Go Vocal’s blog—get insights, advice, and all the latest information on trends to help you foster meaningful engagement.
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From costly expenses to loss of control, several misconceptions about community engagement can hinder local governments from unlocking the full potential of participatory democracy to this day. In this blog post, we’ll explore five of the most-heard myths and why they’re not true.
“Young people are the future.” When it comes to engaging and involving our youth, this quote is often mindlessly tossed about and hailed as a key motivator. Of course, empowering our youngest will serve us well for years to come, but young people are very much already here and ready to part in the public debate. That’s why we spoke with Emily and Justin, two inspiring young residents who are both actively involved in youth engagement programmes linked to North Ayrshire Council in Scotland.
This blog post is inspired by the article “Understanding New Power” by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms, which is an extract from their book New Power.
If community members are taking the time to visit your community engagement platform and share their ideas, you should take the time to follow up on their input. By communicating actively, you can help build trust with your community.
Artificial Intelligence, Collective Intelligence… these notions might sound like they come from coming from a distant future, but they are actually becoming reality.
Over the last few years, there’s been a shift from top-down governance to more horizontally organised types of government. This new political current includes all the stakeholders of public policy projects, such as public organisations, businesses and citizens, into the decision-making process.
Traditionally, community engagement has been compartmentalized into offline and online methods, often treated as distinct and separate elements. However, the evolving needs and preferences of the public call for a paradigm shift. It’s time to blend these worlds, for instance by using digital engagement platforms as enhancers of offline community engagement. This integration promises to streamline processes and enrich the quality of participation.
By the time you finish reading this sentence, around 30,000 tweets have been posted and 200,000 searches have been made on Google.
It sounds like a contradictio in terminis, like ‘sound of silence’ or ‘sensible Twitter debate’. But ‘slacktivism’, a contraction of ‘activism’ and uh, ‘slacking’, has become a widespread phenomenon that urges us to reflect on the nature of activism and participation.
An effective community engagement team, similar to a well-tuned orchestra, relies on a mix of diverse roles each playing their unique part in harmony. As for most teams, the key to success lies in bringing together people with different personalities, skills, and abilities. During his time as Go Vocal's Government Success Manager, Hugo De Brouwer explained which roles and skills an organisation needs to take participation to the next level.
Ever wondered how you match up on your community engagement efforts? We’ve got just the quiz for you. Answer a few questions, get a clear score of your efforts, and get resources to support you as you level up.
Have you ever logged into an analytics dashboard and felt daunted by all the numbers on your screen? You’re not alone. When trying to measure the effectiveness of your online community engagement efforts, the challenge is to sift through numerous available metrics and analyse the relevant ones so you can get to actionable insights.
As one of Go Vocal's co-founders, current Regional Director and previous Head of Government Success and Commercial Director, Aline Muylaert has extensive experience working with local governments to develop and implement successful community engagement initiatives. We sat down for an interview with Aline to discuss the importance of leadership buy-in and ambition in building a culture of engagement.
Many local governments struggle to include more residents in their projects and often find that some voices are much louder than others, and many people aren’t heard at all.
Deliberation and participation may seem like similar concepts. At their core, they kind of are: both deliberative and participatory democracies are systems that include community members in governance.
Whether you’re looking to launch a project, are already running one, or have reached the report-out phase, a strong communications plan will help drive the success of your efforts. In this article, we discuss the five basic principles of a good communications plan for your community engagement efforts.
Running inclusive and participatory community engagement projects requires meeting people where they are. In part, that means having a plan for multilingual engagement to ensure that everyone in your community has the ability to participate. By removing language barriers, your community engagement efforts will be more inclusive, participatory, and representative.
When setting up a participation platform, the matter of trust is something that pops up quite often.
From shaping the future city of Lancaster to improving parks and rec in Carlisle, PA, surveys are used across our platforms to gauge a community’s opinions on specific topics. Surveys and polls are easy to set up and provide a low-threshold way for community members to weigh in on policy topics, which explains their popularity as a participation method. Still, they only scratch the surface of what community engagement can really accomplish. Let’s examine a survey tool’s main strengths and limitations.
If you clicked the title of this article, you’re probably looking for a way to leave a mark on your local community. But it’s easy to get sucked into the grind of everyday life.
