Our Theory of Change – the impact we want our work to have
More inclusive
decision-making
More participatory decision-making
More responsive decision-making
Top objectives: more and better participation
To better understand their priorities, we explored governments' top objectives for community engagement and what they’re looking to achieve by leveraging our platform.
Across regions, governments of all sizes share common goals:
Engaging more participants
Enhancing process quality
Collecting higher-quality input
This trust deficit directly correlates with how governments engage their communities – when people don't see themselves in the decision-making process, they question the legitimacy of the outcomes. It's clear that rebuilding trust requires more than good intentions; it demands systematic, transparent, and meaningful public participation
Only 4 out of 10 people believe their government balances the interests of different groups or uses the best available evidence in decision-making
Our impact
Whether serving major cities or small communities, Go Vocal is fundamentally changing how governments connect with their communities. Our clients across regions and sizes echoed a common sentiment: our platform is helping them engage more people in participation processes, earning an 8.6 out of 10.
Additionally, the governments we partner with rate our platform 8.2 out of 10 for streamlining engagement processes, making participation more accessible and efficient for governments and residents alike. They also confirmed we’re helping them collect richer, more meaningful feedback from their communities, scoring us 8 out of 10 for the quality and analysis of input.
Reflection from our team
We're thrilled to see these scores – they validate our approach and signal that we're delivering on our promise to make participation more meaningful, efficient, and inclusive.”
CEO & Co-Founder
How did we achieve this?
- Boosting (bottom-up) participation with a better ‘Proposals’ feature and improved digitisation of offline submissions.
- Improving role management and permissions, enabling governments to tailor workflows to their needs and have more colleagues use the platform.
- Enhancing our Report Builder to make tracking progress and sharing impactful insights easier.
Cases
St. Louis involves 14,000+ residents in allocating settlement funds
In the American state of Missouri, the city of St. Louis took the rare opportunity of a major settlement fund to hand decision-making power on how the funds should be spent to locals, for resident-driven change.
The community has grabbed this one with both hands, with over 14,000 residents raising their voices. Together, they’ve contributed nearly 1,000 ideas, participated in a prioritization exercise, and stayed actively involved by providing feedback on spending plans.
This engagement progressed in 2024 from ideation to policymaking, with officials co-authoring legislation with residents on our platform based on the 6 spending priorities identified by the community, including fixes to water infrastructure, boosting wages for city workers, and more pedestrian-friendly streets.
Supporting the City of Benicia, CA, in constructive engagement on a contentious topic
Our platform’s wide array of engagement tools is making a real difference in communities like Benicia, California. When tasked with developing a contentious industrial safety ordinance affecting their local oil refinery, the city leveraged our platform to transform a historically divisive issue into an opportunity for constructive dialogue.
By removing participation barriers and enabling anonymous feedback, they reached beyond the usual vocal minority to engage parents, college students, and seniors who typically couldn't attend evening council meetings. The platform's diverse engagement tools helped make complex policy discussions more accessible and relatable to everyday residents.
Amstelveen focuses on platform adoption and internal organisation to build a thriving culture of engagement
Our platform also shines behind the scenes, as demonstrated by the municipality of Amstelveen's journey in the Netherlands. Their team transformed engagement processes by creating a digital 'participation garage' - a central hub on the engagement platform where staff can learn about features, find training resources, and discover successful project examples.
This streamlined approach to project management helps teams clearly define roles, monitor progress, and maintain consistent engagement practices across departments.
Falkirk Council experiences how Go Vocal makes analysing feedback and updating participants a breeze
When Falkirk Council needed to analyze feedback from over 800 residents on their Housing Allocations Policy, the engagement team did a great job levering our platform's analytics tools to turn community input into clear insights.
With our AI-driven input analysis tool Sensemaking, they were able to summarize all submissions in seconds and identify key patterns, while the Report Builder helped them turn the data into compelling visualizations. Through seamless integration with the platform's final phase, these insights were automatically shared with all participants and project followers - showing them exactly how their input influences housing policy decisions.
Perception of participation at risk
Beyond these top client priorities, our Theory of Change framework includes more foundational elements that enhance the depth and quality of community engagement initiatives.
While fewer clients identified these as their priorities in 2024, the following objectives represent essential building blocks for creating lasting, meaningful impact.
Reflection from our team
It’s surprising to see these goals ranked lower in priority, as they are critical to unlocking the full potential of community engagement. We’re committed to working closely with governments to address these challenges and ensure participation leads to meaningful, inclusive outcomes.”
CEO & Co-Founder
69% of respondents who feel they can influence government actions say they trust their government, compared to just 22% of those who feel they do not.
Our impact
Our government survey shines a light on both our strengths and some opportunities for further enhancement, particularly in addressing these critical objectives.
While the average score measuring impact on the political agenda only saw a slight increase from 5.5 to 6.0 since our last impact survey, governments report moderate to good results when it comes to decision-makers valuing community input gathered through Go Vocal’s platform. This is reflected in an average score of 7.4.
Additionally, governments we partner with across all regions consistently agree – scoring an average of 8 – that our platform helps make their processes higher-quality. While centralisation might not always be a top priority for these governments, it often becomes a natural outcome of using our platform and leveraging our guidance to strengthen every aspect of effective community engagement.
This comprehensive approach not only improves workflows but also increases decision-makers' recognition of the importance and value of community input in shaping policies.
Reflection from our team
Our survey findings indicate that while there is room to grow, our platform and the work of our Government Success Managers are steadily fostering a culture of engagement within governments.
To build on these results, we recognise the importance of maximising platform adoption and ensuring engagement projects have a tangible influence on the policy agenda.”
Head of Operations and Government Success
To address this, we are committed to:
- Enhancing features to make them even more user-friendly and effective.
- Help governments to establish true cultures of engagement within their organisation.
- Continue co-designing our solution with governments to ensure it’s aligned with their specific needs and contexts.
Challenges blocking progress
While governments share a strong commitment to improving community engagement, many face challenges in cultivating the strong culture of engagement needed for successful participation initiatives.
Drawing on our experience with over 500 governments and organisations, we’ve identified the following pillars as crucial for building an engagement culture:
- Ambition and vision from elected officials and management
- Robust internal organisational setup and processes
- Adequate skills, training, and resources
So, what challenges are governments in the Go Vocal community facing? While some of the issues are common across the board, others vary significantly by country:
Belgium | 33%
Netherlands | 32%
United Kingdom and Ireland | 33%
DACH | 17%
Francophonie | 33%
North America | 22%
Reflection from our team
As a team, these insights reaffirm the importance of our role in supporting governments, not just with innovative tools but with the resources, strategies, and guidance needed to overcome these challenges. By addressing these barriers collaboratively, we can help unlock the full potential of participatory democracy.”
CEO & Co-Founder
Go Vocal, a trusted partner
At Go Vocal, we’re proud to be a trusted partner for governments, consistently earning high satisfaction scores across key areas:
These scores reflect our dedication to helping governments achieve their engagement goals through innovative tools, personalised support, and strategic guidance.
Reflection from our team
It’s one thing to provide an intuitive and user-friendly digital engagement platform, but it’s another to ensure clients feel enabled to run truly meaningful engagement projects. It’s fantastic to see our Government Success and Product teams recognized as committed partners, dedicated to helping our clients achieve impactful results.”
CEO and Co-Founder of Go Vocal
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