How can you identify and address gaps in your community outreach services?

Brooklyn Community Board 14 has held a nonprofit roundtable annually for the past decade. This brings CBOs serving central Brooklyn together to share accomplishments, current challenges and strategies for addressing them. They network, identify referral organizations, share resources, and collaborate on common challenges. We once attempted to group together organizations with common missions but found a great deal of serendipity in conversations across various service focuses. It’s a rewarding gathering.

We try and observe trends in our area that might alter the situation we have been trying to address. Hybrid proposals help as a segue to new and improved programs, addressing multiple needs in the midst of transitions to other solutions.

Whenever our responses begin to decline, we can begin to assume that whatever efforts we have been using are no longer effective.

Outreach is never one-size-fits-all. It's about adapting as your community changes, grows, and learns. To reach your target audience, you have to think like them, understand how they live, and be aware of their culture.

I have found it helpful to keep an eye on the current community ethos and vibe by getting to know and enjoying the community activities and people around our church. This seems to help tremendously with outreach integration and builds an easy bridge to connect church and community in a fluid and natural way.

I have found that being intentional about forming friendships across our community based on shared common interests will always build bridges for effective community outreach and possible integration.

We’ve found it helpful to invite our neighbouring organizations to meet us virtually to discuss referrals that are difficult to access in our geographic area and discuss how to move forward together ? We are a small organization but one of our best practices is to go 2 by 2 and spending time checking in with each other on a personal level .

I have found it helpful to utilize technology tools such as Mission InSite which provide a vivid window into the surrounding community and the demographics and ethos which are all around our church. Also doing a neighborhood prayer walk can be an effective best practice. This allows me to be out in the community observing, integrating, growing relationships, all while praying for our community. It is a win-win for sure!

We have entered into a partnership with a local school in our neighborhood, where we provide resources and service during various events and campaigns. We also partner with other local churches to help better engage the needs of our community through initiatives and efforts to help meet people's physical and emotional needs. We began a food bank that is open monthly and has been growing in its ability to help families in our community and the surrounding area as they have needs. We have also partnered with other agencies and entities in providing resources.

We have many retirees in our church which is an asset in several ways. First of all, they have plenty of time to invest in prayer and outreach to address our current gaps with community integration. They also love Jesus and embrace others with eagerness, both of which create an ethos which is conducive to building bridges. Our growing edge will be effectively creating a culture of trying new things in new ways in order to reach new people.

Making sure people know their efforts contributed to something positive will build trust in your leadership and make it more likely that people will participate again the next time you ask. We try to communicate specific numbers when possible (i.e., '## people were served,' '## [items] were distributed,' '## follow-up conversations were had,' etc.) so people have a more concrete idea of their impact.

Community is belonging. Helping the community requires fitting in, participating, observing and owning everything there is that makes it up. At this, one can make an objective contribution towards the course.

Nonprofit organizations are often stressful to operate, and it can be easy to fall into the habit of only focusing on the challenges and logistics of operation and ignoring the reason why. Establish a healthy culture of reminding each other regularly what the mission of your organization is so the focus on community outreach isn't lost in the day-to-day activities, ideally by encouraging one another in conversations, though this can be aided with slogans, campaigns, inspirational messages, etc. along the way. Never forget the WHY!