The City of Allen, TX hit a strategic crossroads as it began the update of its comprehensive plan “Allen 2045”. With most of the city already built out, the challenge shifted from managing rapid expansion to guiding smart redevelopment.

Genuine community insight was essential, yet the team knew their traditional outreach wouldn’t yield the depth of feedback required.

Drawing on the earlier successes with the Go Vocal–powered “Engage Allen” platform – used previously for a major bond programme and several other initiatives – the city crafted a hybrid engagement approach, blending digital and in-person touchpoints to secure broad, meaningful participation.

"This project has fundamentally changed how I approach engagement moving forward. Instead of expecting large groups at weekend town halls, we're now reaching people in smaller groups of 10, 12, or 15 and leverage the online platform for asynchronous participation."

– Marc Kurbansade, Director of Community Development, City of Allen

The challenge: Overcoming an outdated engagement model

Marc Kurbansade, Director of Community Development, and Erik Waldbauer, Senior Engagement and Outreach Specialist, knew that Allen’s existing processes were no longer fit for purpose.

The traditional approach was resource-intensive and lacked the depth of insight needed to support high-stakes planning decisions.

Fragmented data and inefficient workflows

"It was important for us to modernize our approach because we've had so many engagement opportunities where we were constantly creating separate websites for each project," Marc explained.

"The Go Vocal platform allows us to centralize where we capture input and really enables us to go out and meet the people who wouldn't otherwise engage with the city."

Insufficient and skewed public data

Engagement Specialist Erik Waldbauer added that past efforts often left the city with unrepresentative data that was difficult to defend: "All of this engagement would have previously happened at in-person meetings. We would have been lucky if there were multiple meetings, and even luckier if more people showed up to the second meeting than the first."

The solution: A hybrid model supported with an accessible platform to remove barriers

Allen's solution was a hybrid engagement strategy using the Go Vocal platform as its central hub.

By approaching the process through a user experience lens, the team built seamless pathways that connected digital and in-person participation to make it easier for residents to engage.

The model was intentionally designed to generate higher-quality, more representative data by removing barriers to access and helping participants feel informed.

Bringing participation opportunities to events

While the city continued to host traditional public meetings, it significantly expanded its reach through targeted, strategic outreach.

"We also attended events hosted by our school district. Rather than organizing more events of our own, we brought comprehensive plan information and our consultants to places our residents are... and that got us tremendous visibility and participation,” Erik explains. “If you don't have strong relationships with other organizations in your community, start building them now.”

Bringing participation opportunities into people's homes and commutes

The Go Vocal platform provided the infrastructure for this new model:

  • A centralized hub for 24/7 input: Residents could participate on their own time, increasing the volume and diversity of feedback. As Erik put it: "It's much easier for someone to say, 'Okay, I don't have 5 minutes right now to take this online survey, but I can do it tonight when I get home'".
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  • Tools fostering high-quality feedback: An interactive timeline showed residents exactly where they were in the process, making it easier to understand when and how their input would matter. This clarity encouraged more people to participate.

    Paired with embedded documents and other contextual materials, the platform gave residents the information they needed to move beyond surface-level opinions and provide thoughtful, informed feedback.
  • Automated and efficient communications: The platform streamlined the process of keeping stakeholders informed in several ways:
    1. It sent automated emails to notify stakeholders of new project phases.
    2. The team could also send manual emails directly from the platform – for example, reminders to complete surveys.
    3. Once the council approved the plan, the platform shared the final version to close the feedback loop.

The results: A smarter process, broader reach, and more confident decisions

The new strategy of going out to residents where they are and giving them an accessible platform to participate on their own time delivered tangible results.

Apart from hundreds of people offline, the city engaged 612 households online and, most importantly, heard from a near representative sample of its population.

According to Marc, the platform played a crucial role in building transparent governance and public trust. “When we talk about trust, the first level is ensuring people believe their input is actually going somewhere... People don't want to fill out a survey that disappears into a black hole.”

It also served to empower council members with what he describes as a “data-driven political backstop.”

Marc: “At the end of the day, elected officials want to make sure they're hearing directly from their constituents and getting the true story, not information that's been filtered through staff or consultants. They can access this platform and see all the unfiltered data themselves. ”

Allen's success proves that you don’t need to choose between efficiency and equitable engagement. With the right platform, you get the tools and time to design processes that amplify both.

Ready to transform your community engagement strategy and be as successful as Allen? Schedule a demo with one of our experts today!

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