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The best way to ensure the projects we support are contributing to community progress is to ask that community for input and feedback.
For some communications projects, community input is a required component of our work, such as those related to land planning, transit or infrastructure. Many of our team members are trained in IAP2 best practices to conduct successful public input opportunities for these projects. That formalized approach gives us a framework for engaging people thoughtfully, understanding their perspectives and using what we learn to move a project forward. But we know elements of this approach can be applied to any project intended to serve, connect and enrich the community it’s in.
For our team’s professional communicators, engagement isn’t an end in itself. It’s a way to learn more about the people we’re trying to reach — what they care about, what they need, what concerns them and what language resonates with them — so we can communicate more effectively.
Community engagement is a strong form of both qualitative and quantitative research.
Qualitative input can look like one-on-one interviews, group workshops or a task force that checks in throughout the course of a project. These conversations can reveal the things that don’t always show up in a spreadsheet, such as concerns people may be hesitant to share publicly, language that resonates with an audience or ideas that the project team hadn’t considered.
Quantitative methods, like surveys, allow us to scale that input while making efficient use of time and resources. At Emspace, we utilize industry leader Typeform for surveys. It includes features like custom survey design, conditional question pathways, auto-translate, an accessibility checker and real-time data summaries for project team members to view. All these features can make it easier for people to participate and increase completion rates.
It’s beneficial to use both qualitative and quantitative approaches together. A mix of interviews and survey results can show both the details and the big picture.
A survey might tell us that a majority of respondents have a certain view, while a conversation with community members can help explain why. This gives our team a fuller understanding of the audience and a wealth of information to inspire communications approaches. It also gives us greater confidence that our recommendations are grounded in what people actually think, need and want.
This community-based research can be especially useful when communicating about complex issues that affect people in different ways. In public infrastructure and civic projects, for example, public input can help project teams understand how a proposed change may affect people’s daily lives. In other communications work, the same approach can help an organization better understand the people it serves, whether they’re community members, donors, program participants or other impacted individuals.
Engagement can also help identify potential challenges before they become bigger problems. When people have an opportunity to weigh in early, they may flag a concern that can be addressed during planning rather than after a communications project is already underway. That doesn’t mean every piece of feedback needs to be acted on, but it does give the team a chance to understand and note concerns, explain decisions and make adjustments when they make sense.
Of course, a project’s timeline, budget and audience can constrict or expand community input opportunities. These parameters help determine what’s possible: Do we have the time to coordinate 10 individual conversations? Would a workshop give us more useful information than a survey? Does our audience have regular access to a computer or the ability to travel to our meeting place? Do we have the time to gather new input, or can we only reference data that’s readily available?
There’s no single right way to conduct community engagement. What’s important is making a thoughtful effort to hear from the people a project is intended to serve and using what we learn to make the work better.
Engaging affected individuals early and often strengthens a project’s outcomes and builds a coalition of supporters.
People are more likely to support something when they understand it, feel that their perspective has been considered and can see how community input influenced the final result. They don’t have to agree with every decision to feel heard and invested in the process. Just being given a meaningful opportunity to participate can change the way people view a project.
Community members who have been part of the process can become some of its most credible advocates. They can help explain the “why” behind an effort to their neighbors, colleagues, friends and networks.
Community engagement shouldn’t be treated as a box to check or a way to create the appearance of consensus. If an organization asks for input, people reasonably expect to know what happened with it. Closing the loop shows that participation was taken seriously, even when the outcome isn’t exactly what everyone hoped for.
This is particularly important for civic and infrastructure projects, where public input may be a formal part of the process. Beyond just gathering input, the real value comes from understanding what that feedback means, communicating how it informs decisions and helping people understand what happens next.
Conversely, if no outside voices are included in research, planning and/or development, a project risks being irrelevant, or even offensive, to its intended audience. Without that outside perspective, it’s easy for organizations to make assumptions about what people want, need or care about. Community engagement helps challenge those assumptions before they become part of a strategy or campaign.
In addition to building goodwill, well-executed community engagement yields more informed, responsive and successful communications. Whether it’s a formal public input process for a civic project or a conversation that helps an organization better understand its audience, community engagement produces a clearer understanding of the people we’re trying to reach and a stronger foundation for what we do with that insight.
