Community engagement and co-design
Decide when, if, and how to engage. Turn what you hear into the design of the initiative. Keep the relationship going after the first meeting.
Program staff and engagement specialists in government, and the community organizations that work with them. Both can take it together.
Half day or one day (one module). One or two days (the full course). Six-month cohort with monthly working sessions.
Required leadership hours, project management continuing education, and AICP maintenance where your agency allows it.
Does this sound familiar?
You have a mandate to engage the community. And, you know it's so valuable. You have only two months for it, and higher-ups asking you to show results soon. Staff want more engagement. The community showed up once and never heard back. Nobody was satisfied, and you’re not sure the effort was worth it.
And if people have already told you they want more green space, do you need another expensive process to hear it again?
You also keep hearing that AI and online tools can help, and you’re not sure which ones, when, or whether to use them at all.
- Identify who is affected and who is missing.
- Set the terms so people with the least time and the most at stake can take part.
- Name what the engagement is for, and match each decision to the right method and timing.
- Turn what you heard into the design of your initiative, and present it so leadership acts on it.
- Report back so trust builds over time.
- Choose online and AI tools against a clear set of checks, run them well, and skip them where they don’t help.
Four modules
Take the whole course, or the one module that matches your need. Every module works on your initiative, with your documents and deadlines.
Module 1Who, why, and on what termsBuilding the shared understanding your engagement runs on, before you pick a method.
- Why we are engaging, and what decision the input will feed. Separating the decisions already made from the ones that are open, and saying so.
- Who is affected and who is missing: screening tools, local data, partner networks, frontline staff, and the people who never come to meetings.
- The history in the room. What the agency did last time, what the community remembers, and how that shapes who shows up.
- Cultural competence in practice: language, timing, who convenes, and who is trusted to carry the invitation.
- A level playing field: accessibility, childcare, food, translation, payment for people’s time, and meeting people where they already gather.
- Engagement fatigue: recognizing it, and deciding whether what the community already told you is enough to act on.
Module 2The right method, the right size, the right timeMatching engagement to the goal, the decision, and your capacity.
- Name the goal first. Engagement does four different jobs: including people who are usually left out, learning what the community knows, building agreement, and mobilizing people to act.
- Matching methods to the goal and the decision: a request for information, a working group, a listening session, a community panel, a survey, crowdsourcing, or none of these because you already know the answer.
- Sizing engagement to your budget, staff, calendar, and what you actually need to learn.
- Timing: when in the initiative to ask, and how to build an ongoing relationship rather than a single event.
- Working with partners: community organizations as co-designers, with clear roles, budget, and authority.
- A one-page engagement plan the team can run.
Module 3From input to design, and back to the communityMaking engagement show up in the initiative and in people’s lives.
- Synthesizing what you heard into RFP design, program guidelines, eligibility, site selection, and design choices.
- Making community input count with decision-makers: presenting who you heard from, how, and what they said so it holds up in the room.
- Shared measures of success, defined with stakeholders across communities.
- Connecting bottom-up and top-down: how local priorities reach policy, and how policy delivers for the community.
- Reporting back: what changed because of what people said, what didn’t and why, and when they’ll hear from you next.
- From input to coalition: turning one engagement into a standing relationship.
Module 4AI and online tools for engagementWhere they help, where they create risk, and how to choose.
- Where they help: reaching people who don’t come to meetings, plain-language summaries, simple games and interactive formats, synthesizing large volumes of input, finding underserved communities in public data, short reports back.
- Where they create risk: replacing the conversation, privacy, widening the gap for people without devices or trust in the tool, advertising instead of listening, not knowing who answered.
- Go where people are, or ask them to come to you: existing online communities versus your own platform, and when to use each.
- How to choose a tool, and how to say no to one: your capacity to run it, the community’s access and trust, the rules and norms, and only then the tool itself.
- A free tool is not free. Online plus in person, never instead. And a look back after the first use.
How it runs
Bring a real initiative and the people responsible for it. We work on your documents and your deadlines. My aim is a team that can do this on its own afterward.
Half day or one day
One team, one module, one working session. You leave with an engagement plan sized to your calendar.
One or two days
The full course for the team responsible for one initiative. Right when the engagement is new or has to be rethought.
Six-month cohort
Two days to start, then monthly working sessions. Community partners and other departments can join, which is often the fastest way to get everyone aligned.
I have worked inside and alongside more than nine state and federal agencies, and I know the privacy, procurement, legal, and civil service rules that decide what is possible. We design what will work inside your organization.
Not sure this is the right course?
Answer a few questions about your initiative and I’ll point you to a starting module.
Where should I start?Bring this course to your team
Tell me about the initiative and the people responsible for it. We’ll pick the format and the modules together.
Talk to Nader