Tools for Civic Engagement & Community Impact
Community Planning
An important goal many partners have is the creation and submission of a community plan. To this end, we have created four step-by-step plans to help teams navigate this process successfully in their communities.
The next several sections include tips, tricks, and worksheets so that you can engage your stakeholders in co-creation.
Community Planning
Creating and submitting a community generated plan is an important goal you can achieve using the tools below. Following the guidance of this toolkit can help you facilitate processes led by and participated in by the community, to create a plan that represents the voices of the community.
Typically community planning follows four phases
Phase 1: Conduct an Assessment
The objective of this plan is to gather the requirements for a good community plan. You will build trust with key stakeholders, conduct interviews to learn about specific needs, and analyze the information to identify insights and gain an overall understanding of the context.
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Facilitate 2 to 3 x 60 to 90 minute Story Circles over the first two weeks with specific groups of your community who are often overlooked, need the most support or have experienced a recent setback. Do this to help foster trust and openness in the community, give voice to those who are sometimes left out of these planning initiatives, and help the project team uncover experiences that are often missed.
Determine who should attend the Story Circle.
Decide on a lead facilitator and note taker.
Prepare any materials you will need during the session.
Arrange the setup of the physical or virtual space.
Maintain an arrival cut-off time. Late comers may not participate.
Ask everyone to put everything away, silence all cell phones, and take everything off their lap.
Welcome the group and introduce yourself.
Ask if your team may take notes on the discussion to record ideas.
Spend 5 minutes establishing community agreements.
Share the background of Storytelling circles.
Give instructions to invite people to share a story that lasts about 3-5 minutes in response to a prompt.
Indicate that you will pass around a voice recorder giving each person the option to record, or not.
Instruct each person to pass the recorder to the person on their left to speak.
Each person is allowed to pass on their turn if they choose.
Introduce guidelines for storytelling before beginning.
Ask if anyone has questions before beginning.
Give the prompt.
After the initial pass of the circle, go around again to invite those who passed to share.
Facilitate an open dialogue about key ideas, phrases and learnings once everyone has had a chance to share a story.
Wrap up by thanking them and acknowledging their participation. Share any next steps.
Follow up on any commitments you made during next steps.
You can download this worksheet to support your trust building activities.
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Conduct 6 to 8 x 1-hour interviews with specific members from the Story Circle in order to understand their experiences in more depth.
Conduct 2 to 4 x 30-minute interviews with key stakeholders in order to learn more context, background information or details of current/past initiatives.
Plan your interviews by determining who you will talk to, how you will reach them, and what you want to know.
Identify the type of interview (in-context interview or stakeholder interview) you will conduct.
Assign roles and responsibilities for your team.
Determine how long the interviews will be and where they will take place.
Frame interview questions and write them down.
Reach out to people you want to interview. Provide them with details about what to expect and schedule time with them.
Before each interview ensure the person you are interviewing is comfortable.
Set interview norms.
Ask their permission before recording or taking photos or video.
Ease into the conversation by asking them to introduce themselves.
Ask questions and follow-up questions.
Be careful to maintain eye contact.
Ask one question at a time.
Be patient and give the person time to respond.
Avoid talking too much. The person you are interviewing is the expert, and you are there to learn.
Wrap up your interview by asking them if they have any questions for you.
Ask if you may contact them in the future.
Thank them for their time.
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Conduct an Affinity Clustering, Themes, and Insights exercise with the core project team in order to make sense of the information collected during the story circles and interviews, and identify key insights from the current experiences.
Begin by making all of the relevant data points visible.
Pin these to a wall, large sheet of butcher paper, flip charts, foam core boards or virtual white board.
Choose one piece of data. Consider the meaning behind the statement.
Compare the other pieces of data until you find a second that you think has a connection to the first.
Write down the relationship in 1 - 3 words (a theme) next to them.
Continue to compare the remaining pieces of data with the theme.
If a data point easily fits within the existing theme, place it in the group.
If a data point does not fit into an existing theme, place it to the side of the existing theme(s) to start a new group.
Once a new group has multiple data points in it, label it with a theme.
Repeat until you’ve worked through all the data.
If a theme has many pieces of data, see if it can be further broken into multiple themes.
If a theme has very few pieces of data, see if each piece of data will fit within a larger theme.
Reflect on the connections between the data points in each cluster.
Rewrite each final theme as one or two short sentences.
Select one theme and ask “why”?
Use the data points and your own perspective to write an insight that definitively, provocatively and completely answers “why”.
Repeat this across all other themes.
Once you finish, step back and assess your work.
You can download this worksheet to support your sense making efforts!
Phase 2: Gather, Generate and Prioritize Goals and Initiatives
The objective of this plan is to gather, generate and prioritize goals, proposals and existing initiatives. You do this to gain alignment on areas of focus for attention and allocation of resources.
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Facilitate 3 to 4 Round Robin exercises with various community members who participated in Phase 1 and/or who are impacted but may not have had a chance to participate in earlier sessions. Conduct this exercise in order to involve the community in sharing existing ideas and coming up with new ideas for potential initiatives and proposals. The favorite ideas gathered during these sessions will be used in the next activity.
Form groups of 4 - 5 people, with each group sitting at a separate table.
Provide each person with markers, scratch paper, sticky notes, and a copy of the Round Robin worksheet.
Share a prompt for ideation with the whole group.
Give a 5 to 10 minute overview of the challenge before you ask people to start ideating.
Give 3 minutes for each person individually and silently to come up or capture one idea around the prompt. This could be a new idea that the participant thinks about in the moment. This is also an opportunity to harvest ideas that people have already come up with before. In such cases, encourage participants to use this activity to share existing ideas, as long as those ideas relate to the prompt you gave them. Ask participants to capture their first idea with drawings and words using the top box.
Each person passes their sheet to the right, or all of the worksheets are gathered and redistributed to another table.
Give 3 minutes for each person to critique the original idea in front of them, and capture their critique on the second box.
Each sheet is passed again to a new person.
Give 3 minutes for each person to improve on the original idea by addressing the most critical challenges captured in the previous round on the third box.
Each person briefly shares their completed worksheet with the rest of their group.
Each group votes on their favorite idea.
Each group presents their favorite idea to the larger group.
Use the collection of favorite ideas from all of the Round Robin workshops in the following Prototyping workshop.
Download this Round Robin worksheet to facilitate with your group!
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Conduct this workshop with a select group of Round Robin participants and the core team in order to prioritize ideas from the Round Robin sessions and create concepts that target our defined areas of interest.
Prototype / Prioritization Matrix
In groups of 3 to 4 people, create one Prioritization Matrix in order to prioritize the ideas generated during the Round Robin session.
Define roles for each member of the facilitation team and divide participants into small groups of three or four people.
Provide groups with a separate work space, copies of the Prioritization Matrix poster, copies of ideas to be prioritized, markers, and plenty of scratch paper and sticky notes.
Each group identifies two to four criteria for their matrix.
Groups discuss criteria and select two: one for the horizontal line and one for the vertical line of their poster.
Groups force rank eight to twelve ideas across their horizontal line.
Groups force rank all ideas across their vertical line, being careful to maintain horizontal placement.
Groups talk through the pros and cons of the ideas in each of their four quadrants.
Groups circle and combine similar or complementary ideas.
Each group selects up to five individual ideas or combinations of ideas that they want to carry forward.
Groups may repeat this exercise using different evaluation criteria.
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In groups of 3 to 4 people, create posters that capture in detail the most promising concepts, which will be prototyped and tested in the next phase.
Divide participants into small groups of 3 to 4 people, maintaining the same groups if following a prior prioritization exercise.
Provide groups with a separate work space, copies of the Concept Poster template, copies of relevant ideas from prioritization, markers, and plenty of scratch paper and sticky notes.
Capture all the ideas that will be part of their group’s concept in the first box on the poster.
Name the concept as if it were a new product or service hitting the market.
Articulate the concept’s key benefits.
Illustrate the concept as a mini storyboard, using the following steps as a guide.
Begin your storyboard by illustrating and describing the problem the concept will address.
Depict and describe how people will become aware of your concept.
Show and describe how people will use key features of your concept.
Show and describe how someone’s needs have been met due to the concept.
Write one key assumption for each frame of the storyboard.
Identify one or two key assumptions across the whole storyboard that are most critical to the success of the concept as a whole.
One group presents the concept to the larger group in 3 minutes or less.
For the next 2 to 3 minutes, discuss questions, feedback and reactions from the rest of the group.
Repeat presentations and feedback discussions for each group.
Each group uses this early feedback to make changes to their concept before continuing.
Phase 3: Test and Refine Proposals
The objective of this plan is to test and refine concepts for proposals. To do this, build prototypes and test with key stakeholders, iterating on each concept as you go through the plan. By doing this, you will be ready to create a plan with confidence.
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In groups of 3-4, complete the Prototype Builder in order to refine the concept posters into more specific prototypes for testing. This may include prototypes of communication materials, budget proposal, storyboards of the experience, etc.
Divide participants into small groups of 3-4 people; maintaining the same groups if this activity follows a Concept Poster exercise.
Provide groups with a separate work space, a copy of their Concept Poster, copies of the Prototype Builder template, markers, and plenty of scratch paper and sticky notes.
Each group selects the one or two key assumptions from their Concept Poster that are most crucial to the success of their concept.
Discuss what could go wrong if any of their assumptions are invalid.
Capture the potential impact of their assumptions by completing the sentence “If this assumption is incorrect…”
Review the different types of prototypes and choose the most appropriate prototype to build.
Write a description of the prototype they plan to build.
Debrief with the larger group and vote on which prototypes should be built and tested.
Build the first version of the selected prototype.
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Create a story of your proposed solution that you can use to describe how the concept was created, tested and refined, and to gain support from people in the community and other key stakeholders.
Assemble specific stories that most closely illustrate the problem your concept addresses, and reveal who is encountering the stated problem.
Use sentiments and quotes from your interviews, observations or tests to highlight challenges.
Choose one or two of your assembled stories to use as an example that best illustrates the problem.
Refer back to outputs from previous exercises to look for real life evidence of the problem such as quotes or images.
Add one or two compelling facts that demonstrate how pervasive the problem is to the community.
Show your prototyped solution in a big, bold, crisp image.
Tell the story of a person using the solution.
Use photos, images, or illustrations as much as possible rather than text or bullet points.
Describe one or two key benefits that your proposed solution will offer.
Show evidence that the solution really works to alleviate the pain of the original problem.
Reproduce the frames in a polished presentation format.
Download this worksheet to develop an outline of your solution!
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Conduct eight to 12 Think Aloud tests with 6 to 8 community members from impacted communities and 2 to 4 key stakeholders responsible for approval or implementation of the proposal. By doing this, you will be able to validate or challenge your assumptions, and thus refine your proposed solution(s).
Fill out the Testing your assumptions worksheet by following the steps below.
Give your test a name and a brief description.
List the key assumptions you intend to test.
Articulate specific questions you intend to target with your test.
Select the type of prototype you will use based on the prototype you made during Prototype Builder.
Define who will participate in your test.
Identify how many people will participate in your test.
Select “Think Aloud” as the type of test you will conduct.
Determine where you will conduct your test.
Decide what assumptions you will be testing and create a testing plan with your team, assigning roles and responsibilities.
Test your prototype with one person at a time.
Introduce yourself and your team, and set the ground rules for the test.
Provide a brief overview of the problem, name of the concept, and the solution you are imagining.
Introduce the person to the prototype you created and prompt them to complete a specific task or goal.
Give them only the first thing they would encounter towards completing the task you assigned.
Ask the person to interact with your prototype as they would interact with the real product or service.
Reveal only the next part of the prototype based on their actions.
Your only role is to keep them talking. Resist the temptation to jump in to help or explain.
Avoid leading questions.
Record and reflect on your findings using Iterating.
Download this iterating worksheet to conduct your think aloud test!
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Complete 1-3 Iterating worksheets with the core project team in order to evolve your Prototype(s) based on feedback and insights from the Think Aloud tests.
Provide groups with a separate work space, a copy of their iterating worksheet, markers, and sticky notes.
Describe in a few sentences what you did and what you were trying to accomplish with the activity.
Reflect on who you engaged.
Capture 1 to 5 things that surprised you and that led to new learnings.
Record what you will change or do differently next time.
Decide and write down what you will do next.
Debrief with the larger group to share and align on these reflections.
Plan to repeat these activities at least once or twice until you are satisfied with the outcomes and feel ready to move on to another activity.
Phase 4: Draft and Submit a Plan
This phase focuses on taking all of your elements from Phases 1 - 3 to draft and submit your final plan to your decision-makers.
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Conduct a Value Mapping exercise with the core team members in order to articulate and evaluate the value created by our proposal for different stakeholders, and the relationship between them.
Prepare your materials including stickies, markers, copies of the Value Mapping worksheet, and a virtual or physical white board.
Identify up to three key stakeholder groups and allocate each to one circle of the venn diagram.
The zones of intersection mark areas of shared value.
The zone in the middle reflects value generated for all three stakeholder groups.
Brainstorm the different types of value that you expect the solution to create for your primary stakeholder.
Capture each idea for a potential type of value created by the solution in a separate sticky.
Place your stickies in the stakeholder circle of the venn diagram and repeat this process with your other stakeholders.
Move stickies to the intersections of circles in the venn diagram that represent shared values.
Set aside or discard any duplicate stickies.
Don’t feel pressured to make up false values that may not be true.
Review and decide on next steps.
Download this worksheet to conduct a value mapping exercise!
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Complete an Impact Measurement Framework with the core team members in order to align on the measures of success that will determine if the plan has achieved the desired impact on the community.
Write down your Inputs. These are the investments, activities or resources that you are introducing to create change.
Write down your Outputs. Think about the direct and immediate results expected from your interventions that would indicate your inputs are succeeding.
Write down the expected Outcomes of these activities for people in the community. These should be the changes in perceptions, beliefs and/or behaviors that you expect to see in the community over time.
Write down the long term Impact desired by the community. This should be the ultimate goal or change that all efforts point to.
Download this worksheet to Develop an Impact Measurement Framework!
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DescriptioConduct a Workstream Preparation exercise with the core team members in order to create delivery plans for drafting, submitting and communicating the plan.
Schedule a kick-off meeting for the project or core team.
Prepare the Rules of Engagement worksheet and the Workstream Preparation worksheet. Set up your session so that all team members can see virtually or physically simultaneously.
Invite the people responsible for driving the solution across the finish line and record them in the Rules of Engagement worksheet.
Consider the tasks that need to be completed and identify people who can best complete each.
Record each person’s role on the team and what they will be responsible for.
Agree as a team when and how frequently you will meet.
Agree when and how frequently you will meet with other key stakeholders.
Discuss and record agreements on how you will monitor yourselves.
Create a project planning chart that is accessible to all team members.
Set up a shared digital drive.
Schedule milestone reflection meetings.
Decide what you will do if you are off track.
Begin workstream preparation by defining desired outcomes in the Workstream Preparation worksheet.
Define project milestones for Tomorrow, Next Week, Next Month, and Next Quarter.
Determine who is responsible for driving each milestone.
Identify concrete, specific actions that need to be done right now for each milestone.
Review these worksheets during all team meetings moving forward.
Evolve these plans as needed.
Download this Workstream Preparation Template to get your project off the ground!
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Develop an innovation story with the core team members about your plan in order to iterate on our original narrative and prepare an evolved story for informing stakeholders of the plan.
Assemble specific stories that most closely illustrate the problem your concept addresses, and reveal who is encountering the stated problem.
Use sentiments and quotes from your interviews, observations or tests to highlight challenges.
Choose one or two of your assembled stories to use as an example that best illustrates the problem.
Refer back to outputs from previous exercises to look for real life evidence of the problem such as quotes or images.
Add one or two compelling facts that demonstrate how pervasive the problem is to the community.
Show your prototyped solution in a big, bold, crisp image.
Tell the story of a person using the solution.
Use photos, images, or illustrations as much as possible rather than text or bullet points.
Describe one or two key benefits that your proposed solution will offer.
Show evidence that the solution really works to alleviate the pain of the original problem.
Reproduce the frames in a polished presentation format.
You can access a Communicating Through Storytelling worksheet by clicking here!
Hosting Events
Hosting Events
Hosting large scale events can feel daunting… often, leaders don’t quite know where to start, or they defer to what feels comfortable and easy. The tool below aims to help leaders develop a checklist for hosting events.
Hosting Events Step-by-Step Guide
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Identify a virtual platform for your meeting (Zoom, Google Meet, etc)
Set the date and send to your EA/Organizer
Set a goal and make a plan for turnout: Decide how many parents you want at the meeting. Send more invitations than your desired turnout..
Identify the Objectives and Outcomes of the Meeting
Create a 2 line script for inviting parents to the meeting: Be prepared to answer questions about the parent meeting. Give the scripted call list to the front desk and ask them to share the information when parents call the school. Give staff a concise sentence or two that they can use to invite parents to the meeting. *For examples of 1-2 sentences for parent meeting
Post your first announcement of the event: Post on Facebook, Twitter, flyer, newsletter, email, and/or texting. You can schedule these posts on Facebook in advance.
Determine a parent incentive for meeting and share widely.
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Create Meeting Content: Meetings typically last 45 - 75 minutes depending on the topic. We recommend using Google Presentation to organize your thoughts! Below is the sample flow:
Socializing/sign in (5-10 min)
Welcome, Objectives, Norms (2-5 min)
Ice Breaker/Relationship Builder (10-15 min)
Content matching objective (15-20 min)
School related announcements (1-2 min)
Next steps (1-2 min)
Questions (1-5 min): If there are any questions that go unanswered, have parents put their questions and contact info in the chat before they leave.
Follow up Survey (1-2 min): Collect the data.
Continue to follow your turnout plan
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Finalize Meeting Content: Edit, share, practice.
Continue to follow your turnout plan
Secure translator if needed. Make sure to provide time to practice the presentation in advance (video and mic).
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Create a follow up survey: Make it short and informative. This survey should align to your mission and objectives for the meeting.
Finish turnout plan: At this point you should have an idea of how many will be attending.
Final staff notice: Encourage staff to attend the meeting.
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Train volunteers early. Make sure co-hosts are able to allow people into the virtual meeting, mute everyone, open the chat or Q&A function, etc.
Check technology. Make sure your technology works prior to the meeting.
Play music. Have some fun music playing as parents enter to emphasize that it is a warm, welcoming environment. President Obama has several Spotify playlists that are perfect and are all profanity free.
Start on time. Start time and a welcome message should be on your PowerPoint slide. Something along the lines of, “Welcome parents we’re so glad you’re here, we’ll begin the program at 6:05pm.”
Be Engaging. Speak clearly. Articulate in a common language (try not to use acronyms or jargon).
Let parents lead (if applicable). If you have them, let your parents lead the conversation. Make sure they are prepared to do so.
Make sure staff are participants in the event. There’s nothing worse than parents in an audience and staff standing at the front in arms length.
Give parents the space to engage with each other. This should be built into your presentations and agendas.
End on time. Respect parent and staff time by ending at the previously agreed upon time.
Allow a space for parents to voice questions. Leave time for questions. This could be done via the chat or Q&A function.
Give the survey. Let the parents know that the feedback you get from this survey will help to inform the next meeting.
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Send a Thank You: Send a Thank You to the staff and parents who attended. This can be an email, text, etc. *See example of Follow Up Email
Collect and analyze data: Look at the data for trends. Use this information to plan your next meeting. *See example of Follow Up Survey
Think beyond your parent group: Think through ways to keep parents involved in your recruitment efforts, community service projects, fundraising, etc.