How to Do a Quick Orientation (Desk Scan) for Your Social Enterprise Idea
(Part 1 in the “Assessing Community Need” series)
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know that ain’t so.”
—attributed to Mark Twain
In the last post, we looked at why a Deep Dive was essential to planning a social impact startup. Here’s the first step.
Before you schedule a meeting or conduct an interview, take some time to scan the community and the opportunity from the 30,000-foot viewpoint of your desk. Start by learning what’s already known with a brief desk scan.
Let’s look at a hypothetical example. A small student team was eager to start designing a food delivery app for seniors in their city. One team member suggested they spend some time doing a desk scan first. Within an hour of online searching, they found two nonprofits already making deliveries, a city program that funded meal vouchers, and a mutual-aid network connecting volunteers with older residents.
In another hour, they realized the problem wasn’t access to food, but a lack of coordination. While lots of people were working hard on the issue, the different organizations often had overlapping efforts in some places, while other seniors went unserved. Their idea shifted from launching a new service to founding a coordinating council to organize the efforts of these existing projects. Rather than adding to the confusion, they helped the seniors in the community by aligning existing organizations. A few hours invested in a desk scan can save tenfold as much time later on, along with greater effectiveness and efficiency.
What’s a Desk Scan, and Why Does It Matter?
A desk scan is a quick but focused review of what’s already happening in your topic area. What are the programs and policies, what research exists, and who are the key players? It’s called a “desk scan” because you can do it anywhere from your laptop. It’s also a first act of empathy and respect for the community. How do you feel when someone shows up at a meeting who obviously hasn’t read the agenda or done the background reading?
Done well, it helps you:
- Avoid duplicating efforts that already exist.
- Reveal existing strengths, partners, and allies.
- Identify real gaps and opportunities.
- Begin to understand who’s affected and how systems interact.
It’s also the first step in a larger six-part process for assessing community needs and opportunities:
1. Orient quickly (Desk Scan)
2. Engage community members with respect (Field Entry)
3. Discover needs and assets
4. Structure insights
5. Validate quickly
6. Decide fit
We’ll explore each of these, starting here with Step 1: Quick Orientation.
How to Do a Desk Scan
You are like an investigative reporter, though your ultimate purpose is to act, rather than to report. You’re gathering data to understand the community and how it works. Who’s already doing what now? When and where is this happening? What’s working, what’s missing, and why is that? What successes have others had that you can learn from, and how are they doing it?
1. Define Your Focus
Start with a guiding question. For example:
- “How are seniors in this area accessing fresh, affordable food?”
- “What programs support new approaches and entrepreneurial ideas here?”
- “Who might still fall through the cracks of this network?”
Keep it specific enough to find meaningful patterns but broad enough to notice unexpected insights. Note times and places so you can be sure your information is current. Define your community boundaries by geographic neighborhoods, school districts, regions, or by global affinity groups (such as the blind or those committed to ecology) linked by the internet.
2. Search Strategically
Begin with local sources: city data portals, school district dashboards, local foundations, and neighborhood associations. Add helpful literature, such as annual reports from nonprofits, community action plans, or funding calls from agencies serving the community. Read the local newspapers and community neighborhood websites.
Then explore the wider context through tools like Google Scholar, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and open datasets from government or universities. Use AI research tools. Capture your sources and notes consistently so you can trace key facts later. Record what you find in a simple spreadsheet or mind map. This becomes your first community ecosystem snapshot, a visual of who’s doing what.
3. Map Stakeholders and Assets
List the organizations, schools, and informal networks already working on your issue. Include individuals, such as local leaders, small business owners, or residents, who shape opinions or connect groups.
Here’s where the approach of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) comes in. I’ll cover more about this approach in a later post, but briefly it means looking at the positives in the situation. Instead of starting with only problems, also examine local strengths. Who’s already solving part of this issue? How are they doing it? What knowledge or relationships already exist?
4. Review Existing Data and Perspectives
Look for patterns in existing reports, surveys, or public meeting notes. What themes repeat? Where are the gaps?
If you find data that seems inconsistent or out of date, make a note. Inaccurate or obsolete data can be misleading and lead to flawed assumptions. Good investigative reporters fact-check their information and seek at least two independent sources for key facts. Combining quantitative facts (numbers, percentages, trends) with qualitative insights (stories, quotes, perceptions) gives you a more complete picture. Think of the statistics as data points on a blank page and the qualitative stories and thoughts of people as colors you use to fill in the picture.
This desk scan helps you start your in-person contact with the community with informed curiosity and a clearer picture.
5. Capture and Organize Insights
Summarize what you’ve found on one page:
- What’s known?
- What’s missing?
- Who’s involved?
Highlight any surprises or contradictions. They’re often the most useful clues. For example, if one report claims food access is improving while residents online express frustration, that’s a sign to look deeper during your next stage of fieldwork. Where is the disconnect?
6. Common Pitfalls (and How to Avoid Them)
- Pitfall: Collecting everything in sight
Try this instead: Focus on data that connects directly to your guiding question.
– Pitfall: Ignoring community voices
Try this instead: Include local forums, social media groups, and newsletters.
– Pitfall: Over-relying on reports
Try this instead: Treat the desk scan as preparation for fieldwork, not a replacement.
– Pitfall: Focusing only on needs
Try this instead: Map community assets too. Note what’s strong, not just what’s wrong.
What You’ll Have at the End
By the time you finish your desk scan, you should have:
- A one- or two-page summary of key facts and missing pieces.
- A short list of potential partners and key stakeholders.
- Two or three questions to guide your next phase of research.
How long will all this take? Your desk scan may take anywhere from 4 to 8 hours or up to two weeks. It depends on the complexity of the problem, the accessibility of relevant information, and the number of people on your team. You want to gather enough background to prepare for the rest of your fieldwork without delaying direct engagement with the community. Your goal isn’t to become an expert on every facet, but to gain a solid, foundational understanding that will:
- Help you write better, more focused questions for your next research phase.
- Prevent you from pursuing a redundant solution with no clear advantage.
- Give you credibility and confidence when you talk with people.
Here’s a suggestion for how to approach a one-week scan:
- Day 1–2: Broad Strokes & Problem Definition — Understand the problem landscape and identify major players.
- Day 3–4: Solutions & Beneficiaries — Analyze existing solutions and clarify who you might serve.
- Day 5: Synthesis & Hypothesis Generation — Pull everything together, identify key insights, and plan initial hypotheses for field engagement.
Stay flexible and adapt this schedule to your problem, your resources, and the community you are serving. You might expand your timeframe if you discover hidden complexities or sensitivities. If you see the same information over and over, then synthesize your findings and wind up sooner.
Previous posts in this series have mentioned the Project Journal as a living and growing repository of key lessons, important data, decisions made, and significant reflections. Your desk scan begins this dynamic, iterative process. As you learn more through your community engagement, you will add, revise, and update your understandings. Synthesize key insights without getting bogged down but remain open to unexpected insights.
This scan is time well spent. By conducting a focused desk scan, you build a strong knowledge base that helps you ask better questions, design more relevant solutions, and speak with greater confidence.
A strategic community orientation is one of the most respectful things you can do when starting a social enterprise. Before you meet people or design anything, take time to see what’s already happening.
Next in the Series
In the next post, “Engage with Respect,” we’ll move from desk research to real-world engagement and explore how to build trust as you begin listening in the field.
Sources & Further Reading
- Stanford Social Innovation Review. (2022). Ecosystem Mapping and Social Innovation.
- MIT D-Lab. (2021). Lean Research Toolkit.
- Asset-Based Community Development Institute. (2018). A Guide to Asset Mapping.
- Christensen Institute. (2019). Jobs to Be Done Theory in Social Innovation.
- Acumen. (2020). Lean Data for Social Impact.
- Estes, F. (2022). Design Thinking: A Guide to Innovation.
- Supplemental research synthesis (2025). Methods for Evaluating Unmet Community Needs: Community Assessments, Stakeholder Engagement, and Mixed-Methods Data Collection.
- Photo by Sable Flow on Unsplash