Community Engagement Strategies

Community Engagement Strategies

Change always operates in both directions—people change communities

and communities change people.

~ Annie E Casey Foundation

What is Community Engagement?

The word “community” can apply to many different groups of people -- those identified by common location, interest, fellowship, faith, government or any other shared circumstance. For our purposes, community is whatever grouping of people we want to “engage.”

Engagement involves action – getting engaged to be married, taking a pledge, engaging in a work agreement, fighting or putting something in gear. Engagement is doing something.

Community engagement is a process whereby one party (your agency or coalition) motivates (engages) a targeted group (community) to take action, in this case related to end-of-life issues.

Developing a Community Engagement Campaign

An engagement campaign that is driven by the needs, resources and energy of providers or business interests is not true community engagement. Community engagement involves the active participation of consumers and community representatives in all facets of the campaign. Agencies contribute to community engagement efforts, but consumers must be active participants – not simply passive recipients.

Engaging or empowering the people isn’t as easy as it sounds. Individual people often don’t have the time, energy, resources and/or expertise to develop and implement an engagement campaign. Typically, service provider agencies provide the infrastructure for community engagement campaigns.

The key to inviting participation is for the staff leading the campaign to let go of control of some aspects of it, and let volunteers, consumers and partner agencies participate in the design and implementation of the campaign. Sometimes that means that the goals of the “lead agency” have to take a back seat to the desires of the community representatives working on the campaign.

10 Keys to Success

Community engagement plans utilize the following strategies to ensure success. Successful engagement plans:

Align with agency/coalition goals - The development of an engagement plan does not happen in a vacuum – it requires goals, information, partners, clear messages, and people to share the message out in the community.
Focus on target audiences - Your engagement plan must specify how you will engage the target audience to achieve your goal.
Involve key partners - Your engagement plan is strengthened when multiple organizations support the work and promote it to their constituencies.
Capitalize on existing opportunities - There are ways to capitalize on other existing opportunities to bolster your engagement activities. Call your partners and see if they have activities related to end-of-life care where you could weave in the LIVE campaign materials. Also, you can “piggyback” the LIVE campaign with other health related issues - a calendar of national health observances is provided in this section.
Creatively find and use resources - Most organizations don’t have a budget line item for community engagement. However, your organization or coalition does have resources it can use for the campaign such as in-kind donations and connections in the community that can lead to donations. For more information about funding, go to Section VI in the Toolkit.
Utilize effective and efficient channels - Successful engagement campaigns blend several channels or methods to deliver messages, and to reinforce one another and increase the chance of exposure.
Develop meaningful and memorable messages - Messages are the core of what you tell the public about your campaign. Refer to the LIVE ‘community’ presentation for messages about the LIVE campaign in Section III.
Have effective messengers - Messengers convey your message to the public. It is important to have the “right” messenger so that your message will be received and your audience will be engaged.
Pay attention to timing - Timing is everything. You’ll want to pay attention to other activities in the community, the amount of time you have to complete a specific aspect of your campaign and your ability to promote and implement your events.

10. Engage naturally occurring communities – see below

Naturally Occurring Communities

Often community organizers publicize events and hope that people who care about the issue will attend. The problem is that everyone is busy – the average person receives hundreds of requests for their time and attention every day from television, radio, print advertisements, email, phones and individuals. So how can you stand out in the crowd and attract attention to your campaign?

Simply put, don’t wait for people to come to you – you must go to them. Find groups within your community that will allow you to host an event during their regular meeting times or in their space. In any given town or small city there are literally hundreds of naturally occurring communities of people who come together for a common purpose. Examples include:

Faith communities
Social clubs or interest groups
Businesses – the workplace
Residential communities

Think about the groups or communities to which you belong. Most people have affiliations with multiple groups of people. These are people you have something in common with – be it a faith tradition, interest in a hobby or other activity, place of employment or geographic neighborhood. You may not know all the people in your communities, but you may gather together at specific times for a common purpose. These community gatherings are ideal places to ask people to join your campaign and become involved.

Some groups or communities have a mission which involves helping others. Many faith communities, social clubs, sororities/fraternities, and even businesses devote time and/or money to worthwhile causes. These groups within your community are natural places to canvass for people to become involved in the LIVE campaign.

Resources – provided in this section

Specific suggestions about how to implement the LIVE campaign in your community
A PowerPoint ‘buy-in’ presentation about the LIVE campaign to use for your staff, board of directors or coalition members
An Event Planning Guide and Checklist to plan a successful community program
A calendar of national observances to piggyback the LIVE campaign
Statewide outreach ideas for the LIVE campaign

Additional Resources

For additional information about community outreach and engagement, go to:

Caring Connections - - free tools and resourcesfor hospices, coalitions and other organizations to improveend-of-life care
Community Toolbox - - practical information about how to promote community health and development
Tom Wolff & Associates - – great newsletters, tip sheets and other resourcesto mobilize social change in communities
Advocacy Institute – – great website and newsletter loaded with inspiration and tools for coalition building and collaboration