WRIT 400: Nonprofit White Paper

This guide leads you through research strategies for your nonprofit white paper.

Choosing Keywords

The best way to find relevant sources is to search with the right keywords. Ask yourself:

  • What are different ways to refer to my population?
    • seniors, senior citizens, geriatric, elderly, retiree
  • What geographies am I interested in?
    • United States, California, Bay Area, Contra Costa County
  • ​What is the issue I'm interested in?
    • enrichment, loneliness, STDs, nutrition, intergenerational care

Then decide what kinds of sources might have the perspective you're looking for, and which databases are best to find those sources.

Then you might do searches like these:

Multisearch search for seniors OR older adults AND nutrition AND "retirement communities"

Google search for seniors hunger contra costa county

 

And you can use the database's filters to limit to results from a certain date range, certain type of publication, etc.

Subjects: Writing
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