Engagement Planning Chart

Once you know where outreach and engagement fall on the project timeline and what opportunities for collaboration exist, you can think more about what each of these opportunities will look like. When you’re planning outreach and engagement, you want to be able to answer the who, why, what, when, and where. Answering these questions will help keep outreach and engagement aligned with the project goals.

You can use this Miro Board worksheet to develop your outreach and engagement plan. As you get closer to the engagement events you can refer back to this worksheet and add more detail to your plan. Further instructions for answering each "W" question in the worksheet are provided below.

Engagement Planning

Start by planning your engagement events. Once you’ve thought through what the engagement opportunities will look like, it’ll be easier to plan in the next step how to reach out to your target audience about each opportunity. You can ask the following questions about each engagement event:

Who is your audience?

Refer back to the stakeholder identification you did to know who you need to engage. Consider whether you should target different stakeholders at each engagement event or whether you hope to engage all key stakeholders at every event.

Answering this question is crucial because you should think about the specific needs, wants, and barriers that your audience might have to decide on the what, when, and where of your engagement.

Why are you doing this engagement?

Refer back to the project goals you set. Think about how each engagement opportunity can help achieve those goals. Consider how the experiences of your target audience can uniquely inform and impact the design.

What kind of engagement will you do?

Based on your goals and audience, determine whether you need a more in-depth engagement event like a workshop or if something more surface level like a survey will meet your need. Consider the accessibility of different formats for your target audience.

As you get closer to the actual engagement event, you'll want to get specific about the activities and questions you'll use. At this stage it’s okay if you only decide on the format of your engagement, you just need to have enough detail to advertise the event, meeting, etc.

When will you have the engagement

Think about the time of day and day of the week that you might host an engagement event. Is this a time that your target audience would usually be busy with kids, work, school, or other responsibilities? If you're piggybacking on another engagement event, make sure it's at a time that would be accessible for your target audience.

Where will you have the engagement?

Think about the physical or virtual location where you will host the engagement. Consider whether your participants will feel safe and at ease in that location. Make sure your location is physically accessible and nearby public transportation. If you're piggybacking on another engagement event, make sure the location is accessible.

Outreach Planning

Now that you know the details of your engagement opportunities, you can plan how you will do outreach for each engagement session. Outreach is a crucial step in the engagement process because if people do not know that engagement is happening then they are excluded from the process. It’s very important to make sure that you tailor your outreach for your target audience so that the most important stakeholders can have the most say in the process.

As you plan the outreach, ask yourself the following questions:

Who is your audience?

Usually this is the same as your engagement audience.

Why are you doing this outreach?

Typically the goal of outreach is to share about upcoming engagement but you may have additional goals with your outreach such as education and awareness.

What kind of outreach will you do?

Based on your target audience, what would be the most effective methods to reach them? Some groups may be more likely to see posts on social media while others may be more responsive to physical flyers. Furthermore, you should consider what resources and capacity you can dedicate to outreach. Some methods like door-knocking are time intensive while others are as easy as sending an email.

In order to understand the range of possible outreach methods, you can explore this Airtable database. This table lists a variety of outreach methods and describes the benefits and considerations of each. Furthermore, there are instructions on how to execute each outreach method and links to additional resources.

When will you conduct the outreach?

Think about how much time you'll need to prepare for and conduct outreach. Give yourself enough time to produce materials and coordinate schedules for activities like door-knocking or phone-banking. If your outreach includes meeting announcements, canvassing, or other live activities, make sure you do them at a time when your target audience will be available.

Where will you conduct the outreach?

Think about the geographic area in which you'll conduct physical outreach like mailing flyers or canvassing. If you're doing online outreach, think about the social media sites or email lists that you'll use and whether or not your target audience also uses those digital platforms.