If you were hosting a special event at your place of employment, place of worship, for a group of associates, customers or friends -- or to inform and engage a community -- how much notice would it take to achieve optimal levels of awareness and participation?
How should this be accomplished? By telephone, in person, special notice (invitation, advertisement, or press release), email, social media, other? All of the above? Once, or repeatedly to follow up and spread the word?
What should be common sense for adults indicates there are a few basics:
When something is time specific, early notification is important so people are able to schedule it onto busy calendars.
When something is important or ongoing, the level of proactive outreach and methods used to communicate must be sustained and creative in order to achieve broad engagement or support.
The message may need to be tailored to specific audiences, yet should always be direct and truthful so expectations are consistent and common goals are met.
This holds true for personal relationships, in business settings, and for governments. It sometimes gets lost in hierarchies or bureaucracies, especially when the real "customer" or "goal" doesn't remain the focal point.
Prevent another situation where 37 of 1891 respondents to a 1998 survey expressing dissatisfaction with Christiansburg's Recreation Department due to the lack of a pool resulted in a $20 million dollar facility 12 years later -- residents and taxpayers today have higher expectations. Especially given the advent of email, social networks, blogs and official web sites. (It should be noted the 1998 town population was approximately 16,000, meaning the overall survey response rate was minimal.)
In the above example, it will take another 5-10 years to determine whether this huge public debt and current $3 million per year operating cost will be offset by other tax revenues or user fees. Meanwhile, from that same survey, no equivalent progress has been made on expanding sidewalks or community parks.
Here's another, timely, example. On July 15th, the Town of Blacksburg used their email alert system to inform recipients of a Regional Household Hazardous Waste Collection event. This included a list of what can or cannot be disposed of, as well as a map to the collection site located in Radford.
In the July 23 Roanoke Times a short blurb appears about this collection event, directing readers to call their local government. If you call Christiansburg's main line at 382-6128, will your questions be answered adequately? If you go to the town's web site today, readers will not find any mention or instructions (so no script for the employees who may be taking all those telephone calls).
Readers may have recently seen something about a water line break on the "East End" of Christiansburg. Given special cleanup collections reference "quadrants" -- could residents figure out where this was unless they didn't have water? On the other hand, ask where the East End of Radford is and most NRV residents could tell you. Note Christiansburg's current budget eliminated one of those special cleanup dates. And who wouldn't want as much hazardous household waste safety disposed of as possible, preserving our waterways and neighborhoods, or extending the life of costly local landfills?
Clicking on the time-sensitive Consolidated Plan and Annual Action Plan (where citizen input may be critically important so special interests don't dominate actions) readers are pointed to the Planning & Zoning page. Go there and start digging for these two sets of plans in order to read and respond by the deadline. These two plans play heavily into accessing federal grant monies which could lead to progress on those sidewalk and community park issues talked about in the 1998 survey.
Here's a sample plan to communicate in yet another community.
These examples are things taxpayers have purchased -- computer hardware and software, personnel, services. These examples are things citizens have been asking for, yet leaders haven't delivered. These may serve as examples of how Christiansburg can improve on engaging all constituents by ramping up effective communication and community outreach.