How Much Is Enough?

Over the years, we at the Orton Family Foundation have debated how much citizen participation constitutes success in our projects. This discussion gets complicated as the “how many” quickly and appropriately gives way to a deeper conversation about the “who” in the room and the opportunity and level of participation rather than just a simple head count.

While we dig for this important information (who participated, how, why and what they had to say) through our evaluation work, it strikes me that a head count can still be a quick, useful measure of success and can represent real progress. So, for me, the question remains: how many in the room indicates success?

Now if there is a big, hot issue in a community, turnout is sure to be larger than usual. But I’m thinking about a different scenario in which a community is acting proactively, looking down the road and trying to devise a blueprint for where it wants to go before an issue clouds the discussion and fractures the community. Imagine that...proactive planning! It is possible and has been happening in the Foundation's projects with Damariscotta and Biddeford, ME, Victor, ID, Golden, CO, Killingly, CT, Exeter, RI and Starksboro, VT.

As I often say, the only thing harder than planning in the midst of a crisis is planning without a crisis at all. So: when there is no crisis at hand and a community is trying to bring citizens together for authentic, thoughtful discussions about its future, what constitutes a successful turnout? From my observations, achieving 10 percent community participation is pretty amazing (even though it doesn’t sound so great). And if this happens two or three times in a row, there’s really something going on.

Another way I've tried to calculate success in the numbers is to find out how many people turned out for the most controversial issue in the last five years, (i.e. a development proposal, school bond, crime, etc.). If the community then meets or exceeds that number in the context of a proactive planning discussion, that equals success.

But I'm still not satisfied. This may be setting the bar too low.

What constitutes successful participation in your communitiy? What measures do you use to determine success? Have you found that different approaches to generating interest produce different results? What has worked best and worst? What has retained community interest for the longest? Can you recommend any surefire engagement strategies? Perhaps they differ from community to community, depending on the issues, challenges and population? Or maybe it all comes down to food?

Your thoughts, ideas, anecdotes, please.