Undertaking community engagement to support organisations and projects involves more than just a desire to connect and a few promotional efforts. Engaging effectively, in a manner which builds genuine connection and community capacity, requires organisational capability, knowledge and skill.

1. Project competence delivers…accountability

Usually when engaging you’re doing so on behalf of an organisation to fulfil its mission or to gain community support in achieving a purposeful project.  Having a project of sufficient rigour from which to engage community support, means ensuring it has critical design elements which relate logically to each other – clear objectives connected by seamless and principled processes. Every project has a reason, so its important to clearly express the project’s intended impact so it can be understood by everyone and then accountably managed. Describe it in terms of its objectives, the inputs (resources), actions and outputs required to complete it. Explain it’s desired outcomes and assign indicators which will inform everyone of the project’s progress and impact. Justify your strategies. Ensure  that the outputs and outcomes are measurable and your project resources – people, money and time – are sufficient to get the job done. And, importantly, clearly articulate all these elements in a cohesive and detailed plan.

2. Social capital delivers… action outcomes

Does your organisation have sufficient connection and positive relationship to reach into the community with whom you wish to engage ? Organisations who represent the community on a range of issues  of shared interest, generally have extensive community networks, this social capital is their core asset. These connections and the quality of the relationships are social capital that can be drawn upon when their common interests are at risk.

Without this capability any organisation seeking to engage the community and respond to threats to shared interest, needs firstly to invest adequate time and resources in establishing those connections and building understanding and trust with it’s constituents. Relationship, understanding and motivation pre-empt any collaborative community action. Engagement that has impact requires that people can be meaningfully organised and their energies mobilised towards real world action around shared concerns.

3. Stakeholder knowledge delivers…impact

Do you know who it is in the community with whom you want to engage and why ? What roles do they play in the ecology of your sector and your organisation ? Community isn’t a ‘mass’ public to which you send information, it’s a complex social system. The way people organise within it can either help or hinder an organisation’s progress or project’s success. A stakeholder analysis is undertaken in consideration of your corporate plan or project purpose. It delivers an accurate understanding of how individuals, organisations, agencies and other groups can be engaged to assist with your corporate mission or project’s purpose.

4. Research delivers… strategic value

Many tools exist for assisting with stakeholder analysis – some useful, some at best are for guessing. . Effective stakeholder analysis isn’t based on supposition – filling in the fields of a matrix or table. Even using a simple tool like a CLIP descriptor of power, interest and legitimacy needs to be based on real information -it’s about reducing risk. It requires genuine social research – at least informal and at best primary and undertaken on behalf of the organisation in consideration of it’s mission or the project’s purpose.

With a sound stakeholder analysis, you can then develop strategies for engagement based on what you genuinely understand about how stakeholders can and will work with you. Engagement approaches based on this knowledge help you to get to your destination,’ where you want to land’. Social research information determines ‘the right engagement tools to do the job’ and the allocation of sufficient time and resources to undertake that engagement within terms of mutual benefit. Without this core ingredient of successful engagement, efforts will be ad hoc – hit or miss… Unless there is money to waste and time to kill, don’t even bother undertaking community engagement without it.

5. Relationship delivers…collaborative power

Community and stakeholder perceptions are the critical social elements of your project’s plan. How is the engaging organisation perceived by its constituents ? What is it’s reputational status with the community? Is there conflict of interest or agenda between project partners, stakeholders or participants? Is the project based on a stable organisational commitment to fulfilling it’s stated obligations ? Can it respond flexibly to any changes in environmental conditions which impact its ability to progress ? Knowing the answers to these questions will contribute vital social information to the project’s risk analysis –a project’s social elements are critical to it’s viability and successful community engagement.

6. Capability delivers …mutual benefit

Engaging with the community involves more than having a chat.
Engaging participatively and claiming representation of interests requires that an organisation or project fosters the productive, trusting relationships borne of operating within the engagement principles of inclusion, equity, transparency and openness. The challenge for all organisations and projects is to build a team of engagement practitioners who can work with the community using understanding of and skill in engagement and facilitation.

7. ‘Terms of engagement’ delivers … trust

Furthermore, an organisation undertaking community engagement must be clear as to what it is promising as an outcome in reciprocal, mutual benefit of the engagement process. It’s making a promise to people. This may include information, influence in decision-making or involvement in action to affect those decisions. Ultimately the engagement seeks to build ownership of a proposed strategic direction, a decision, policy or course of action. If you don’t seek to deliver this level of promise from engagement, then be clear in your ‘terms of engagement’ at the outset.

Consultation, as an example of a type of community engagement, actively seeks people’s views and input into policy, plans and decisions, but ultimately decisions are made by the organisation for whom the consultation was undertaken. The promise : ‘those engaged will be informed, listened to and their concerns acknowledged…feedback on how their engagement influenced the decision will be provided to them’.

Consultation ‘must haves’…

• Clear purpose –what is being sought ,what is and isn’t negotiable.
• Clear understanding –who is being consulted and how they can be reached to get a response.
• Time for transparent engagement and response.
• No double-handling, views are sought once with any group.
• Transparent feedback to those consulted.
• Demonstrable contribution of the views of those engaged in the decision-making.
• Clear and transparent presentation of all information throughout the process.
• Adequate allocation of resources to ensure these requirements are fulfilled.

Adapt Strategic Communications – engagement planning and facilitation : www.adaptstrategic.com.au