Community Engagement for Community Impact
Whenever I run into a board or organization that is unsure what to do strategically, the first recommendation I make is community engagement. Community engagement is a key to crafting strategy and creating meaningful impact. Most folks in our organization do not have the same lived experiences as the folks we serve—although many organizations are making a shift to do so. We have knowledge and experience from a service level but without the point of view of people we are serving, we miss opportunities to efficiently do our best work. A part of organization sustainability comes from the community’s ability to access and utilize its services supported by aligned resources and operations.
Here are a few things we can learn from the community to make informed decisions.
Impact:
What is the impact of our work?
Does it align with our intended impact?
Who is most benefited by our work?
Is it who we intended?
What impact does our community desire from us? What do they see us capable of doing?
Problems & Challenges:
How does the community see the problem? What do they see as the solution?
How are the most impacted community members experiencing the problem?
Compare what the community sees as the problem with data you have from your system.
What are the expressed barriers to access or changed behavior?
Data Collection
Validate new or budding ideas
Engage similar organizations to understand their strategy
Scan the environment for resources
Explore best practices and inspiring innovations
Resource Mapping
Find partners and coalitions for collective efforts
Scan traditional and nontraditional funding sources
Other providers and their services
Clarify what true gaps exist in the community
Here are a few ways you can do community engagement.
Surveys.
Surveys are a great way to collect information from a lot of people. When deploying a survey, it’s important to keep your intended audience in mind. A community that is busy or harder to engage will need a short survey. A longer or translated survey might need a staff member to facilitate the collection. Surveys require your time and attention most at the start of your process as you craft the survey and at the end when you analyze the results. The amount of people that take the survey will determine the amount of time you will need to analyze the results
Qualitative collection.
Numbers are half the story, leaving room for a lot of interpretations. Mixing in qualitative data can add more context as you consider the quantitative data. If you have a relationship with your community, you can invite them to a focus group to discuss their experience and share their thoughts. Interviews can be a great way to pick a person’s brain and ask them about specific things they know or have experienced. At The Spark Mill we have a practice of keeping qualitative data anonymous so that people feel comfortable sharing their thoughts with us.
Environment Mapping.
Most communities are rich with resources, as evidenced by their existence. Doing environmental mapping can help you gain clarity about what all exists and identify ways to access or leverage those resources. Community impact requires community collaboration, and mapping can be a way to find the right partners to make a desired change. Some problems need innovation solutions or solutions can come from inspiration in other sectors. Some communities have already figured out effective solutions and we can engage with them to see what is applicable in our own community.
Hosting & Incentives.
While we may put in significant effort to coordinate community engagement, we are still asking people for their time, energy, ideas, and stories for our betterment. It’s important that we treat these interactions and relationships with such care. When engaging your community, be a host so they feel welcomed – like you want them there and want them to feel comfortable. If you don’t have a relationship with your community, it may be hard to get them to engage in a focus group or respond to a survey. In this case, provide an incentive for participation that allows a person to give their personal time and business to you.
Community Engagement Project.
While developing an ongoing community engagement practice is ideal, doing so as a project can be just as beneficial. Making it a year-long project would allow you to pursue grants that would support your effort or fund a financial incentive. It could be a great project assigned to new staff to learn about or manage a program or a project for a student intern.
I think robust community engagement and the data you receive from it can be helpful not only to develop strategy but to reference for a few years. If you’re interested in learning more from your community and want support in doing so, reach out to me and my team at The Spark Mill. We’d love to make that happen.