Transform Your Community Engagement Practice

Build trust and nurture civic pride with a practical new tool from Reimagining the Civic Commons

Youth at the restored Summit Lake shoreline, once perceived as a liability by neighborhood residents, not an asset to deliver on shared values of equity and public life. Image credit: Tim Fitzwater.

Imagine community engagement at its best: Diverse community members, professionals and designers share ideas and contribute to creative, locally inspired solutions. Collaboratively created project plans, once realized, become the source of community pride.

Through a process like this, trust is built and civic engagement is nurtured.

Unfortunately, the reality of community engagement often does not live up to the ideal. On the ground, engagement can involve checking the box with familiar strategies (like public meetings), the same few people showing up, conflicts that are hard to move through — and project plans that leave few residents satisfied and do little to build trust or civic pride.

A pop-up play space at FDR Park in Philadelphia, created in partnership with Tiny WPA and local youth. Image courtesy of Fairmount Park Conservancy.

We are excited to introduce a powerful new tool to help you realize the potential of community engagement.

Transform Your Practice: A community engagement card deck provides creative, practical and proven outreach ideas in an easy-to-use card deck format. Created by a working group of practitioners across the U.S., the card deck identifies common misconceptions, encourages you to ask important questions and shares impactful emerging practices. Accompanying case studies share examples of cities from Macon to Detroit putting the practices to use.

Transform Your Practice is available now to download. In addition, the first 50 people to subscribe to our newsletter will receive a complimentary Transform Your Practice card deck in the mail, printed on high-quality cardstock. Sign up by November 10 to receive the deck for your desk — and start adding powerful new strategies to your outreach practice.

Reimagining the Civic Commons is a collaboration of The JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, William Penn Foundation, and local partners.