Effective Community Engagement — Top 5 Tips

For many charities and non-profits, there are always some groups of people or some specific geographic area within your remit that you’ve never quite ‘tapped into’.

Often this might be a certain large estate or perhaps a particular ethnic group. Sometimes there are reasonable and quantifiable reasons for this. We’re not all the same and certain areas, demographic and groups are sometimes less interested in certain products and services. But often, too often, it’s because your organisation has just never engaged with that group of people effectively.

After all, whilst some may not always think this, pretty much every community, ethnic and geographic group share far more similarities than differences with everyone and everywhere else.

The run down estate may seem a different World to the fancy suburb full of Audis and manicured lawns. But in both areas everyone still gets sick, has bills to pay, has debt, watches TV, sits on sofas, have marriage problems, suffer sadness and anxiety, fall victim to crimes and so on. The list of similarities is endless. The list of difference often not as long as you might have thought.

So if you’ve struggled to engage a certain community, or if you’ve (when being totally honest with yourself) never really tried, perhaps it’s time to do something about that?

So today, Third Sector Network are going to share a snapshot from one of our upcoming online events Better Community Engagement for Charities (details about this event below) and look at our top 5 tips for effective community engagement.

1) Understand your area — No, we mean really understand it!

Have you ever taken then time to really understand, accurately, all the local communities and their make up in the area you serve? For example, if you say an area has a high ‘Asian population’, what do you mean by this? Indonesians are Asian, so are people from Japan and Afghanistan and 4.4billion other people! Don’t generalise about communities, understand the layers that make up a group of people.

2) Take the time to consider your product / service and its appeal to specific communities

There are some considerations that are very well known when it comes to understanding different communities. You may know that many Muslim people don’t consume alcohol or pork. But do you know more than this? Do you know the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims? Do you know WHY Muslims often don’t consume alcohol? — Knowing a fact about a community is not the same as understanding it.

3) Remember that hardly anyone is ever part of just ONE community.

There are Hungarian communities. But, in these communities there are many different religious communities. There are many sexualities and many personal identities. Amongst all of these there are then professional communities. One person may identify with a number of communities and you have no idea if any matter more to that person than another. Never assume because you have identified someone with one community, that that is their only community.

4) Are you talking to different communities the same way?

If you’ve ever watched TV whilst on holiday you’ll have probably noticed that TV adverts and shows are not the same in Italy or Spain as they are in the UK. And same is true for most countries. This is because different communities don’t communicate with each other identically. A message that works really well with one community may fall flat with another, even if they would ultimately be interested in yours service. Take the time to look at how organisations within specific communities communicate. Look for commonalities and nuances. Your message won’t be as effective unless it’s delivered in a way that is familiar to a community.

5) Be honest with yourself, have you ever refrained from trying to engage with a certain community because you were afraid of causing offence?

So often, charities and non-profits think something they’re talking about might be controversial and cause offence in a certain community, so they might avoid the subject there. But the truth is, they’re more scared of causing themselves problems than thinking of the true feelings of that community. If you exclude a community from something under the pretence of not wishing to cause them offence, you’re still just excluding them. And that’s not good. No community should ever be excluded from something because you think it’s the easiest option.

And there you have it, it’s only the tip of the iceberg but these are out Top 5 Tips for better community engagement. If any of this has resonated with you then you may be interested in an event we run online all about this very subject. We go far more in depth and look at practical ways you can engage your local communities much more effectively.