About Resource
While written for community-based development organizations, Keeping People Connected: A nuts-and-bolts toolkit for engaging residents, businesses, and property owners in problem-solving, decision-making and community-building provides helpful, practical tips that can be adapted to the science center and museum context. The guide outlines engagement strategies and tools to help you get people interacting in ways that help them learn, share, resolve conflicts, make decisions and plan actions.
Public Agenda is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization based in New York City, helping to build a democracy that works for everyone. By elevating a diversity of voices, forging common ground and improving dialogue and collaboration among leaders and communities, Public Agenda fuels progress on critical issues, including education, health care and community engagement.
How to Use
The toolkit includes numerous tools that enable you to begin diagnosing challenges and determine the community’s starting place. You can use these techniques in different combinations as part of an inclusive, well-rounded engagement strategy. Examples include:
- Understanding what is happening in your community through stakeholder and power/proximity mapping.
- Assessing how your organization is communicating and how people are connected to one another by taking inventory of your face-to-face and online strategies, as well as analyzing social connections and social media traffic.
- Recruiting participants and meeting demographic representation goals.
- Facilitation techniques for face-to-face discussions, traveling engagement, and online engagement.
Author(s)/Organization: Public Agenda
Publication Year: 2019
Tags
Attributes:Respects Community Strengths, Aims for Action, Centers Community Priorities
Outcomes:Strong Community Partnerships, Capacity for Civic Engagement
Approaches:Dialogue & Deliberation, Civic Engagement & Policymaking
Type:Guidebooks & Manuals