Needs Assessment

Organization Background

Life Sciences United (LSU) is a nonprofit organization founded by four women in 2002 to support each other’s success within the life sciences. With a mission to help women advance in their careers, LSU provides mentoring, networking, and professional development in a dynamic forum. 

Today, LSU has over 4,300 members spread across 12 Chapters. Members are professional women from all career fields of the life sciences, belonging to pharmaceutical companies, universities, marketing firms, etc. Many members are entrepreneurs; thus, a focus on entrepreneurship is core to LSU's mission.

The organization is led by more than 600 volunteers throughout North America who come together to facilitate events and mentoring programs and is backed by a staff team of eight women who work to collectively uphold LSU’s values. LSU’s leadership team consists of a paid staff team of eight, a volunteer board of nine directors, and volunteer leaders for each Chapter, who are commonly divided into chair, vice chair, and committee positions.

Opportunity

Life Sciences United has set a goal to diversify its revenue streams for long-term financial sustainability. Currently, LSU has a repository of intellectual property produced by LSU members and volunteers, which consists of recordings of live virtual events. These resources, available in various formats, such as webinars and panel discussions, are housed within an exclusive online library accessible only to LSU members. Recognizing an opportunity to monetize the media in this online library, the organization aims to offer them as paid resources to the market, comprising both individuals and organizations. 

The primary objectives of this needs assessment were to:

• Identify market-ready media by assessing the media’s quality based on instructional design standards and LSU’s brand and content guidelines.

• Determine strengths of existing media, types of media suitable for marketing, and identify areas for improvement.

• Establish guidelines for enhancing the marketability of future media and guiding future production processes. 

Methods

Framework for Assessment

To guide our assessment, we used a modified version of the Swanson Performance Diagnosis Matrix (Swanson, 1996) to get an accurate identification of actual and desired organizational, process, and individual performance levels, which later also helped inform specific interventions. The model was used to create enabling questions that allowed for investigating the relevant performance variables, as seen in the table below. For a complete list of frameworks used during this needs assessment, see the needs assessment planning table in Appendix D.

Data Collection

Throughout the needs assessment, we utilized extant data and conducted interviews, all of which informed our analyses. The final report in Appendix C provides a more complete version of this in table format.

Gap Analysis

This needs assessment aimed to conduct an analysis and give recommendations that will help Life Sciences United increase and diversify their funding, leveraging their media library assets of recorded events to do so. As such, the primary gap that the team considered ways to close is the gap in funding. However, a comprehensive review of LSU’s video library revealed a second gap between where the media currently is (regarding quality/marketability) and where it needs to be marketable. These gaps are intertwined, and closing the gap in media quality will be necessary to close the gap for funding.

SWOT Analysis

The analysis of the extant data revealed many strengths and weaknesses of LSU's online video library, for which the team used the SWOT analysis to better analyze and frame the gap in media quality. The SWOT analysis assesses the media and organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 

Cause Analysis

After the team had identified and assessed the gaps in both media quality and funding, the team needed to investigate what was contributing to and causing this gap. To get at this, the team conducted several interviews with LSU members and one staff member.

Swanson’s Performance Diagnosis Matrix (SPM) was the tool the team used to frame the investigative questions, allowing the team to consider causal factors relating to mission & culture, system design, and capacity on an individual, process, and organizational level.

Key Findings and Roadblocks

The primary objective of this needs assessment was to help Life Sciences United enhance and diversify its revenue streams. In order to achieve this, the initial plan was to develop a rubric that would help LSU identify which media was sellable and put its best content forward. However, our evaluation of the media and interviews with members revealed three very important roadblocks:

1. Copyright infringement. As alluded to before in the discussion of strengths and weaknesses, the team's review and analysis of the existing content within the media library revealed incidents of potential copyright infringement. Guest speakers were using copyrighted images in their slide presentations. During the interview process, we further confirmed that although LSU encourages each Chapter to vet their speakers and the speaker’s slide deck, it is not enforced. 

2. Speaker release form ambiguity and ethical issues. We also learned that the speaker release form may not have been reviewed by an attorney and is easily accessible by anyone – which means anyone can sign it, and they could sign it for someone else since the process is not verified. The speaker release form also leaves room for interpretation as it does not explicitly state, nor does it seek permission from the speakers to commercialize their content. Looking ahead, this may pose a huge threat to the organization. 

3. Production quality. Based on the content that was reviewed by the team, the production quality itself also makes it unmarketable at this time. With this in mind, the team had to revisit the client's initial request. The team had to pivot to find another way for LSU to increase and diversify its revenue structures.

Recommended Interventions

Although the evaluation of the media and interviews with members revealed significant weaknesses and threats, it also brought to light valuable opportunities and strengths. In the final stage of the project, the team sought to design interventions that were carefully aligned with LSU’s mission, culture, and broader goals, aiming to ultimately close the funding gap and foster sustainable growth.

Since immediate monetization of the existing media is not possible at this time, we looked for interventions that would help LSU get there.

To better understand how to prioritize and assess these interventions, the team used the multicriteria analysis (found in Table 12, Appendix C), ensuring that the criteria were aligned with LSU’s mission, vision, and strategic goal of diversifying their revenue streams. The four criteria used in our intervention selection and analysis include:

• Speed in Meeting Needs: to what extent and how quickly the intervention can meet the needs of the organization

• Capacity: to what point does the organization have the necessary resources, such as personnel, knowledge, skills, and attitudes to implement the intervention.

• Ease of Coordination: how easily the organization can implement the intervention in terms of coordinating efforts (for example, across Chapters). 

• Long-Term Funding Impact: the long-term financial benefits of the intervention if implemented successfully.

As it stands, the team recommended LSU consider the following actions to ensure they get to that state.

1. Improving Media Process: LSU will need to establish a standardized process for hosting, recording, and post-production to improve the marketability of all future media. Recognizing that the current gap in media marketability is rooted in issues related to process-level system design and capacity, as revealed in our previous cause analysis, the intervention focuses on addressing these fundamental challenges. By implementing standardized processes, LSU could monetize future recordings of events with minimal re-work needed to make them marketable.

2. Improving User Experience: LSU needs to improve the awareness, visibility, and accessibility of the current video library for its current members. While improving media quality will go a long way in bringing it into a marketable state, its presentation and usability on the site are also important factors to consider. Our data collection revealed that, while members acknowledge the value of the library and its content, it’s perceived as being cumbersome to use. Our cause analysis identified several issues, such as difficulty locating it on the site, a lack of search filters, and limited awareness of its offerings. By elevating the user experience of the video library, LSU can boost engagement and retention among current members and draw in new members, thereby increasing revenue.

3. Potential Market: LSU can leverage its mission, strengths, and capabilities to reach a wider virtual audience and draw in new members. Our data collection and organizational analysis identified many strengths of LSU, which are also closely related to LSU’s mission. By offering more virtual events in general and expanding into the virtual space, LSU could reach wider audiences, draw in members from entirely untapped audiences such as college students, and create a space where more media is being recorded for the video library.

Should LSU choose to implement a combined approach, a Program Logic Model (PLM) (W. K. Kellogg Foundation, 2004) can be used, as shown in Appendix B. The PLM is a tool that outlines the means and end results of the program. It further breaks down the different categories and provides a graphical representation of what should be done at each stage in the program to ensure the end results are achieved.

Just implementing one of the recommendations will help LSU in the long run. However, it would be most impactful to implement all three, as they complement and build on each other and will ensure LSU is positioned for maximum growth in the long run. As such, the team would like to stress the importance of seeing these interventions as a three-step intervention process rather than three standalone recommendations. 

Appendices

Appendix A. LSU Process Infographic

Appendix B. Program Logic Model

Appendix C. Final Report

Appendix D. Needs Assessment Planning Table