Go Vocal’s blog—get insights, advice, and all the latest information on trends to help you foster meaningful engagement.
Climate change, social equity, affordable housing, and sustainable mobility top the list of priorities for local governments. To address these effectively, there's an urgent need for better planning tools to meaningfully engage residents in the decision-making process. That’s why we’ve recently released a significant upgrade of our platform's interactive Mapping suite, turning it into a powerful toolbox for local governments and planners to harness collective wisdom and foster collaborative problem-solving.
Wildfires. Drought. Hurricanes. Floods. These days it seems like everywhere you look, some part of the world is experiencing a natural disaster. While some climate changes are natural, today’s rising temperatures and abnormal weather patterns are a direct result of human activities. While organizations, countries, and individuals are all taking steps to mitigate the burgeoning crisis, according to the United Nations we are not on track to meet the target set by the Paris Agreement to prevent the globe’s temperature exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Where do we go from here? Enter climate action plans.
Do you have a small team dedicated to community engagement efforts? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. The City of Allen has demonstrated how a small team can achieve excellent results by fostering widespread support throughout the organization and crafting a robust engagement strategy, strongly facilitated by its online community engagement platform.
So, you’ve engaged your community. You’ve asked residents and stakeholders to share ideas, cast votes, or take part in a survey. You might’ve even asked them to allocate budgets or invited them to an online workshop. And now, your community engagement results are in.
Whether you’ve been updating bicycle infrastructure or you’re struggling to connect transit options, it’s key to make your city’s mobility plan as inclusive as possible. So what exactly should you consider, and how should you go about it?
Running inclusive and participatory community engagement projects requires meeting people where they are. In part, that means having a plan for multilingual engagement to ensure that everyone in your community has the ability to participate. By removing language barriers, your community engagement efforts will be more inclusive, participatory, and representative.
Whether you’re working in the public or private sector, you’ll inevitably find yourself needing buy-in from community members and other stakeholders. Comprehensive plans, economic development plans, strategic plans, climate action plans, mobility plans – whatever your mandate, most planning processes share the same core components and necessitate public engagement.
Anonymous participation can be the key to unlocking engagement on topics that your community is divided on. We’ve helped clients host their fair share of such projects on Go Vocal platforms, and we heard the desire for an anonymous participation option loud and clear. Read more to learn how this latest feature can help increase engagement rates.
An effective community engagement team, similar to a well-tuned orchestra, relies on a mix of diverse roles each playing their unique part in harmony. As for most teams, the key to success lies in bringing together people with different personalities, skills, and abilities. We sat down with Hugo De Brouwer, CitizenLab’s Head of Government Success, to discuss which roles and skills an organization needs to take participation to the next level.
While citizens’ assemblies and panels have been around since the dawn of democracy, they’ve recently received increased attention as an effective means of resolving polarized debates and restoring public trust in democratic institutions.
When it comes to engaging with the public, social media is often a first instinct for many government officials. It is easy to access, widely utilized, and is often the first place people go to share their opinions on trending issues or topics in their communities. In fact, according to TechCrunch, 62% of adults now get their news from social media. But when it comes to meaningful and effective community engagement, especially if it’s in pursuit of inclusive and equitable policy-making, social media lacks the moderation, security, and deliberation required for officials to make truly representative decisions.
Understanding how your community – and who in your community – currently engages with local topics is crucial to identifying opportunities and gaps for your next community engagement project. Before getting started, consider who you need to reach and how you will do it.
It sounds like a contradictio in terminis, like ‘sound of silence’ or ‘sensible Twitter debate’. But ‘slacktivism’, a contraction of ‘activism’ and uh, ‘slacking’, has become a widespread phenomenon that urges us to reflect on the nature of activism and participation.
Digital community engagement can complement offline engagement, but it doesn’t replace it. Offline participation methods are still widespread, as they’ve proven their value for many communities by allowing for deliberation and debate.
A comprehensive community engagement strategy is key to ensuring the smooth launch of – and satisfying outcomes for – projects. Before initiating a project, it’s best to set clear objectives, define roles and responsibilities, and select the most promising communication channels. Looking for some guidance? Discover Go Vocal’s Online Engagement Canvas and how it can help you design your strategy.
Community engagement platforms can increase civic participation, improve trust between residents and governments, and can help collect data that increases the impact of your projects. When you optimize the way you use social impact data, there’s a real opportunity to assess a project’s performance and outcomes, improve future processes, and run more efficient and ethical projects.
On everything from clean water and waste management to access to sustainable transportation, it is crucial to put environmental justice at the forefront of your sustainability plans, and community engagement can be an essential tool to achieving this.
As one of CitizenLab’s co-founders, current Commercial Director, and previous Head of Government Success, Aline Muylaert has extensive experience working with local governments to develop and implement successful community engagement initiatives. We sat down for an interview with Aline to discuss the importance of leadership buy-in and ambition in building a culture of engagement.
Have you ever logged into an analytics dashboard and felt daunted by all the numbers on your screen? You’re not alone. When trying to measure the effectiveness of your online community engagement efforts, the challenge is to sift through numerous available metrics and analyze the relevant ones so you can get to actionable insights.
