
Define Your Goal
What does your community need and why? Answering these questions will help you define your goal.
The questions are simple but the answers may not be. Don’t rush this step. Your goal will guide the next steps of your work.
What does your community need? Think about what you hope will be different as a result of your efforts. What is your goal?
As you answer the why does it need it question, think about the data and focus on differences or inequities in health outcomes across groups in your community. What data can you use to define the problem? What data support your solution? Who should benefit from your solution?
We like Answering the Three Key Questions for Advocacy Campaigns to help you get clear on your goals. “Nine Questions” A Strategy Planning Tool for Advocacy Campaigns takes you beyond these questions to see how your goal will set the stage for change efforts.
The “Why Use Data?” Action Learning Guide also provides you with the opportunity to reflect on how data can support your health improvement work, identify and understand inequities, and tell a story or answer a question about your community’s health.
Make it visual. A visual tool, like a logic model, can help you see how strategies link to long-term results. Logic models can help you think through what you want to achieve and why. They also play an important role in your evaluation.
- We like to use the Tearless Logic Model to turn the traditional logic model approach into a user-friendly process. It breaks the process into a series of engaging questions. It is an especially helpful early planning tool. The questions are also useful at other points in the process.
- Need to brush up on logic models? Check out Program Development & Evaluation Logic Models for examples, templates, and a training guide.