United Way of America Brand Identity Presentation

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Community Engagement 101
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THE WORK OF UNITED WAY
WHAT
HOW
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The Problem

• Ingrained narratives
• Norms, networks, relationships, and structures
• Customer service run amuck
• Thin capacity for change

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The Solution

• Become a community-change organization, not a
  funder of services
• Be part of the community, not acting on its
  behalf
• Create internal and external alignment
• Achieve mission and build community
• The Bottom Line
• United Ways must make authentic community
  engagement a core part of their work

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What is community engagement?

• People GIVING their time
• To inform and educate United Way and one another
• To learn how they as individuals can contribute
  to community change
• To help make decisions together about a community
  agenda
• To sell the solutions weve created together
• People GIVING resources
• People ADVOCATING for public policy change and
  championing causes
• People VOLUNTEERING

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What is authentic engagement?

• Authentic - Having a genuine original or
  authority, in opposition to that which is false,
  fictitious, counterfeit, or apocryphal being
  what it purports to be genuine not of doubtful
  origin real as, an authentic paper or register.
  (Websters Revised Unabridged Dictionary)
• Exercise
• Take one kind of engagement from the previous
  slide. What would it mean to conduct that
  engagement authentically?

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Principles of authentic engagement

• Ongoing not just a series of tasks to be
  accomplished
• Common good inspires a belief in shared
  concerns
• Common ground building a shared understanding
  and a basis for moving forward
• Action community members are active in the
  talking and the doing
• Listening genuine listening is critical
• Reach beyond our usual work with companies,
  volunteers, and agencies
• Matches purpose your motivations are clear

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Pay-offs to authentic engagement

• Builds deeper relationships
• Creates community knowledge
• Builds political will for action
• Enhances credibility
• Builds new community norms, networks, and ways of
  working together
• New leadership emerges
• Creates ownership for a common agenda
• Fills a vacuum in communities

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Common challenges

• Time
• Staff capacity
• Public opinion v. expert knowledge
• No immediate pay-off
• Getting people to show up
• Getting beyond the usual suspects
• Facilitating useful conversations
• Actually using what you learn
• Having mechanisms v. being mechanistic

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Practical tips

• Map out the layers of your community
• Learn where people gather and go to them
• Create an engagement calendar but dont be a
  slave to it
• Build time after every conversation to collect
  knowledge
• Get training in facilitating conversations and
  developing themes and train your staffs
• Go back and analyze your engagement efforts with
  your staff is it truly authentic? If not, how
  can you change what youre doing?

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Take advantage of these resources

• Discovering Community Power A Guide to
  Organizing Local Assets and Your Organizations
  Capacity (Available for free from The Kellogg
  Foundation at www.wkkf.org)
• Organizing Community-wide Dialogue for Action and
  Change (Available online from Everyday Democracy
  www.everyday-democracy.org)
• Year-round Community Engagement Plan for United
  Way of Dane County, Madison, WI (Available on the
  Knowledge Café under the What tab for Standard
  1.2)
• Sign up for the Community Engagement Community of
  Practice at http//communityengagement.pbwiki.com
  
• Sign up for the Volunteer Engagement Listserv
  (send an e-mail to listserv_at_listserv.unitedway.org
  and in the body of the e-mail type SUB
  uwvolunteerengagement-L FirstName LastName)

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