I this guide, we look at common methods that practitioners use to analyze their effectiveness in inclusive and equitable engagement and provide considerations to think about how these can be more effective.
Hello and welcome to our second article on Lessons for Civic Engagement, a 2-part think piece series that explores the intricacies of the experience of getting involved and practical considerations.
If you haven’t already read Part 1: How Relationships Can Change The World (and how you connect with your public), we invite you to take a look. In this article, we explore how relationships should look relative to levels of public participation goals as well as where relationships can be made.
In Part 2, we look at common methods that practitioners use to analyze their effectiveness in inclusive and equitable engagement and provide considerations to think about how these can be more effective.
In our research and report on the barriers to inclusive public engagement, we saw themes across community members and practitioners that are important considerations when thinking about inclusive engagement.
From the community perspective, the major themes discovered are around why people don’t get involved and the experienced barriers to involvement that would otherwise provide an inclusive experience. These are not discrete themes, and in fact, are often nuanced relationships.
The factors explaining why people may not get involved boil down to awareness, time, (dis)trust, and interest. Simply put, people cannot be or are unlikely to be involved if:
Tangentially, barriers to effective engagement are:
From an engagement practitioner’s perspective, the barriers to effective engagement that are experienced include:
Finally, themes around the elements of effective engagement consists of:
This knowledge is the first step in being able to accomplish more inclusive and effective engagement as it helps us identify problem and opportunity areas. However, the problems can often be abstract and complex, making it difficult to understand where to start. In the following sections, we’ll discuss the guiding principles and practical approaches to help practitioners start to develop their toolkit as they move towards designing effective engagements.
Before we go into details of practical methods, we want to review some important principles for equitable public engagement. These principles were developed through robust work in collaboration with the community and stakeholders from Simon Fraser University Centre of Dialogue.
The principles should be used as guideposts for not only a singular engagement, but a long-term approach to the practice of engagement as a whole, with the understanding that fully living these principles will take both time and effort. As this is transformative work, we must remember that it is a marathon and not a sprint, in order to set our own expectations and maintain morale and tenacity through it all.
The following section compares a shortlist of methods of engagement against the performance of the previously identified themes around effective engagement. These include questions practitioners should consider to more effectively utilize these methods to reduce barriers and to introduce points to consider when leaning into opportunities.
Community Contact Lists
This is a common method to be able to connect with harder-to-reach communities in engagements that require a larger breadth of participation. As with any method, the execution is what impacts the outcomes.
Leveraging your local Alliance of Information and Referral Systems group (211.ca in Canada, 2.11.org in the US) can facilitate the building and maintaining of community contact lists. They can connect your organization with community groups that provide services for diverse audiences. For a nominal fee, they can sometimes help you understand which community groups have a stronger presence in your community, so you know which ones are valuable to connect with to begin to do the work.
Project Websites
Project websites are a standard to be able to provide the public with project information so that they can be informed and access online engagement. With the advent and adoption of the web over the last few decades, information and engagement have become more accessible in some ways, but inaccessible in other ways. Impact around the themes when it comes to project websites include:
With consideration of accessibility and inclusivity, executing poorly on this method can have impacts on the larger relationship that you have with individuals and segments of the community.
“Did you know that the average reading level of adults living in the United States is between 7th and 8th grade, middle school level? […]People prefer to read about two grade levels below their reading level because it’s more comfortable. When it comes to technical content, a person’s reading level dramatically lowers. They just can’t comprehend the unfamiliar technical vocabulary, complex sentence structure, and buzzwords that have no context to them.” – Free Code Camp
Project websites can only be as effective as the quality of the website, its content, and its reach. Considering all of the above, it is also important to understand how to supplement these factors.
Social Media
As an omnipresent channel, social media can play a powerful role in engagement. Not just simply in being able to amplify messaging surrounding an ongoing engagement, but in many other themes.
We recommend engagement practitioners to become familiar with best practices for accessibility in social media.
In-Person Material
In-person material refers to any kind of touchpoint that someone interacts with in the physical world. This can include materials such as direct mail postcards, posters in public spaces, billboards on the street, ads in magazines and newspapers, and so on.
On-site Intercepts
On-site intercepts can target informing and engaging your public.
Large Scale Public Events
Large-scale public events can manifest in different ways. Most commonly, large-scale public events include council meetings, town halls, and public information and/or engagement events.
Small Scale Public Events
Similar to large-scale events, small-scale events can achieve information and engagement goals. Considerations around the themes include all of the aforementioned as in large scale events but can also greatly impact:
Advisory Committees
Advisory committees are the method that has the ability to swing in both directions of reducing or contributing to friction points.
We recognize that this list is not exhaustive, and is meant to provide an overview of popular engagement methods, especially as we consider how patterns of communication evolve over time. The most important takeaway is that any method of communication and engagement is only as good as your delivery. What you put in will be what you get out. There will never be a perfect way to approach communications and engagement, so it is always about considering all of the friction points and exploring future opportunities in order to live the principles of equitable engagement.