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PHASE 1: Needs From The Community Visions Survey

Phase 1 (September 2022 – May 2023) consisted of a community-wide survey which asked people 12 open-ended questions about needs, assets and strengths for people who live, work, or depend on Grinnell for resources. This survey could be taken online, as a paper copy, or in a group discussion format, it could be taken anonymously and asked no demographics questions. Community Research Assistants were hired to help promote the survey and to host in-person discussion groups to fill out the questions. The questions regarding “needs” in Grinnell were used to generate a comprehensive list of all issues raised by survey takers and the most mentioned topics were used to generate the list of 46 top issues – used in the next Phase. In addition to the survey data collected, Phase 1 also consisted of many interviews with resources holders and asset managers, small focus groups and the initial research into Grinnell’s ‘peer communities’, and asset mapping in the community.

VIEW PHASE 1 COMMUNITY DATA

VIEW PHASE 1 COMMUNITY PRESENTATION

VIEW PHASE 1 COMMUNITY SURVEY

PHASE 2: Methodology For Prioritization

The Prioritization Process

Phase 2 (June 2023 – September 2023) used the data generated in Phase 1 (the list of 46 top issues) in another round of survey. This second survey asked people to self-report their demographic information and then rank choice vote their top 7 issues from the list of 46. Survey takers could be entered into a twice weekly cash drawing of $50, which ran the 10 weeks that the survey was open. Paid Community Research Assistants were used to help promote the survey – similar to Phase 1. The data from this survey was used to generate the list of the top 7 issues for Grinnell:

To see breakdowns of this data and the methodology for how demographic information impacted the ranked choice, please visit the “Phase 2 Data” document below. In addition to the survey, background archival research was conducted with the help of three full-time Research Assistants over summer 2023.

VIEW PHASE 2 DATA SUMMARY

PHASE 3

The final research phase focused on gaining more detailed information from the community to better understand the prioritized issue. This was done through 69 community sessions, including public listening sessions, focus groups, and community hosted discussions. Listening sessions were held in Grinnell’s Drake Community Library and open to the public on a walk-in basis. Focus groups, also primarily scheduled for the library, were each limited to six participants and required signing up. Attendees at these were paid. Community hosted discussions were held by six individuals from lower-income households who were hired to conduct up to seven focus groups each (one on each issue) with their friends and family.

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What the Phase 3 Reports Are, What They Are Not

Our primary goal with each report is to provide the community with information to help stakeholders make informed choices and address the prioritized need. At its core, this is a participatory community-based needs assessment. It is an effort to bring in diverse voices from throughout the community of persons who live, work, or rely on Grinnell for resources, together with input from individuals who have worked in the community to service the needs in question or otherwise might be considered experts. Our goal in seeking community-wide input is both to empower community members to participate in community development, as well as to better understand the experiences surrounding each identified need, how the need affects members of the community, what underlying causes people see leading to the issue, the obstacles they personally face and that the broader community may face in resolving the issue or ameliorating its impacts, ideas they have for what can and should be done, and what they see as strengths and assets in the community that may contribute to solutions.

The goal of this report is not to answer each of these questions definitively. In some ways the core of this report reflects the results of a community-wide brainstorming session (e.g., where everyone in a room shares ideas on post-it notes that all go on a board and are then organized by themes). The review of problems, impacts, causes, and solutions are provided from the perspective of members of the community, not the research team nor the project steering community. We have sought to gather input broadly from the community, particularly from those who may not frequently have a voice in decision making, and to share that input here. We believe that listening to and giving voice to such community members is valuable in itself and can be a means to solve problems. To highlight this value, we share the following vignette. At the end of one focus group hosted by a low-income community member in her home, she used our provided script to ask if there was anything else the participants wanted to add. One responded, “I’m just grateful to be able to, to be allowed to participate, that maybe my opinion matters.”

As is good practice in brainstorming sessions, we have not attempted to edit or filter input, nor are we trying to be arbiters of whose ideas are correct or not. Rather we have gathered lots of ideas and sorted them together into themes. We do attempt to make note when there are contradictory views, or when there are clear factual inaccuracies. However, we believe it is valuable to represent all the voices who shared their ideas with us. Experiences differ, perspectives differ, even experts can disagree on underlying causes, and there are usually multiple possible solutions to any problem. Additionally, people make decisions on how they understand a situation, so even if all experts agree that some perspective represents a misunderstanding, knowing what the misunderstandings are and how common they are can be valuable to decision makers. Also, we expect that those who take on these issues will have expertise at the table.

While the experiences and ideas shared by members of the community is the core of the report, we also share additional information to help decision makers reach their own conclusions about what part of the problem might be addressed and how. This includes an overview of the current Grinnell context related to the prioritized issue in terms of relevant infrastructure and resources, key measures, historical information, key inflection points, and ongoing efforts, as well as comparisons to a selected group of peer communities. In most cases we have also sought to provide our own input (making it clear when this is the case) to the community asset list when we have identified relevant organizations or other assets that did not come up in interviews, surveys, or community sessions. Finally, we provide some information on policy options pursued in other communities, and assets available outside of the community (e.g., funding resources or resource hubs), though these are not intended as endorsements.

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P.O. Box 344, Grinnell, IA 50112

View Community Data

PHASE 1: Needs From The Community Visions Survey

PHASE 2: Methodology For Prioritization

The Prioritization Process

PHASE 3

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