Changes

Making the business case for community engagement

We are interested in debating this – click on the title of this post if you would like to proceed to a message board where you can comment and contribute.

This might be about

• explicit messages on how community engagement can help agencies to meet targets, in the light of statistics like the 85.7% of Local Authorities who think that the economic slowdown will make it more difficult to achieve Local Area Agreement targets (Survey of the Impact of the Economic Slowdown on Local Authorities 2008)
• ideas for, and experience of, measuring ROI (Return on Investment) where the investment is community engagement

or something else …

What is community engagement all about?

We have been trying to find straight forward ways of explaining community engagement and the motivations for considering it… Imagine a street of houses – you want to ask 16 householders a question – if you just go around the houses and ask them you will get up to 16 different replies.

These replies will be largely concerned with that particular household – they won’t necessarily consider anyone else – and if they do, that view will likely be a perception – a guess about the concerns or issues facing others.

Alternatively – if you work with these 16 householders as a group – not only do they discuss and negotiate to reach a consensus on their collective priorities but it is likely that their discussion and their perception of what is possible will be much more sophisticated – and coherent. If you are working with them they should also get a realistic picture of the constraints that you are working within.

Similarly – just one person making connections with groups and communities in this way doesn’t cut it – their manager – and others – need to understand what they are doing, the motivations for doing it and what the benefits are to the organisation – micro and macro.