Community Empowerment Research

We help churches, schools, and community organizations
measure needs of the people they serve,
set strategies to meet those needs, and
assess the impact of their work in service, training, evangelism, and outreach.

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Are You Making A Difference?

Knowing is Better Than Hoping

Do you know for certain that you are making a difference in the lives of the people you serve?

Whether we are talking about
      church members’ spiritual lives
          or community members physical needs...

Whether you are a community social service agency, a para-church ministry
    or a church ministry:

You have people you are reaching.        Are they helped?        Are their lives changed?

We like to think we are doing good.  Maybe we have someone come and tell us how much we helped them.  From that we assume we have done all we can do and cannot “do good” any better.

But what of the people we do not hear from?  Were they helped?

A volunteer organization provided social opportunities to mid-life singles.  Most of these people were over 45 and had been through a divorce.  Unfortunately, there is a tremendous need in every city for groups like this.  This singles ministry had a number of avid participants.  These 20 or 30 folks came to all the events and often expressed how much they gained from the group.  Obviously this organization helped these people immensely.

But the singles' group had a mailing list of over 300 people.  Where were the other 270 or more?  Why did they not come to meetings and events?  Where did this organization ministry fail them?

No one asked them.  No one even noticed that hundreds of people came once or twice and never came back.

Maybe this group could not have done anything better.  But likely there are hundreds of people in need whose needs are not met because the group leaders never assessed what they could do better.

Do you know that you are making a difference?

Do you know if you’re doing everything you can possibly do?

How do you know?

We often assume that because we are doing good work, it must be the best possible.  But we are people.  We can always do better.

We can’t just assume that by doing the same thing we’ve always done or doing whatever comes to mind first, that it is the best, most effective thing to do.

Scientific research has given us way to find truth in physics, medicine, and other fields.  We can to use the same scientific methods to help our social services become better.

We can become better at doing good when we use the methods of social science that are already used in large organizations and businesses to make their efforts more effective and more efficient.

We are not being good stewards of the financial resources given to us if we blindly guess at what to do, who to serve, and how to serve them.

Research solutions from Community Empowerment Research can help you be more effective, more efficiently—

whether you work in social outreach, counseling, social services, community organizing, or social work.