10 steps to effective Climate Action Community Engagement
If your town or city is working on Climate Action and you are wondering how the city can most effectively engage your community (which is critical at every climate action stage), below are the 10 steps to effective engagement.
The process may seem long, but most of the items in the list are related to planning. With proper planning, the execution will flow smoothly and you’ll see the greatest results. Remember that engaging your community goes well beyond putting a notice in the local newspaper – it requires a thoughtful marketing campaign. In order for a citizen to sit up and take notice, they need to be ‘touched’ at least 7 times!
So how do you effectively engage your community? Below are 10 essential steps to creating an effective community engagement program.
- Identify your Focus Areas
There are literally thousands of potential topics that relate to climate action and trying to communicate too many will result in little-to-no response from the community – other than complaints from annoyed people. On the other hand, identifying 5-8 focus areas will provide your residents with clarity and direction.
One great source for focus areas is in your “Summary of Findings” report from the planning phase. Look at the top priority actions and any community education or awareness actions that relate.For example, “Public education on energy efficiency and alternatives” or “Promote permaculture and sustainable solutions” or “Initiate public education on emergency preparedness.”
In addition, mix in 1-2 topics that are simply “Recent town/city actions related to climate resiliency” to communicate current or past town/city activity. - Set Engagement Goals
For each focus area, you’ll want to define engagement goals. Are you simply trying to provide awareness? Or, are you expecting (hoping for) a response or action from the citizen? You will also want to set measurable goals. For example, do you want to ‘reach’ 65% of your citizens? Do you want to achieve action from 25% of your citizens? You’ll also want to define how the measurement is handled, but that will be done after step 4 – Outreach Channels. - Develop your Personas
Not all focus areas will apply to all citizens and not all citizens are ‘reached’ in the same way. To help with the creation of your engagement strategy, you will want to create a handful of personas (roughly 3-8). Personas simply represent the various profiles of your citizens – your target audience. And, remember to include all socioeconomic profiles within your community. Various persona templates exist, but feel free to follow or reference the persona template that we provide. - Identify and/or Set up your Outreach Channels – Digital and non-digital
As part of your engagement strategy you will probably use a combination of digital (website, social media, mobile app, etc.) and non-digital (posters, banners, mailers, table top displays, townhalls, etc.) channels. Use your personas to understand which channels will have the most effect in reaching residents. Leverage the channels that you already have set up (i.e. city Facebook and Instagram channels, local newspapers, green community groups, etc.). Once your channels have been defined, you can complete Step 2 by identifying how you will measure your specific engagement goals. - Define Outreach Campaigns
A campaign is a coordinated set of actions based on a certain theme. Your campaigns will most likely be based on your focus areas. A campaign may span 1-3 months and will contain actions all related to a specific focus area.For example, if one of your focus areas is to reduce waste (trash), you may want to:
* Provide an infographic (to be hung in local establishments and distributed on social media) showing the current town/city waste volume and goals – and the actions that citizens can take to reduce their trash
* Provide educational information on website, social media, and app showing what can and can not be recycled – and how to keep recycling ‘clean’ such that it can go through the recycling process
* Solicit a volunteer team to ‘audit’ recycling bins neighborhood by neighborhood on the recycling day
* Set up a “Fix-It” or “Repair Café” to reinforce re-use versus replace habits
* Run a discounted or free trial period for curbside composting
* Provide education in the elementary and middle schools relative to reducing waste
* Involve the appropriate clubs (sustainability, climate action, environmental, etc.) at local High Schools
* Promote neighborhood garage sales and/or online market places like Facebook Marketplace
* Coordinate promotion of local second hand stores/shops like Goodwill or thrift stores
* Run recycling events for those items not accepted curbside – items like electronics, Styrofoam, etc.I think that you get the idea. The intent here is to provide repeated, related information and activities that connect with your citizens over a period of time. The average person needs to be ‘touched’ 7 times before they make a habitual change – a campaign is a good way to get a number of those touch points through to your citizens. And some of the activity you will want to continue, and build them into your normal sustainability effort after the official campaign is over.
- Create your Project Plan
In order to organize your activities, you’ll want to create a project plan. The project plan will include activities, required content, ownership, calendar/timeline, etc. We recommend placing your campaigns on the project plan first (spread out over time) and then filling gaps with ongoing topics like city actions, success stories, etc. Also, remember that all content does not have to be created from scratch – there are a number of good content sources out that you can use provided you credit the source. As a side note, we also provide a content library as part of our Green Community Homeowner Campaign package. - Identify your Resources and Define Roles
As you can see (and probably already know), an effective community engagement program requires a lot of work. You can not do this alone. You will want to identify a core team to define strategy/plan and then leverage volunteer teams and community advocacy groups to help carry out the activity. In looking at your extended teams, try to identify specific skillsets that can be used most efficiently. Some people are better at writing content, some people are great graphic designers, some people are great at setting up events, etc. - Identify Budget or Funds Required
Certainly you are trying to leverage as much volunteer help as possible, but you’ll also have expenses for events, printing, video production, program management, etc. You’ll want to identify the items that require budget and then identify where that budget is coming from. - Execute on Plan
Such a short bullet item for a monumental task, but, with proper planning, this task should go relatively smooth. Your project plan will become your guide as you progress. And, don’t be afraid to adjust as needed. - Quarterly Measurements, Analysis, and Adjustments
For many reasons, you’ll want to track progress. Some actions will yield results better than anticipated and some will be disappointing. That’s OK. By measuring progress, you can adjust and refine your approach. Take quarterly measurements of your goals identified in Step 2. Review the data – is it what you expected? Better or worse? Link your metrics to campaign activity dates to see if you can identify bumps in activity. Discuss potential adjustments with the core team. Be careful not to switch approaches to quickly as many engagement approaches take time to build, mature, and to show results.
It may seem like a lot, but most of it is proper planning. And with proper planning comes effective execution.
We hope that you find the information on our site helpful and invite you to reach out if you have any further questions or if you are interested in our turnkey Green Community Homeowner Campaign.