Community Engagement: principles and best practices
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Community Engagement Principles & Best Practices - Grassroots Solutions is a consulting firm that focuses exclusively on engaging, organizing, and mobilizing people. As engagement experts, we have put together a presentation for various nonprofits,foundations, and other groups which is an overview of the best practices in Community Engagement and organizing.
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Community Engagement: principles and best practices
- 1. Community Engagement Principles & Best Practices April 29, 2015
- 2. Who We Are Grassroots Solutions is a consulting firm that focuses exclusively on engaging, organizing, and mobilizing people.
- 4. Why? Because engaging people fuels change. •Credibility and trust •Valuable input, feedback,ideas •Energyand enthusiasm •Sign-off,buy-in, or ownership •Sense of community, common identity, connection to place •Scale and sustainability
- 5. TOP 10 Community Engagement Principles & Best Practices
- 6. Create an engagement plan Go where people already gather Multiple opportunities to engage Work with and leverage trusted partners The details matter Appreciate the power of stories Make it personal Listen, value, and use stakeholder input Communicate and follow up Track success
- 7. Create an engagement plan
- 8. Go where people already gather
- 9. Multiple opportunities to engage
- 10. Work with trusted partners
- 12. Appreciate the power of stories
- 13. Make it personal
- 14. Listen, value, and use stakeholder input
- 15. Communicate and follow up
- 16. Track success
- 17. Contact Megan Powers Email: megan@grassrootssolutions.com Phone: 612.746.6720 www.grassrootssolutions.com MN | NY | DC | ME
Editor's Notes
- 15 yrs old, 40 staff Staff in Mpls, DC, NY & Portland, ME
- Means different things to different people: outreach, collaboration, feedback, inform, activate No single “right approach” or magic tactic. Depends on the project, the goals for engagement, resources, timeline, specific people and groups, dynamics, existing barriers, etc. Common elements of effective, authentic engagement A distinct approach to building relationships Doing with, not for More than an event or meeting Two-way exchange: of ideas, questions, concerns, mutual learning, dialogue and listening, and/or collaborative work Ongoing Participating and contributing to the vitality of one’s community
- Sometimes we skip over WHY engagement is both important and valuable. Not just the right thing to do. Enriches the process and the product.
- What we’ve learned over time
- Overview
- Create an outreach plan with roles, tasks, and benchmarks. A plan is a document that outlines your goal(s), what you are going to do, and how you’ll use your various resources (time, people, money, partners, etc.) to advance what you set out to accomplish. Specific strategies and tactics should align closely with your goal(s). Of course, be sure to include a timeline and budget as well.
- This means conducting outreach activities in places and spaces where people already gather, whether that is an online space ( an online forum or Facebook group, etc.) or a physical space (a farmer’s market, festival, conference, etc.). People are most comfortable in their own space where they already have relationships, and it can be more effective than recruiting people to attend a meeting or event that you initiate. Going where people already gather could include having a table or booth at existing events and spaces, or serving as a guest speaker as part of a network meeting agenda.
- Roaming Table – Detroit Offer a variety of ways for people to participate or connect with you. A traditional large-scale public meeting can still be an effective engagement tactic. However, it is often helpful to layer on additional opportunities for people to engage or share ideas beyond meetings, such as smaller interactive roundtable discussions, an online forum (e.g., Mindmixer or Metroquest), telephone town halls, an SMS text messaging program, outreach door-to-door, idea chalkboards, one-on-one interviews, and other face-to-face and virtual engagement methods.
- Leverage partners and their networks. Often, it is a good idea to work closely with organizational partners, community leaders, and/or organizers from the neighborhoods, communities, or constituencies that you want to engage. This means building and maintaining relationships with partners or ambassadors who are willing to serve as trusted messengers and spread the word among their networks about what you’re doing. Community partners are important because they increase your reach and your ability to engage your target audience. Consider providing stipends or mini-grants to partners where appropriate to compensate them for their skills and time.
- The details matter. When you do plan and host your own events, meetings, or other kinds of engagement activities, strive to make them accessible, convenient, and enjoyable for stakeholders. Think about all of the logistics and details, such as venue, parking/transit options, materials, supplies, childcare, food, signage, language translation or interpretation, and room set-up and layout. Carefully plan the agenda and prepare speakers or facilitators. And most importantly, be sure to devote time to thorough event promotion and outreach.
- Do.town: healthy communities with Blue Cross Blue Shield and Cities of Richfield, Bloomington, and Edina Appreciate the power of stories. Personal stories can help your issue or initiative come to life. Consider gathering and sharing testimonials and personal stories related to your effort.
- Make it personal. Personalized outreach is more effective in generating action than impersonal outreach. In other words: The more personal, the better. Generally, an in-person conversation is more effective than a phone call, which is more effective than a personalized email, which is more effective than a mass email, and so on.
- Listen, value, and use stakeholder input. Consider what kinds of stakeholder groups you hope to engage and why. What kind of input and ideas do you seek? What are the “non-negotiables” or items that have already been decided, and where are you most open to feedback? How do plan to capture all input? How do you plan to use input? It is important to define these aspects of the public input gathering process and openly communicate about how decisions are made and what those decisions are. In meetings, use active listening skills such as eye contact, acknowledging concerns, thanking people for their comments, writing or capturing what you hear, and echoing back what you’ve understood. In addition, it is a great best practice to share on an ongoing basis what kinds of input and feedback you’ve been hearing throughout a project, and how that feedback is shaping or affecting what’s next.
- Use multiple communication channels, and follow up. There is a difference between engagement (community participation, idea sharing or dialogue, and two-way exchange) and communications strategies (typically, one-way information sharing and updates), although there is overlap. Both are important. On the communications side, different forms of communication are preferable for different people, from e-newsletters to social media, from newspapers to text messaging, from websites to paper flyers and more. To reach a wide variety of people, it is important to keep these communication preferences in mind and get your message across using multiple communication channels. Regular communication (e.g., every other week) can often help ensure transparency and accountability. As part of this, remember to follow up with progress updates and next steps after a big event or pivotal milestone in a project.
- Track success. Tracking your progress means documenting and measuring your efforts and their results. In order to do this, you must define engagement goals and benchmarks early on. How many people do you hope to engage? What types of people? How can you best reach them? How many events and activities? What kind of momentum, actions, or participation do you want to generate? How will you know that your engagement has been successful? A CRM or other tracking tool can be valuable as it provides a central place to track and monitor activities and grow your list of supporters or stakeholders. Tracking success can also mean checking in on progress towards benchmarks along the way, and determining which engagement tactics are most effective and when to adjust or pivot.