CommunityScale’s projects are informed by local perspectives, such stakeholder engagement to add expertise and ideas to the process and enrich the outcomes.

Our community engagement builds common priorities

We work with communities to create plans that highlight common ground and build on local knowledge. We engage in an open dialogue with people to ensure plans reflect each area’s unique history, needs, and hopes for the future.

Our projects:

• Build a narrative that reflects lived experiences. This process is a partnership between ourselves and the community. Our expertise educates and informs the public, while the community’s insights provide crucial guidance to the plan’s direction. Our commitment to transparency and inclusion helps solidify a common understanding as plans move forward.
• Connect to community needs. Our methods seek broad input from community members, including those who may not interact with planning processes. We take advantage of digital and asynchronous outreach methods to keep residents informed on the planning process and help them make meaningful contributions to the final output, including outside the context of a conventional public meeting.
• Grow from the local context. We tap the place-specific expertise of local officials, planners, and professionals to understand how local context should inform the plans. Focused stakeholder discussions add essential nuance to our data-backed analysis, ensuring our plans take key details into consideration.

Methods

Outreach: We reach people where they are

We employ innovative ways to get community members’ attention, educate them on the process, and learn from their perspectives. In particular, we make full use of digital channels to provide asynchronous options so people can participate on their own schedules. We have found that these outreach methods reach far more people than traditional public engagement methods.

• Open-source dashboard. An easy-to-access website introduces project objectives and priorities and shares data-rich observations about the housing landscape. We maintain the platform with key information and updates so we can keep the process consistent and clear. 
• Social media cards. We translate the project’s most important info into eye-catching charts or graphics, each with a punchy headline to capture attention. These are shareable on the social media channels of your choice to build awareness and attract participation in the project. 
• Videos: Short explanatory videos posted in social media formats are useful for engaging new and on-the-go audiences.
• Press releases: We support media coverage to promote higher participation levels in ongoing engagement forums. In an age of stretched-thin resources for traditional news, outlets often welcome helpful information and clear resources for coverage, as it makes for easier newsgathering.

Dialogue: We facilitate an informed community conversation

We combine multiple in-person and virtual meeting formats with digital survey tools to create informed dialogue with local stakeholders. Through this process, we share findings from our data-driven analysis and gather insights that will inform final recommendations and project results.

• Surveys with significance: Surveys ask targeted questions alongside digestible project information where respondents can provide insight on their own experiences. This quantifiable information and contextual comments are ideal for gaining quick and valuable insights from community members who otherwise might not participate. 
• Stakeholder focus groups: Small group meetings ground truth our analytical findings, place our work in the right context, and provide insights about challenges and opportunities as we work toward plan recommendations. We seek stakeholder perspectives such as local real estate economics, community service resources, and economic development strategy.
• Community workshops: Public meetings bring community members up to speed with key findings from our analysis, then gather feedback on the goals, priorities, and strategies that will result from the study. Meetings begin with a concise but data-rich presentation and conclude with an interactive session where participants can ask questions, review the analysis in more detail, and share their ideas with activities such as mapping exercises, survey boards, and Q&A cards.
• Public hearings: We attend board and commission meetings to present projects and facilitate open discussion with officials and audiences.

Engagement outcomes

CommunityScale’s approach creates evidence-based, data-backed plans that are enriched by community insights. Our emphasis on transparency and education helps build shared understanding and common priorities as we proceed, facilitating buy-in from stakeholders and the community. This partnership streamlines plan implementation and approval, leading to a more efficient process and better results.