Rethinking ‘Low Participation’
It’s always great to see strong participation numbers in community engagement, but sometimes we can become too focused on the stats. High participation can certainly strengthen an engagement process, but it is not the only measure of success.
As engagement practitioners, we should think of participation numbers as an output, not necessarily the outcome. The real value of engagement is often found in the quality of feedback received, the depth of conversations, and the relationships and trust built along the way.
Working with a wide variety of clients and communities across the country, we’ve seen significant differences in participation and uptake depending on the topic, audience and purpose of the engagement. Some projects are designed to reach broad sections of the community, where large participation numbers matter. Others are more focused on depth, creating space for detailed conversations, building relationships and collaboration.
For example, even within the same local government area, two consultations can achieve very different levels of participation despite using similar communications and promotion approaches. A region may generally be considered highly engaged, but different topics naturally generate different responses from the community. Good engagement is not always about reaching the most people. Sometimes, a huge response rate may actually point to community outrage, mistrust in decision makers or fear whereas a smaller engagement can be incredibly successful because of the richness of the feedback, the insights shared, or the connections developed through the process.
Here are two examples of recent engagements and how they differed in terms of participation;
Consultation 1. Engagement on Strategic Plans
This two-phased engagement consisted of a variety of engagement methods, including place-based pop-ups, workshops, an online survey and deliberation. Information on the project, each phase and how to get involved was hosted on Council’s engagement platform, the in-person engagements were advertised, and all-in-all the project was well-known.
The mixed method approach and broad communications led to a whopping 4696 total participants, an amount rarely seen for an engagement of this nature.
When engaging on strategic plans that will affect the wider community, participation numbers are important in understanding the reach of engagement and communications. Knowing that the community was accurately represented in engagement findings was a key evaluation point, among many others of course.
Consultation 2. Community Building
Focused in a section of the local government area, a community building-engagement was hosted to bring locals together amidst strong development. Rather than widespread engagement across multiple suburbs, this relied heavily on physical presence, letterbox drops and word-of-mouth.
As we know, community building isn’t just engagement, it is about supporting the community to make change. Community dinners were held in convenient locations, with activities for all ages, incentive vouchers were distributed upon completing activities, all to assist community members to attend, contribute and get to know one another. A total of 73 individuals participated in this engagement.
So what does this mean?
While one project was record breaking participation-wise (for us anyway), and received such a depth of feedback to support the development of several strategic plans, this cannot be easily compared to Consultation 2.
Where participation might appear to be lacking, the conversations on a personal level, and the lasting friendships and experiences shone through. While, yes, participation is still key in any engagement, this factor was not central to the wider project.
Know your audience and tailor your approach and expectations
In engagement, we often feel like a proud parent seeing participation numbers go through the roof for our project. It is a sure-fire way to showcase the success of a project, but is it the only way? An in-depth understanding of your target audience, the level of interest and how you may reach stakeholders, sets any project up for success.
As consultants, we like to work backwards from the end goal. At the outset of any project, we discuss success measures and consider evaluation points. While some projects have high participation goals as a whole, some may have specific demographic goals in relation to the area (e.g. 1000 participants vs 60% of young people aged 12 - 25, or 10% of mail out recipients to respond to survey prompts). We might also focus on evaluation questions like:
‘Who’, rather than ‘how many’ participated? (did they reflect our community/ impacted demographic? Did they come back or was it their first time engaging? Who didn’t we hear from and why?
Did we learn something from this engagement?
How did community feedback influence the outcome or next steps?
Did the community/participants provide feedback about the process? What were their reflections or evaluations?
Having realistic goals puts the level of participation and type of feedback into perspective.
Tips for your next engagement:
Be realistic: Understand who will be interested in the project and how many people it impacts. If the audience is targeted, they require a specific approach as opposed to broad engagement tactics.
Target audience: Different ages, genders and other identifiers experience things differently, but this does not necessarily mean those outside of your target audience may not be interested. Consider where your audience will be, avenues they typically engage through, and how best to support their participation.
Timeframes: The timing for submissions of any type require adequate communications and awareness. Whether this is in the form of physical presence and engagement, or online and printed materials, participants need to be aware of the project to participate.
Design and accessibility: The types of activities, length of time required to participate and accessibility of information should be considerate of the audience you intend to engage.
