Community Outreach and Engagement

For community organizations that advocate for change, one of the most challenging tasks is seeking feedback from a diverse range of stakeholders that may not be in agreement.  Through an authentic and strategic outreach effort, an organization can gain “buy-in” of its needs to move forward. 

JRCP’s, community outreach efforts for any public institution always include:

• A Breadth of Voices – We seek out a variety of voices and a large number of participants so that critical mass is reflected in what’s being heard.

• Engagement – We facilitate discussions that help program stakeholders HEAR perspectives they do not normally hear – Stakeholders have the chance to experience challenges to conventional wisdom,  

• Contribution to the Initiative – We seek out outreach that contributes to actual creative and thoughtful programmatic change to the institution or the initiative.

Our community outreach efforts leverage processes.  When thoughtful and strategic process is designed into listening and feedback efforts, outreach becomes scalable, true understanding happens, and new ideas are integrated into any given public project.  

JRCP’s process features:

• Establishment of outreach initiative goals & objectives for clarity of purpose.
• Participant selection and invitation strategy to assure attendance from as many people in target audiences is possible. 
• Development of dialogue strategy designed to spark discussion.
• Discussion facilitation techniques implemented by trained team members. 
• Listening exercises designed to elicit input; training stakeholders to perceive different perspectives.
• Utilize multiple measurement mechanisms to gauge results.
• Outcome reports

The end result is outreach efforts that successfully engage with a broad range of stakeholders including communities that are too often ignored and left behind.