Practice Area #3: Community Engagement

Central to FCP’s mission is the belief that publicly accessible and actionable outcomes data is key to strengthening the cross-sector collaborations that ensure that working Americans can thrive in ways that matter to them. The infrastructure and practices that support communities in identifying collective goals and tracking progress are essential to catalyzing action and driving the systemic shifts needed to improve lived experience across the country.

Within this context, community dashboards are an underutilized strategic tool that can accelerate and sustain common purpose and collaboration across the field of place-based work. If deployed well, they can act as vehicles for ensuring public access and commitment to outcomes that advance collectively-held communal goals. In a study of over 572 place-based initiatives, we identified six effective practices that when implemented together can support the success and sustainability of community dashboards. On a broader scale, these practices are valuable for ensuring the success of other modes of public outcomes sharing.

In this brief, we explore community engagement as an effective practice for sharing outcomes in place-based efforts. Our research shows that continuous community engagement, participation and collaboration can lead to successful design, continued relevance, and long-term sustainability of community dashboards.

Authentic and consistent engagement can expand community power and strengthen the legitimacy and impact of community dashboards to help meet north star goals. When residents are meaningfully engaged in defining local priorities, dashboards can more accurately reflect the lived realities and shared hopes within a community.

The best practices outlined below focus on how place-based initiatives (PBIs) can embed community engagement throughout the life cycle of their dashboards – from design to use to long-term sustainability. They reflect a shift from community engagement as input-gathering, to community engagement as a pathway for developing local leaders, building trust, and mobilizing community-led action.

Empowering Residents to Define Community Engagement Strategies

Engagement is most meaningful when it reflects residents’ own definitions of what it should look like and why it matters. When engagement is tied to individual and collective purpose, it fosters greater trust, mutual respect, and long-term commitment.

This doesn’t happen overnight. PBIs we’ve spoken to say it can take years to establish strong connections and develop understanding and language around local challenges and a common vision before residents are ready to engage in collective action. But without this sustained investment, you risk misaligning PBI efforts with community priorities. In short, it’s hard work, but worth it to make lasting change.

Section 1: Design community engagement strategies in partnership with residents to ensure opportunities align with and amplify what matters most to them.

Co-design engagement strategies for community dashboard work—including goals, methods, and compensation for engagement—with residents to ensure their time, insight, and lived expertise are fairly recognized and valued. This collaborative approach helps ensure strategies are relevant, respectful, and grounded in the day-to-day realities and aspirations of community members.

Before starting a co-design process, consider using tools like actor maps to identify key stakeholders, trusted leaders, and resident groups whose lived experience or relationships are essential to the work. Understanding who is most impacted by an issue—and who holds influence, trust, or connections critical to solution-building—helps ensure engagement is intentionally inclusive, strategic, and well-aligned with the initiative’s goals.

Meaningful engagement also depends on understanding residents’ goals for their participation— whether it’s to create opportunities for their families, build relationships, or access resources—and creating spaces that honor and support those goals.

Section 2: Remove logistical and financial barriers to participation.

Make it easier for residents to engage in community dashboard development, meaning-making, and use by designing engagement opportunities that account for everyday lives and responsibilities. This can include offering childcare or meals, translation or interpretation, transportation support, scheduling events outside of traditional work hours, and offering multiple options for participation (e.g., joining in-person, online, or by phone). Hosting gatherings in familiar community spaces like libraries, schools, or places of worship can also increase access and trust.