Engaging the community takes many forms – from simple voting to complex planning processes that involve community opinions and decision-making processes.

An ongoing challenge lies in making sure the goals and methods of engagement are authentic. Too often, organizations invite communities to participate for appearances’ sake or just as a way to calm public outrage without actually addressing its root cause.

Definition

Community engagement is an approach to public decision-making that seeks to incorporate people’s interests, solutions, and values into its decisions and actions. It aims to build trust between your organization and those it serves.

Internal reporting involves providing analysis and outcomes of your engagement efforts internally to key stakeholders within your organization or team. Reports, presentations or dashboards should aim to communicate both qualitative and quantitative metrics related to your project.

Consultative engagement involves organizations sharing information with a community and inviting their feedback on specific plans or issues, with decision-making responsibilities ultimately remaining with the organization that initiated the consultation process. Conversely, thick engagement involves ongoing communication and collaboration among small groups – like community dialogues or advisory councils – for an extended period. It often employs an impartial facilitator trained in facilitation. Together they may discuss ideas that arise during brainstorming sessions as well as disagreements that arise and possible solutions that might exist.

Objectives

Community engagement demands an organization set clear goals and objectives, which should be measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART goals).

At the center of any effective community engagement plan lies identifying your target community. This could be either geographically defined or comprised of specific demographic groups. Once identified, take time to understand their unique needs and characteristics so you can develop effective engagement methods that lead to meaningful participation and produce positive outcomes.

Once feedback has been compiled, it’s crucial to interpret its results and share them with stakeholders and the community at large. Doing this helps build trust between you and those participating as well as foster an environment for continuous improvement. Furthermore, using insights gained during interpretation to refine engagement strategies and communication channels so as to remain responsive to changing community needs and dynamics is also key for remaining responsive and staying responsive over time. Finally, long-term relationships must be fostered; not only for ongoing projects but also future ones.

Strategies

Community engagement strategies depend on both the business objectives of an organisation and the lifecycle stage of their community. In general, however, they focus on communication, inclusion, and collaboration to identify shared interests and concerns while creating sustainable outcomes.

Identification and elimination of barriers to participation. This could include simple measures like providing childcare during meetings or more complex issues like systemic disenfranchisement.

Ultimately, this form of community engagement puts decision-making power into the hands of its constituents. This can be accomplished through ongoing participation in advisory panels or working groups where community members take the lead and collaborate on decisions together. Alternatively, organizations could establish reciprocal relationships with communities. Ideally this would include transparent decision-making processes with open channels for feedback ensuring stakeholders feel informed and valued – this can foster long-term relationships while building trust while increasing ownership over changes implemented with greater commitment levels from them all involved parties.

Implementation

Community engagement refers to an umbrella term covering an array of activities involving diverse people in dialogue and decision-making processes that impact them. This requires cultural sensitivity, an appreciation of local challenges faced by certain communities and a determination to foster equity and inclusion.

Identification of stakeholders is an essential first step to successful community engagement. This involves identifying individuals, groups and organisations with an interest or connection to a project or issue at hand as well as their influence over others.

Interpreting and acting upon community feedback involves making adjustments to project objectives, communication channels or any other aspect of an engagement strategy based on community input. Any such changes should be documented and shared back with those affected when possible – this way completing the cycle. Internal reporting also plays a vital role in implementation efforts as it allows managers and other leaders to use engagement efforts’ results as proof of value and impact.