Effective placemaking initiatives arise from the collaborative visions shared by government staff and community members. This is accomplished through co-designing and actively participating in the planning stages of a project. So, join us as we explore five inspiring placemaking project examples that empower community engagement.
These five initiatives benefit local residents’ specific needs and interests and help beautify our neighbourhoods for increased tourism for future visitors and residing community members for years to come. Each project is a living testament to the transformative power of thoughtful placemaking. They empower residents to shape their surroundings and cultivate a sense of belonging and ownership.
Here’s our round-up of five placemaking community engagement examples to draw some inspiration from:
Informing Residents of New Precincts in a City Centre
Neighbourhood Activity Centre
Long-Term Frameworks
Community’s collective vision
Enhancements for a Park
City of Kalgoorlie Boulder | Kal City Centre
1. Informing Residents of New Precincts in a City Centre
The City of Kalgoorlie Boulder had embarked on a multi-million dollar project to revitalize key precincts within the Kalgoorlie Central Business District in St Barbara’s Square. Kalgoorlie’s goal for Kal City Centre was to create vibrant, economically robust, and diverse spaces that would help benefit community members within the area.
To keep the community informed about the new precinct features, Kalgoorlie utilized various visual elements including a Photo Gallery showcasing a bird’s-eye view of St Barbara’s Square, a video, Feature Grids, and a Newsfeed for project updates. To further engage residents, Kalgoorlie has included a Call to Action button, prompting community members to subscribe and stay updated on the project’s progress.
Wyndham City Coast County | Neighbourhood Activity Centre
2. Neighbourhood Activity Centre
The Woodville Neighbourhood Activity Centre (NAC) in Wyndham is an established hub featuring a local shopping centre, schools, open spaces, and recreational facilities. However, it lacks a vision or guidelines for its operations and future growth. To help address this, Wyndham City Council worked towards a Woodville Place Plan and sought input from residents, businesses, and visitors to shape the area’s future.
Wyndham has since released the draft of the Woodville Place Plan and has encouraged locals to participate through different engagement tool methods. For instance, by utilizing the Form tool, Wyndham asked residents to read and submit their feedback on the plan. Wyndham also displayed the objectives and actions of the plan in a visually engaging format to simplify information and reduce text-heavy content. In addition, Wyndham utilized a Quick Poll as an easy way to get real-time responses from community members by asking them the following question: ‘How do you rate the plans for our Draft Woodville Place Plan?’.
Wyndham had also expanded its engagement efforts by making its engagement site multilingual, allowing residents to translate the content on the page according to their preferred language. This initiative aims to enhance accessibility and inclusivity, ensuring that all residents can easily engage with the information and have their say in community discussions regardless of their language proficiency.
City of Port Phillip | South Melbourne Structure Plan
3. Long Term Frameworks
The City of Port Phillip has prepared a new draft for its South Melbourne Structure Plan to help establish a long term vision for the next 20 years of South Melbourne. This plan will also be used to identify actions to manage change and help respond to challenges such as climate change, population growth and COVID-19.
As a way to educate and inform residents of the plan for the long-term framework, Port Phillip has utilized the Hotspot tool to help indicate to residents where the four precincts have been identified to deliver place-specific outcomes for South Melbourne. By clicking on each dot, members can view further information on the specific recommendations of each precinct as a way to help reduce text heavy content on the page. The City has also used other elements such as FAQ’s, a Document Library, and Facts cards as a way to provide further information to residents.
City of Boroondarra | Glenferrie Place Plan
4. Community’s Collective Vision
The City of Boroondarra created a ‘Glenferrie Place Plan’ to help guide the future revitalisation of the Glenferrie precinct in Hawthorn. As a product of closing the loop, this plan showcases extensive community feedback, research and analysis. It features urban greening and sustainable transport, arts events and smart technology, sports, recreation and revitalised laneways, tapping into what’s special about Glenferrie and its community.
As part of the Glenferrie Place Plan, Boroondara has utilized engagement tools like Feature Grids to highlight the nine initiatives and showcase the community’s shared vision for Glenferrie. By leveraging this engagement tool, Boroondara encourages residents to explore the plan visually, enabling them to delve deeper into information regarding their specific needs and interests.
Boroondara has also utilized the Timeline tool and a Follow button, encouraging residents to keep up to date with the long-term plan.
City of San Diego | Balboa Park Priortization Framework
5. Enhancements for an Ideal Park
The City of San Diego’s Parks and Recreation Department has engaged AEA Consulting to develop a Prioritization Framework for future Balboa Park capital projects, to inform future decision-making and provide better alignment between available resources and what residents want to experience when they visit.
Using a mixture of online and in-person engagement to seek input from the community, San Diego utilized digital tools such as the Social Map, where they asked residents the following question – “Where would you like to see improvements in Balboa Park?”. This allowed residents to add a marker to specific locations of the map and add a comment with what they would like to see renovated or enhanced. As a result of their engagement efforts, San Diego garned over 400 contributions!
San Diego had also used the Gather tool to ask for additional feedback which encouraged residents to either add a comment or a photo to share their story. Along with the Fund It tool by using the posints system to get community members to vote on ‘Which draft criteria do you want to prioritize?’.
The City of Holdfast Bay | Parklets
Bonus Project: Low Barrier Engagement
Here’s a bonus project, which highlights one of our predicted community engagement trends for 2024; low barrier engagement. The City of Holdfast Bay have been engaging the community on what they think about ‘Parklets’. Parklets are little pop-up spaces that utilise one or two car parking spaces to extend the public realm. For example extra seating for a cafe, the installation for a popular food truck or safe lock up spaces for bicycles.
In this project Holdfast have utilised two engagement tools, timed how long each will takes to participate in to respect participants time and given the community the choice on which one suits them for providing feedback. Information is clear and to the point and utilises tools like the Fact Cards and FAQ tool to keep things brief.
These community engagement placemaking projects showcases the power of collaboration and shared input for public participation between government staff and residing residents. By involving community members in the planning and decision-making processes, these initiatives will not only help to support their specific needs and interests, boost tourism and the neigborhood area, but also fostering a sense of ownership and belonging among residents.
As we look ahead to the future of placemaking, these examples serve as inspiring models for empowering communities and creating vibrant, sustainable, and people-centric spaces.
Before we look forward and reveal our predictions for the top 2024 trends in online community engagement, let’s look back. 2023 was the year that saw some very clear trends, especially in the digital community space. We saw hybrid engagement come of age, we saw really clear stages in engagement, and we even saw the rise of AI. Below, we’ve listed the five trends we have mapped as the top 2023 online community engagement trends.
The Solidification of Hybrid Engagement
Staged Engagement
Community Development and Going Beyond the Project
Participatory Budgeting
The Initial Adoption of AI in Community Engagement
1. The Solidification of Hybrid Engagement
We predicted this two years ago and it was certainly de rigueur for most when planning community engagement over the past year. Various forms exist, but many projects showcased a mix of online and offline engagement strategies.
City of Port Adelaide Enfield, South Australia | School Idea’s Pitch Project
The City of Port Adelaide Enfield represented this trend well with their ‘School Idea’s Pitch’ Project, which saw students act as elected members and make mock Council decisions on various issues offline. Their ideas were then shared online for community comment and support through upvoting, with some ideas being taken to the Council’s chamber for discussion. This was a great way to get younger members of the community engaged in what local government does at an early age and a good example of the value of hybrid engagement.
City of Clarington, Canada | Parks, Recreation and Culture Master Plan
On the Canadian side, Clarington in Ontario implemented a robust hybrid engagement strategy for their Parks, Recreation and Culture Master Plan, which included pop-up open houses around town, online meetings at various times of day, asynchronous digital engagement surveys, and even in-person kiosks at City Hall. The kiosks in particular saw great positive feedback on bridging the digital divide and high levels of engagement throughout the second half of 2023. It will be exciting to see how the kiosks are used going forward, and how peer municipalities learn from Clarington’s example.
2. Staged Engagement
When we say staged, we don’t mean fake news. Instead, what we mean are consultations with multiple stages of engagement from early engagement, even pre-engagement, through to closing the loop. Using a digital engagement platform makes staged engagement even easier and facilities a more robust process.
Strathbogie Shire, Victoria | Public Art Project
This was perfectly presented in Strathbogie Shire’s ‘Public Art’ Project, which started with pre-engagement to engage the community before the project had officially begun to see what community members were feeling, and ended with closing the loop to ensure that the participants were able to see the results of the project once it was concluded and so they could see their influence on the outcome.
Island County, Washington | Comprehensive Plan
With large and long-term planning projects, a similar goal can be achieved by using the same project space over time. Island County, Washington (USA), recently launched their Comprehensive Planning process with the intention of collecting ideas in the visioning stage, before later moving into the plan development stage. This will allow participants to influence the process while it’s still being developed and to find upcoming engagement opportunities both in- person and online.
3. Community Development and Going Beyond the Project
Late in 2023, at a conference in Canberra one of the speakers said, “people don’t live in projects, they live in places.” We couldn’t agree more. In the online space, what we have seen in the last year is the ‘traditional’ online community engagement starting to go beyond the project and transitioning to include more ongoing relationship and community development type projects. This will certainly continue into 2024 as it adds more value to the online space and also helps maintain and engage the online community.
City of Port Adelaide Enfield, South Australia | Get Shady Project
In 2023, a stand out project in Australia was the City of Port Adelaide Enfield’s ‘Get Shady’ project which engaged the community long term to distribute over 3000 native species of trees to help create a shade canopy to tackle climate change. This simple yet important project has helped the local government develop its relationship with the community on an issue that is on everyone’s minds while not providing a strict timeline.
Village of Deforest, Wisconsin | Birds of Deforest and Houses for Them
We also saw elements of this ‘beyond the project’ style work in North America in towns like Deforest, Wisconsin, where they are using Social Pinpoint to capture community spirit and a little bit of Citizen Science around birdwatching and acknowledging the role of community advocates to preserve and support this activity.
4. Participatory Budgeting
Participatory Budgeting started in Brazil in the 1980s, and it was used across Europe as a recovery tool to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). It is now growing in use throughout Australia and North America. It’s not surprising that we are starting to see a big increase in the use of Social Pinpoint’s Fund It tool.
Now a popular tool, Fund It is certainly seeing more use in local government budgeting processes. It’s also often used in funding community projects; for example, participatory budgeting and tradeoff exercises can be used to engage the public in choosing everything from building elements of playgrounds and dog parks, to voting on the final designs for public art and mural projects.
Bayside City Council, Victoria | Library of Things
A favorite of ours is Bayside City Council’s ‘Library of Things‘ because it encapsulates the local government’s desire to spend public money on items for the library, like lawn mowers and kitchen utensils. But it takes away the stigmatic cost element by first asking the Community to choose items using points in the Fund-it tool and secondly by asking them to provide their own ideas via the Gather tool. While there is no project decision here to be made, the community is using participatory budgeting to own its Library of Things.
In Monterey, California, they deployed the Fund It tool to assess community values around distribution of housing units (instead of dollars or points!). The question posed was: “We need to accommodate X many additional housing units in Monterey over the next X many years, how would you distribute those units among the following neighborhoods?” The Fund It tool gave project managers space to explain the tradeoffs involved in choosing different neighborhoods while still keeping the budgeting exercise simple enough to be accessible to a broad cross-section of interested community members.
5. The Initial Adoption of AI in Community Engagement
While we are only just really learning the possible impacts (good and bad) of AI in community engagement, ChatGPT set the world alight earlier in 2023 with talk of how AI could help us with our everyday lives. If you attended any conference between September and December 2023 in the community engagement space, you would have surely encountered at least one workshop, session or keynote on the subject. Earlier last year, IAP2 North America even hosted a six-part series on the role of AI in public participation while at least three sessions at the IAP2 Australasian Conference were about AI.
What we have learnt is that there are both advantages and disadvantages to early adoption with AI. Speed and efficiency are great at an organizational level; however, the human element is often critical in a community engagement context, and data privacy and reputational risk must be carefully considered in the deployment of AI tools. Are your communities and stakeholders ready for it, even if you are?
We were excited to see these trends advance the field of community engagement in 2023. While some of these trends, such as hybrid engagement, continued to build from previous years, we expect many of these trends, like the growth of AI, will certainly continue to take shape into 2024.
In a recent study released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in October 2023, it was revealed that 42.9% of Australians aged 16–85 had experienced a mental health disorder at some point in their lives. Specifically, within the last few years, predominantly during the pandemic years from 2020 to 2022, it indicated that 21.5% of individuals aged 16–85 had a 12-month mental disorder, while 37.9% had a selected physical condition. Comparing this to the 2017-18 data, there was an increase from 20.1% to 17.5% in 2014-15 for Australians with a mental or behavioural condition.
Concerning this surge in mental health disorders, we spoke with a well-known mental health agency to understand the implications for engagement levels between individuals and agencies post-pandemic.
When it comes to mental health engagement, a local focus is preferred. Those accessing mental health services tend to favour local services with regional knowledge, often avoiding online relational engagement tools. Mental health services predominantly engage online by sharing resources and facilitating support groups, including reference groups comprising individuals with specific mental health conditions and groups involving their families and caregivers.
Present engagement activities primarily involve surveys conducted by various agencies, while face-to-face grassroots engagement occurs at the local level through offices, established meeting places, or social media where data management and analysis are challenging.
Despite agencies utilising social media for organic content and advertising outreach, engaging service users with privacy and confidence remains a challenge.
Considering the ongoing outreach, feedback, and engagement, why not explore the use of a digital engagement platform to consult individuals, involve groups, and promote resources and outcomes from these collaborations, especially at a local level?
Five Benefits of Utilizing Digital Engagement for Mental Health Professionals
Here are five benefits of utilizing digital engagement for professionals in the mental health field when the focus is on staying local:
Enhanced Local Connections
Increased Accessibility
Tailored Support Services
Reduced Stigma at a Local Level
Collaborative Local Initiatives
1. Enhanced Local Connections
Digital community engagement facilitates mental health professionals in establishing stronger connections within their immediate geographical area. This approach fosters a sense of community and solidarity, exemplified by the City of Melbourne’s successful Neighbourhood Portals on Social Pinpoint.
Peer Support Groups – Facilitating online peer support groups where individuals can connect, share experiences, and provide mutual support. Peer support has shown to be effective in reducing feelings of isolation and promoting a sense of belonging.
2. Increased Accessibility
Digital community engagement platforms broaden the reach of mental health professionals, connecting with a more diverse audience locally. This accessibility extends support to individuals who may face barriers to traditional in-person services due to geographical limitations or disabilities. Social Pinpoint’s bespoke translation tool enhances engagement diversity across different languages in your locality.
Crisis and intervention resources – Ensuring that the platform includes easily accessible crisis intervention resources, such as helplines and mental health crisis services is vital. Having immediate access to support in times of crisis is crucial.
3. Tailored Support Services
Professionals can use digital engagement platforms to collect local information, offering support services and resources tailored to the unique needs of their community. Social Map simplifies data collection for a more effective understanding of local challenges.
Interactive Assessments and Screening Tools – Include evidence-based mental health assessments and screening tools to help individuals self-assess their mental health. These tools can guide users to appropriate resources based on their needs.
4. Reduced Stigma at a Local Level
Engaging with digital communities allows mental health professionals to address stigma directly. By participating in local conversations about mental health, they can break down stereotypes and promote open dialogue, ultimately reducing stigma on a community scale. Social Pinpoint’s Conversation tool facilitates open discussions in groups or privately.
Psychoeducational resources – Provide evidence-based psychoeducational resources on various mental health topics. This can include articles, videos, and infographics that offer practical tips and information for managing mental health challenges.
5. Collaborative Local Initiatives
Digital platforms provide a space for mental health professionals to collaborate with local organizations, government agencies, and community leaders. This collaborative approach ensures that solutions are well-suited to the local context. Social Pinpoint’s Private Project functionality allows professionals to work together confidently before launching any initiatives.
Community initiatives – Engaging the community in collective challenges or initiatives that promote a sense of unity and purpose. Collaborative efforts can contribute to a supportive community environment.
In summary, digital community engagement offers mental health professionals a range of benefits, including enhanced local connections, the ability to tailor support services, reduced stigma at a local level, collaborative local initiatives, and targeted outreach and services. These advantages empower professionals to make a significant impact on the mental health and well-being of their local communities.
As the festive season dawns upon us, it’s tempting to assume that community engagement should take a back seat while individuals revel in the holiday cheer away from home. Community engagement during the holidays goes beyond decorations and celebrations; it’s about building connections and plans that last. Therefore, it’s precisely during this time of joy that nurturing engagement becomes even more vital.
Let’s explore how community engagement can be adapted during the festive period, considering the travel and festivities that often pull residents away from their usual life cycle routines.
Three Strategies for Festive Community Engagement
In the spirit of the holiday season and nurturing connections, here are three strategies that can be utilized to boost your upcoming community engagement for the festive season.
Closing the Loop
Planning Ahead
Celebrating the Wins
1. Closing the Loop
Closing the loop in community engagement involves creating a feedback system that ensures once everyone’s voice has been heard, they get to hear how their input has influenced an outcome. The festive period often brings a sense of reflection, making it an ideal time to address projects that have advanced or closed throughout the year.
By actively closing the loop on community feedback, residents will feel valued and heard, fostering a stronger sense of belonging. With Social Pinpoint and Consultation Manager’s in-built emailer, you can use it to showcase all the excellent projects that you have closed, much like a family Christmas newsletter.
2. Planning Ahead
While the festive season is a time for joy and celebration, it’s also a crucial period for planning your community engagement initiatives for the year ahead. Therefore, use this time to gather input on potential projects from colleagues around the organization, possible events you could support, and improvements that can be made from what you have learned in the past 12 months.
Hosting visioning sessions or collaborative workshops both with colleagues and community groups can help identify community priorities. Planning ahead not only ensures a smoother execution of future initiatives but also demonstrates a proactive commitment to better community engagement.
By utilizing the data you have collected on tool use and participation levels in Social Pinpoint and/or reports on issues learnt and interaction types in Consultation Manager, planning how best to engage next on that sticky upcoming project should be well informed and easier than pulling a Christmas cracker when the time comes to deliver.
3. Celebrating the Wins
Reflecting on the achievements and positive changes within the community after a successful project is essential for morale and motivation not only for the community who participated but also the staff that have spent many hours planning, executing and delivering. Take the time to celebrate the wins, both big and small.
Whether it’s completing a project, reaching an engagement goal, or fostering positive stronger and bigger relationships, ensure you acknowledge and share these successes. Celebrating these wins not only boosts morale but also inspires a sense of pride and accomplishment, encouraging continued active participation. With over 30 content tools in Social Pinpoint, showing these wins off in a high visual and active way is simple. It’s like putting the icing on the Christmas cake.
As we immerse ourselves in the festive spirit, let’s not forget the power of community engagement. While we certainly don’t advocate doing any engagement over the Christmas period – unless it’s something fun like City of Canada Bay’s Christmas Window competition or helpful like City of Pittsburgh’s Snow Angels, using this time for closing the loop on feedback, planning ahead for the future, and celebrating the wins are three key components that can elevate your practice during this joyous season.
By fostering connections, being actively prepared for the next 12 months, and recognising achievements, organisations and communities can lay the groundwork for a thriving and engaging future together. Happy holidays!
In today’s fast-paced world, digital community engagement has become a game-changer not just for government agencies looking for support with decision-making processes but for sports clubs looking to engage their members and wider sports communities beyond the game.
It is transforming the way they connect with paying fans and those who wish to become part of what is almost like a close-knit family around one single passion. Sports club members, after all, are often die-hard supporting mouthpieces with a high level of feedback that clubs could ultimately benefit from listening to and using their knowledge to shape the club’s future.
Recently in Australia, at the FIFA Women’s World Cup, almost two million fans attended the games (total) – up by more than 600,000 from the previous record. In the AFL (Australian Football League), this year’s paid membership figures show that most clubs broke the previous year’s records, with three clubs now tallying over 100,000 members. In the UK, the Premier League dominates, with Manchester United claiming to have a worldwide fan base of over one billion fans, while across the big pond in the NBA (National Basketball Association). The New York Knicks are said to have a TV market size of nearly 7.5 million people. That’s a lot of people you could engage and listen to.
Benefits of Digital Community Engagement for Sport Clubs
If you’re involved in sports club membership, community engagement or multicultural community liaison, here are five key areas highlighting the incredible benefits of using a digital community engagement platform for your sports club:
Enhanced Member Experience
Community Building
Inclusive and Diverse Communities
Data-Driven Decision-Making
Member-Driven
1. Enhanced Member Experience
Being Part of their Club’s Decisions: Digital engagement platforms allow sports clubs to provide their direct members with relevant updates, invitations, and news to ultimately be able to participate in key decisions affecting their club. This personal touch enhances the overall member experience by being able to contribute to the club’s future.
Club Ownership: Members can participate in discussions, collaborate on club decisions and share opinions and ideas as the club moves forward. Being listened to in key areas will make members feel like they are a bigger part of the club. This can create more positive relationships between sporting clubs and their members, by building trust with its management and owners.
2. Community Building
Online Forums and Groups: Digital engagement fosters community building through the ability to create online forums and groups where members can interact, share experiences, and build lasting connections with fellow sports enthusiasts. The club itself can use this data to improve fan and member experience as well as reach potential members.
Gamification: Many sports clubs use digital engagement to introduce gamification elements, such as challenges, rewards, and leaderboards, which further motivate and engage members. Imagine running a challenge to design next year’s Home kit and the engagement that would achieve.
3. Inclusive and Diverse Communities
Broadening Membership: Digital engagement platforms enable sports clubs to reach a wider audience, including potential new members and fans, making it easier to attract individuals from diverse backgrounds, skill levels, and interests. The use of visual content tools or multilingual translation means those who would often find it hard to engage with the club can now access and take part in their own time.
Inclusivity Initiatives: Clubs can use digital channels to promote inclusivity by organising events, workshops, and resources that cater to a broad spectrum of members, fostering a sense of belonging for all. With digital tools, in-person events can be enhanced to provide a hybrid approach while those that can’t make it can still participate from the comfort of their own home and not miss out.
4. Data-Driven Decision-Making
Analytics Insights: Digital engagement platforms provide valuable data on member engagement, preferences, and participation rates. This data can inform club leaders about what works and what needs improvement, helping them make informed decisions.
Example of Hume City Council’s using the Fund-It Tool for their Sunbury Aquatic & Leisure Centre Project
Feedback Loops: Clubs can collect member feedback through multiple engagement tools online such as surveys and polls, enabling them to make adjustments to improve the overall fan experience. The ownership will increase when they see they are being listened to. A great example here is the Hume City Council engaging the community on a new swimming facility by using Social Pinpoint’s Fund-it tool to help shape pool equipment choices.
5. Member-Driven
User-Generated Content: Digital platforms empower members to contribute content, such as photos, videos, and stories, allowing them to actively participate in shaping the club’s identity, history and culture collaboratively. Most professional clubs these days have an Instagramable mascot, why not ask younger fans to engage with the mascot online and get their feedback with someone they connect with on match-day. By having the mascot ask questions or for younger members to share, you will gain data and insights from a different demographic.
Geographic reach: Most sports clubs these days, whether small town amateur league to the multi-million dollar clubs of the AFL, NFL, and Premier League, have great geographic reach (remember Manchester United’s world stats, according to a survey conducted by Roy Morgan in 2019, Manchester United is the third most popular football club in Australia, with 1.12 million fans). With digital engagement it doesn’t matter where a member lives, they can still feel part of their club and interact with each other.
As a result, digital community engagement is a winning strategy for sports clubs. It’s about forging meaningful connections and building a thriving sports club community. It enhances the member experience, provides valuable insights, and opens up inclusive, member-driven, and collaborative environments that celebrate achievements and foster a sense of belonging.
If you are the champion of community engagement within sports clubs, harnessing the power of digital engagement will undoubtedly help you take your club’s sense of togetherness to new heights, ensuring it remains strong and vibrant for years to come.
When it comes to collecting authentic and high-quality data, mandatory registration for your community engagement site can prove to be a valuable tool. With the implementation of mandatory registration, organizations can enhance their decision-making and community engagement efforts by ensuring that feedback is received from genuine individuals who are true residents of the area.
The mandatory registration process requires individuals to provide their personal details before participating in community activities. The data collected then enables organizations to consistently improve and tailor their engagement initiatives, therefore creating more relevant experiences that better cater to the specific needs of the community.
While mandatory registration may encounter certain barriers, such as community resistance and concerns about data collection, it is essential to prioritize transparency and openness throughout this process. By building trust within the community, and remaining honest about how data is collected and stored.
In this article, we will explore the benefits of using mandatory registration and provide recommendations on how to effectively implement this useful tactic on your community engagement site.
What are the benefits of mandatory registration for community engagement?
While open, public projects are great for community engagement and getting everyone involved, they can also come with their own challenges.
As these projects are available for anyone and everyone to get involved and have their say, it’s almost impossible to track unique instances of feedback or understand the demographic breakdown of responses. Data can be distorted and skewed, especially if certain stakeholder groups are actively dominating the conversation.
Because of this, these open projects sometimes have the ability to sway certain outcomes in a different direction compared to ideal participants and their preferences.
Even though you are receiving a large amount of feedback, these individuals may not actually be representative of your community of interest. This is where mandatory registration comes in.
By encouraging people to register on your community engagement site, you can remain confident that the feedback you are receiving is not only genuine but is coming from stakeholders that have a vested interest in the project.
With mandatory registration, you also gain access to more accurate and valuable insights, such as demographic data, to better understand your community’s needs and concerns. This valuable data empowers you to tailor your engagement strategies to ensure you are truly reaching a representative cross-section of your community and effectively target the right audience.
Mandatory registration allows organizations to maintain a database of community members, enabling you to establish stronger connections, gather feedback, and provide personalized support. It can also be used to facilitate effective communication, as registered participants can be notified about upcoming events, updates, or opportunities for involvement.
And, as you consistently capture unique data from community members, you can further understand and identify where you may see gaps in representation and reach – allowing you to pivot your strategy when needed.
How can you implement mandatory registration for community engagement?
If you are considering implementing the use of mandatory registration for your community engagement initiatives, let’s explore the recommended steps to help you get started.
1. Gradually implement mandatory registration.
Whilst change can be new and exciting, your community may be confused or concerned about the shift.
If you were to suddenly implement mandatory registration, you may encounter resistance from your community. Folks may have questions about the purpose of data collection or the need for providing personal information. People can be very cautious about their personal data and privacy, especially among older generations.
If you’re looking to implement mandatory registration, we’ve had a few clients trial this technique on specific projects or different participation tools – just so they can understand the impact this may have on feedback.
It is also important to be open and transparent with the public about your intentions, by providing information and addressing any concerns or questions you can ensure everyone is on the same page.
2. Inform your community through various communication channels
Okay, so you’ve conducted a trial with your community, and you’re ready to implement mandatory registration across your entire engagement site. What’s next?
To prepare your community and ensure they are well-informed about this change, early communication is key. But what is the most effective approach?
We recommend using a mix of information and visuals to explain the change. Visuals can be highly effective in conveying information as they are often easier to understand compared to plain text. Videos, in particular, provide a powerful tool to explain the process and highlight the benefits.
It is also vital to select the appropriate platforms to reach your community effectively. Review where your community connects with you most and consider utilizing multiple channels to maximize your reach and engagement.
Let’s delve deeper and review which channels you can utilize to inform your community regarding mandatory registration.
Email marketing campaigns.
By evaluating your existing membership base, you can work towards developing an email marketing campaign to inform your community of this change. The primary objective of this campaign will be to ensure that your clients are well-informed about the change, including its purpose, benefits, and any necessary actions they need to take prior to the implementation date.
This personalized approach will help foster engagement, maintain transparency, and enhance the overall user experience throughout this transitional phase.
Social media promotions.
It is likely that some individuals may have previously opted out of receiving emails, while others may not have received them simply because they haven’t subscribed to your email campaigns. Therefore, it’s crucial to ensure that these individuals are still informed about the change. One effective alternative for reaching out to your community is through your social media channels.
Social media serves as an excellent platform to keep people updated and also offers an opportunity to expand your membership base. This can be accomplished either through organic reach or through paid advertising campaigns.
Website articles and FAQs.
Your organization’s website (or current engagement site) serves as a centralized hub of information, allowing anyone who visits the site to easily stay informed about changes and recent developments. By featuring this important update on the homepage, you ensure maximum visibility and accessibility for a wide range of users.
This also presents an opportunity to direct users to an article, video, or frequently asked questions (FAQ) section, offering more detailed information to address any potential confusion.
3. Implementing and evaluating your mandatory registration process.
Once you have informed your community, it is now time to implement mandatory registration (you made it!).
Throughout this implementation period, you may get some more confusion or pushback, but it’s important to be patient with your community and provide more support to ensure folks feel safe and informed.
At the end of the day, this will save your community loads of time as they won’t have to consistently enter demographic information. And, people will only receive the most relevant updates and notifications that align with their interests.
Once implemented, it’s also important you carefully monitor and evaluate whether mandatory registration aligns well with your community. Have you achieved your intended objectives? This includes gathering feedback from a wide variety of tools and analyzing the quality of feedback you’ve collected.
By assessing the quality of feedback and overall satisfaction of participants, you can easily pinpoint any challenges or barriers faced by your community and identify areas for improvement.
Is your feedback more representative of your intended audience? Are you identifying greater gaps in your engagement strategy and targeting? Do you need to focus more on specific age groups? Are locals in certain areas not engaging?
Implementing mandatory registration gradually enables the collection of higher-quality feedback and promotes authentic engagement within the community. By addressing concerns and maintaining transparency regarding data collection and usage, you can effectively mitigate fear and resistance among community members.
Additionally, leveraging a variety of communication channels such as email marketing campaigns, social media platforms, and your organization’s website ensures widespread visibility and accessibility. This approach guarantees that all community members stay well-informed about updates and changes, fostering a sense of unity and shared understanding.
Community engagement doesn’t have to be the same-same, basic and formal experience. In fact, incorporating interactive and enjoyable activities into your community engagement efforts can transform them into something truly memorable. Here are 5 fun examples of community engagement that will boost participation and invite interaction from your audience.
Infusing ‘fun’ into your community engagement can foster trust and open communication. It allows your community to connect with you differently and build an exciting, collaborative experience that isn’t hinged on feedback alone.
You can also create a more inclusive and vibrant community with fun, gamified activities. This, in turn, allows for more positive collaborations, shared decision-making, and a sense of ownership within your community. As a result, your entire community engagement process can become more enjoyable and memorable.
Here’s our round-up of 5 fun community engagement examples to draw some inspiration from:
Community Competitions
Supporting Local Businesses
Future of Open Spaces
Wildlife Management
Crossing the Digital Divide
1. Community Competitions
Gladstone Regional Council orchestrated an exciting community competition as part of their Easter in Gladstone 2023 Photography Competition. The main goal of this captivating initiative was to involve residents, visitors, and community hobbyists in capturing local photos that showcased the Gladstone region from their unique perspective.
Photographers of all skill levels were enthusiastically encouraged to participate in this competition and contribute their entries via a Gather tool. The community played a crucial role in determining the most popular photo by ‘Liking’ their favorite.
Council even incentivized the competition for winners with a $250 voucher, a certificate signed by the local Mayor, and even the opportunity to have their photo showcased on a billboard.
In light of COVID-19, the City of Canada Bay implemented a campaign known as ‘Love Local‘. The primary objective of this project was to offer support to local businesses in the area of Canada Bay by enabling them to register their address and company information to be featured on a Social Map.
The interactive nature of the Love Local SocialMap aimed to assist the 90,000 residents of Canada Bay in easily locating and actively supporting local businesses during challenging circumstances. By providing a centralized and easily accessible online resource, the campaign played a crucial role in fostering community engagement and reinforcing the resilience of the local economy.
The Love Local still receives contributions from local businesses 3 years later!
City of Canada Bay’s Love Local Social Map
3. Future of Open Spaces
Merri-bek City Council has developed an inspiring project aimed to empower the community in shaping the future of their Open Space Strategy. For this project, the Council wants to hear directly from the people who use the spaces and places around Merri-bek to make sure the city remains liveable, green, and sustainable for generations to come.
By recognizing the importance of gathering input directly from their targeted community through online conversations, Merri-bek aims to receive feedback from the people who use and appreciate these spaces and places to help shape the future.
So far, Council have taken advantage of using a multitude of tools to help create a highly engaging and interactive experience that provides helpful information to guide their community to contribute.
The Council also plans to venture into various local areas by organizing a series of pop-up sessions and in-person workshops. These in-person events are all about bringing the Council staff directly to the community to spark meaningful conversations and gather further valuable insights.
Interestingly, Merri-bek City Council has also pledged to engage community members at the level of ‘involve’. This level of transparency with the community on what level of impact they have on the Open Space Strategy is incredible to see.
“For this project we will be engaging our community at the level of ‘Involve’ on the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) Spectrum.
This means we will work to ensure the community’s concerns and aspirations are directly reflected in the strategy and provide feedback on how public input influenced the decision.”
Merri-Bek City Council’s Outdoor Spaces Project
4. Wildlife Management
Have you spotted a macropod lately? The Sunshine Coast Council came up with a cool fun project to create a plan in supporting the population of kangaroos, wallabies, and pademelons in their Draft Macropod Conservation Plan.
The Sunshine Coast is home to a beautiful array of native wildlife and the Council recognizes that wildlife management is a shared responsibility across multiple land tenures. Because of this, this project really highlights the importance of partnerships with all stakeholders across the Sunshine Coast to contribute to this plan.
So, to gather some valuable data and input from their community, the Council conducted a fantastic survey using the Form tool to help identify priority actions for the next three years. Alongside their survey, Council also released a Social Map to encourage the community to identify where macropods live across the Sunshine Coast.
This project is a great example of balancing essential community feedback with a variety of interactive elements that spark further interest and intrigue to encourage participation. By providing an opportunity for the community to voice their thoughts, the Council aims to foster a sense of shared responsibility and solidify the long-term well-being of macropods.
Sunshine Coast Council Macropod Map Sightings
5. Crossing the Digital Divide
The City of Calgary created their Digital Equity Strategy to explore and prioritize solutions to reduce the growing digital divide within Calgary’s communities.
The City wants to make concerted efforts so that Calgarians have the necessary technology access, tools, and skills to work, study, and connect online. The initiative builds upon the existing work on Smart Cities and Resiliency, focusing on closing the divide and strengthening the community’s social and economic fabric.
The Digital Equity Strategy goes beyond identifying challenges; it’s about taking action. From their collaborative brainstorming sessions with the community, the City of Calgary required community input to prioritize 17 actions.
Using the Fund It tool, the City provided the community with 20 points to virtually “fund” their top priorities. With most actions requiring anywhere between 1-5 points to fund, Calgarians were forced to make a trade-off and prioritize the initiatives most important to them.
This interactive process empowered the community to actively shape the Digital Equity Strategy to make Calgary more digitally inclusive, so that everyone can thrive in their living, working, playing, and personal growth experiences.
Example of City of Calgary’s Fund It Tool
How to Create Fun and Interactive Community Engagement Projects?
As a community engagement practitioner, you hold the key to creating fun, interactive, enjoyable, and memorable experiences for community members. The one rule here is to actually try and break the rules of your usual, standard engagement template.
You need to try and break the norm of what your community expects and create an experience that encourages participation.
What tool have you never used before? Could you use images or icons to relay text better? Is there a fun project you could test?
When you break down the barrier of formal participation, you can also create a friendly collaborative space to foster trust, open communication, and mutual understanding with your community.
This lays the foundation for shared decision-making and a greater sense of ownership and camaraderie among community members, ultimately leading to a more inclusive and vibrant community.
In today’s digital world, online platforms and digital engagement tools have played a significant role in connecting communities closer together with their local and federal governments. As we continue to connect with our communities and capture private and personal data the need for understanding the impact of data protection and privacy in community engagement is essential.
Community engagement facilitates meaningful interactions by giving community members a voice to support decision makers in making better informed decisions.
So, as individuals are increasingly relying on online engagements for public participation and communication, it’s important for organizations to ensure that data protection and privacy are one of their main priorities.
But with the rise of digital technology and as more personal data is being shared and collected during online consultations, you might begin to wonder… Where is my information is going? Is my data being protected?
In this article, we will discuss the importance of data protection and privacy in community engagement by providing valuable insights into how organizations handle your data, so you can feel more confident in the safety and security of your personal information.
Why is data protection and privacy important in community engagement?
Making sure that personal data is safe and secure is not only a fundamental right but also essential in the context of community engagement.
Organizations need to assure their community that sensitive information is kept safe as they promote their dedication to creating a secure and trustworthy environment by ensuring data protection and privacy is a top priority.
Implementing robust data protection measures not only aids to fulfill legal obligations but it also creates a welcoming and respectful environment where everyone’s worth is recognized.
Protecting sensitive data by taking preventative measures to safeguard this information is essential. Implementing procedures like data encryption, access control, physical protection, and pseudonymization ensures an appropriate level of security in accordance with these associated risks.
Adhering to legal frameworks and regulations for data protection.
Data protection and privacy are critical considerations for organizations. Fortunately, legal frameworks and regulations have been implemented worldwide to help support these concerns. These regulations generally require organizations to be transparent and secure in how they handle their information
As a community engagement practitioner, you need to ensure that you are adhering to the relevant frameworks and regulations in your region.
Key principles of data protection.
While there are many different legal frameworks around the world, these regulations are usually governed by certain key privacy principles. When it comes to global regulations, it’s important to keep certain key principles in mind for your community engagement process.
GDPR’s 7 key principles provide a fantastic overview on morals and ethics your organization should uphold throughout your consultation period:
Lawfulness, Fairness, and Transparency: Process personal data legally and transparently.
Purpose Limitation: Collect data for specific purposes and avoid incompatible processing.
Data Minimization: Collect only necessary and relevant data.
Accuracy: Ensure personal data is accurate and up to date.
Storage Limitation: Retain data for the necessary duration and delete it when no longer needed.
Integrity and Confidentiality: Implement security measures to protect personal data.
Accountability: Demonstrate compliance with the GDPR and maintain records of processing activities.
Here’s an example that demonstrates the implementation of Lawfulness, Fairness, and Transparency:
A local government decides to conduct a community survey to collect feedback on upcoming infrastructure projects. To ensure transparency, they explicitly communicate the purpose of the survey, explain how the data will be utilized, and clarify the legal grounds for processing participants’ data. They provide transparent information on data protection measures, such as anonymizing responses and ensuring data confidentiality.
By following these steps, the local government ensures compliance with the GDPR principle of Lawfulness, Fairness, and Transparency. They prioritize open communication, respect participants’ rights, and provide clear information on how data is collected, used, and protected.
As you can see, these principles help organizations safeguard individuals’ privacy and adhere to global regulations.
Ensuring your community engagement platform is private, secure, and safe.
When utilizing online platforms for community engagement, it is essential to prioritize privacy to safeguard sensitive information and foster a trusted and secure environment for community members to participate and interact. Consider the following measures:
Secure Infrastructure
Community members can choose reputable platforms that employ robust security measures, such as encryption, to safeguard their user data. Social Pinpoint, for example, is ISO 27001 Certified, achieving the highest standard of security, safety, and support.
Private Projects, Anonymity and Pseudonymity
Offering private projects or the choice to participate anonymously/using pseudonyms can help you can create a safer space for community members to participate in a more closed environment. This fosters a sense of comfort and feeling more secure by eliminating concerns about identification.
Citizen Membership
Citizen memberships often entails a verification process to ensure that community members are genuine and accountable for their actions. This helps maintain a safer and more trustworthy environment for community members within the platform. With Social Pinpoint, you can build a flexible and customizable user registration system to capture members.
Access Controls
User permissions enable your organization to control access and make sure that only the appropriate people can view and update sensitive information. Access controls are a great way of lowering the chance of unauthorized leaks or data breaches. Social Pinpoint has a sophisticated user management system that lets users control and manage all users and their levels of permission and access.
Next steps to implement better data protection and privacy.
Data protection and privacy are paramount considerations when engaging communities.
Make sure your privacy policies are easy to find and understand. Let people know exactly how their personal information is treated, stored, and shared. And ensure you establish channels for community members to ask questions, voice concerns, and request modifications or deletion of their personal information.
By adhering to data protection frameworks, following key principles and keeping security top of mind, you can feel more confident that your community engagement data is safe. And, by taking these additional steps to maintain the privacy of your community members, you can instill greater confidence that they’re safe too.
Video is an extremely powerful tool to instantly capture the attention of your community and increase connection on a deeper level. With interactive and visual content being consistently preferred over traditional, text-based, or static media, it is no surprise that video content should be prioritized. In community engagement, video can transform a project and enhance information delivery – so here are 5 reasons why your team needs to use video content in community engagement.
According to a study republished by Forbes, “91% of consumers now prefer visual content over traditional, text-based or static media.” The versatility of video content makes it an effective tool for engaging diverse audiences with different interests and needs. It’s no surprise that video is becoming an incredibly popular and powerful tool for community engagement.
Videos are a great way to connect and engage your community by offering informative, insightful, emotive, or entertaining information. You see, videos are versatile and can be used in a variety of ways, from promoting community events and initiatives to providing educational resources or sharing personal stories. However, it’s important to understand the value of video and how it can help you improve your community engagement.
Also just a quick disclaimer, video content doesn’t have to be some big, outlandish production piece. Simply having a face or voice behind your project is a great start! So, what type of video content should you be focusing on?
What video content should you use?
Video content can come in various formats, which can include tutorials, vlogs, animated GIFs, live videos and webinars, recorded presentations, or even community stories.
Tutorials are designed to educate viewers on completing a task or performing a skill. We’ve seen some great examples of our clients showing exactly how to provide feedback if they’re testing out a new participation method.
Vlogs typically feature a person sharing their personal experiences or opinions on a topic. Sometimes an expert in the team can provide a more in-depth breakdown of a project.
Animated GIFs are short, looping video clips often used for comedic effects or to convey a quick message.
Live videos and webinars offer real-time interactions with viewers and allow you to have a conversation surrounding a specific topic or project. Already had a Virtual Town Hall? Great, share that recording on your project page and allow everyone to view!
Recorded presentations are pre-recorded discussions designed to be watched later. These videos can help provide a more structured approach to complex information.
Community stories feature individuals sharing their experiences and insights.
You may successfully deliver your message and engage your audience in a way that coincides with your communication objectives by selecting the best video format for your project.
Why you need to use video content in community engagement.
Video content is powerful and can be used to enhance your community engagement efforts. There are five key reasons why you need to be using video content, let’s take a closer look:
Your community will absorb information easier.
Your engagement team can repurpose more content.
The SEO of your engagement project will improve.
You will increase engagement, a lot.
Your community trust and connection will soar.
1. Your community will absorb information easier.
Did you know that people obtain information easier through visuals than by reading plain ol’ text? According an Insivia 2023 Marketing Report, people can retain 95% of information when they watch it in a video format, compared to 10% when reading it in text.
Videos are a type of storytelling that allows you to combine information into a short narrative to bring attention to your community in a manner that text cannot. Rather than simply listing facts, you can make your content more memorable by providing information to help you engage with your community on a deeper level.
A significant amount of text translated into a brief video with a representative speaking on a project provides another avenue to reinforce your message and to better connect with your community. The more educated your community is and understands what’s happening around them, the more input they will bring to aid you in making better-informed decisions.
2. Your engagement team can repurpose more content.
Are you ever stuck for content ideas? Videos are excellent for repurposing opportunities, as they can be utilized in different ways to give your content a fresh new life. Community engagement practitioners can repurpose video content by creating short clips or a series that focuses on specific aspects of a project you’re working on.
For example, have you already hosted an online event or town hall? If so, then you can easily upload a copy of this to your project to help provide more context and information. These videos may then be shared on your social media, website, or even email newsletters to increase interest and engagement from members of your community.
You can also transform your lengthy project text into presentations or webinars to educate your community further on the project and provide a new layer of visual context.
3. The SEO of your engagement project will improve.
Improving your project’s site ranking with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) techniques is incredibly helpful for community engagement as it can increase the visibility of your online presence, making it simpler for your community to participate and connect. Search engines (such as Google) prefer websites with video content and rank them 53 times higher than those without.
Video can increase the length of time people spend on your site, which will lead to longer engagement times overall. This is also a positive SEO indicator as Google will deem your content relevant and of high quality to your audience.
Uploading a transcript or subtitle file to your video can also boost the SEO and discoverability of your project whilst also providing more accessibility options for members of the community.
4. You will increase engagement, a lot.
Using video content increases the likelihood of generating an emotional response from members of the community. People are more likely to share memorable and relatable content if it is generated and communicated in a memorable and relatable manner. According to Forbes, videos can generate 1200% more shares than text and image content combined.
Video provides an additional avenue for the community to connect, be informed, and understand more about a project. Especially, if there is a physical change or shift that the public can see being built or developed, then a video can really help to envisage that.
Thankfully, Social Pinpoint’s flexibility allows video content to be embedded anywhere within your project. This will optimize your engagement for different levels of information and understanding as you can decide exactly where your video is located.
Video also provides the opportunity to introduce new engagement tools that the community might not be used to. If you’re looking to expand on the typical survey for example and use a budgeting tool, you can show your video exactly how to contribute feedback and what that will be used for.
5. Your community trust and connection will soar.
Videos are great for showing transparency, as your audience can observe the body language and tone of the speaker, which builds credibility. When it comes to adding a face behind those who are delivering a project, it creates a sense of emotional connection and builds trust. Videos can demonstrate the knowledge and expertise of a person or the organization behind the content by presenting information in a clear and simple manner, which also increases trust and legitimacy.
To put it simply, video marketing is a powerful tool for community engagement, as it provides an effective approach to interact and engage with your audience, through the use of visuals.
Video helps people remember more. Not only is it a powerful tool for helping people further understand and remember your organization, but it generally outperforms other content. Recently, HubSpot described just how insanely popular (and powerful) it is with more than nine out of 10 people reporting they want to see more videos from organizations in 2023.
Video helps build better community connection. Video allows you to use a combination of visual and auditory elements to convey emotions, ideas, and stories in a way that static, complex content cannot. Because of this, you are able to help viewers understand the people and issues involved in a community initiative, making it more likely they will feel invested in and motivated to contribute feedback.
