, how urgently, and whether they'd help do something about it. Answered side by side, the data tells you not just what to build, but what the community will build with you.
Sample form preview — live and ready to fill in.
Everything you need to run this template.
Residents state issues in their own words before rating them.
Severity and frequency separated — a queue, not a wish list.
Willingness to participate measured at the same moment as the need.
View results by neighborhood or group without rebuilding the survey.
From copy to deliverable in four steps.
Copy it in and set issue categories to your context.
Online links plus paper copies at trusted spots.
Sort by urgency times participation willingness.
Feed the ranking into your next program cycle.
Pick your role — see how it fits your workflow.
Choose fights the community will join.
Compare needs across blocks in one dataset.
See your problem quoted in the planning document.
What makes this template work as a professional deliverable.
A preview of the real questions in this form — exactly what respondents see.
