Citizen Communication strategies that work
Victor is an active participant in the Bridlemile Neighborhood Association and Bridlemile Creek Stewards in SW Portland. He chairs the Bridlemile neighborhood’s Communications Committee. This post is adapted (with permission, of course, and emphasis added by me) from a response he sent to the newly-forming SW Neighborhoods, Inc., Communications Committee, regarding suggested methods of outreach to citizens. If you want to hear more or contribute your experiences on this topic, attend the SWNI Communications Committee meeting on September 10, at 6pm in the SWNI conference room in the Multnomah Center on SW Capitol Highway.
In Bridlemile, we’ve noticed a trend away from meeting attendance but increased attendance at associated events. For example, although the Bridlemile Creek Stewards (BCS) typically has only one “non-board” person a year attend their monthly meetings, 2-20 people may show up for each associated event – even though both meeting and events are announced in the same way (in the BCS case, email and website). A meeting about planning, and an email asking for suggestions about, walks in the neighborhood had no attendees/replies, but one of the subsequent walks had a dozen people show up!
So the problem may not simply be the methods you use try to reach people, but simply where people are willing to spend their volunteer hours.
In Bridlemile (and I imagine this will be true in different combinations for other neighborhoods) no one method reaches or brings out people. Each person seems to have their favorite and least favorite methods of getting informed. Those who are flooded with email and don’t know how to filter it abhor email, may like the SWNI News [Southwest Neighborhoods, Inc., monthly bulletin, funded through the Office of Neighborhood Involvement – AF] or going to the website on their own. Those who get a ton of catalogs and mail, don’t want additional stuff in their mailbox, but use email or the website. Those who hate having their door bell rung put up no soliciting signs, or don’t answer it.
My two cents to people aiming to communicate with Portlanders is NOT to try and choose any one method, but choose a few/as many methods as you can handle, and work on how to make each method most effective for your neighborhood, and use as many multiple methods in different combinations whenever time allows.
Personally I’m a big believer in combining any method with a neighborhood website. A website can capture much more about the event/project, whether they are in the future or past, than any other method. And therefore it can be used to make other methods more targeted (since other methods can easily point to the website for additional information/details). Also once the project is done, the web page can then act as a document of what was done. See Bridlemile playground revovation or creek restoration, both of which have all the key information for anyone wanting to replicate those efforts.
The most effective means to get people out to a special meeting or event here in Bridlemile has been door to door flyers… not just left at their doors, but knocking on doors and briefly talking with the person. You have to gage how long they are willing to listen very quickly, so it’s essential that the people who do the door to door are familiar with the handout. The talk no matter how brief does multiple things: helps the person to decide whether to read the flyer or simply recycle it, gives them a chance to ask questions that may or may not be answered on the flyer, puts a face on the topic, and is more engaging (when you get a chance to talk) than any other method.
But typically you are lucky if you get to talk at 20% of the doors you knock on… so the most effective method of all has been: two targeted mailings, with a door to door campaign (not sure what the order was) that the SWNI Crime Prevention folks did, which got about a dozen people out for the recent Hamilton Park footpatrol training.
More recently we tried a door to door to get people to sign up for an email group (but it’s essential to include phone number for people who have trouble with email group subscription, best to get their email at the door if you get a chance to talk with them), followed by an email group invite for an initial meeting (which got about three replies), followed by a phone call to those who did not reply to the email invite (which got 5 more people to say they would attend the meeting tonight).
Regarding door to door flyers… the most effective so far have combined a picture and headline that captures something essential about the topic, with a brief description, and a web link for more information. On the back, a brief Q&A about the topic.
For regular monthly meetings we publish in the SWNI News (although that goes to only a quarter of the households in SW, because residents have to sign up for it), at our website (gets about 30 hits a day, of which each event on the calendar only gets about 30-80 reads during the two weeks prior to the event), a monthly email (has only 36 subscribers currently), and a yearly calendar card (with monthly meeting dates circled). Even so, we typically only get one or two people beyond the board to come out for a monthly meeting.
Unfortunately people’s preferences are always changing so it’s an ongoing struggle to know which methods to use. Neighborhood meetings and events are competing with an ever increasing number of other causes, events, and entertainments… so even the best flyer or event can fail for reasons not at all associated with your best efforts at making it the best possible.