Start with organizing your team’s resources and goals. By starting on the same page, your projects will be set up to maximize your team and community’s return on engagement.
Consider your resources
To set up a successful engagement project, you’ll need time, budget, and a dedicated team. This means ensuring strong internal support (from policy-makers, management teams, and your communications teams) as well as a dedicated team of people who can be sufficiently responsive to community feedback.
Clarify your goals
Before launching, define what your main goals are, as those goals will inform the tools and methods you use to achieve them. Are you identifying problems, devising solutions, or making decisions? Then, define the type of feedback you want, and pick one of the methods in our platform’s digital toolbox.
- Want ideas from your residents? The ideation method is best for you.
- Looking to allocate resources? Participatory budgeting can help move this forward.
- Putting different scenarios to a vote? A poll can help make a decision efficiently.
By being deliberate in your engagement process upfront, you will both get more feedback from your community and increase efficiency for your engagement team.
For more on teeing up your projects for truly meaningful engagement, check out Part 1 of our Practitioner’s Guide on creating sustainable and effective community engagement, written in collaboration with the Rebecca Woodbury from the Department of Civic Things.
