Challenges facing community organisations to be surveyed

An initiative to support community and non-profit organisations has launched a community needs assessment survey.

Huddl is encouraging community groups and charities in Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago to take part in the survey.

“Our goal is to give community groups the right tools they need to be successful and achieve more,” Huddl programme coordinator Fiona Reeve said.

“Through this survey we want to understand the challenges, barriers and highlight opportunities for us to build a solution that supports the needs of the community.”

Huddl is governed by members from Alexandra Community House, Central Lakes Trust, Central Otago District Council, Cromwell and Districts Community Trust, Queenstown Lakes District Council, Sport Central, Volunteer South, and the Whakatipu Hub.

The steering committee was formed in 2021 after identifying common challenges among community groups.

"Collectively we were seeing organisations face similar issues and we wanted to identify and remove some of these challenges to help ensure community groups are sustainable,” Huddl steering committee chair Scott Sinclair said.

“So, we brought together a group of people from across the community sector to see how we can best support the nonprofit sector and make life easier for them.”

Huddl plans to launch an ‘online knowledge hub’ to provide tools and resources to upskill and support community groups, plus provide access to training, mentor programmes and facilitate networking and connections across the sector to ensure skills are shared.

The community needs assessment survey, which will help inform this, is now open for all community groups and nonprofits and it closes Friday September 27.

“The data received through this survey will directly influence the resources and training we provide,” Fiona said.

Take part in the community assessment survey here.