Economic Development Recovery and Resiliency Playbook - Flipbook - Page 25
• Conduct regular meetings to discuss the status of the goals and objectives and review implementation of the
adopted plan.
• Engage in clear and consistent communication with the stakeholders about the goals.
• Facilitate public community meetings with stakeholder organizations, and publish a schedule for public meetings.
Select a facilitator who can direct the meetings using prepared questions, and use a scribe to take notes detailing the
attendees’ feedback and key points or issues raised during the discussions.
• Gather information from meetings. This can be done in many ways, both manually and electronically, to capture
thoughts, ideas, suggestions, questions, etc.
• Prepare reports for each stakeholder meeting. For consistency, each report should use the same template or format.
• Publish on your jurisdiction’s website and participating parties’ websites any reports presented in meetings.
• Use information and feedback for your strategy. All of the reports should be used to help create the strategic plan.
Information from the reports may be displayed in a spreadsheet to indicate the tasks that should be prioritized.
• Use social media platforms, which provide an excellent way to engage stakeholders. You can also create a private group
for the stakeholder committee. Private groups (available on Facebook, Slack, and other platforms) ofer a convenient way
for committee members to communicate.
• Conduct virtual and in-person meetings as an efective way to reach more community members, whether through a one
time meeting or regularly scheduled meetings with your stakeholders.
• Hold charrettes, meetings in which all stakeholders work to resolve conflicts and map solutions. These can be a very
useful tool when defining economic goals.
• Publish information about the goals and progress on the jurisdiction’s website at regular intervals.
Community Outreach. When defining goals, engaging the
local community — not just stakeholders — is imperative.
There are many ways to engage your community and
define goals that the community not only accepts, but
also embraces. Be sure to address equity and engage
underserved groups. Consider working with community
navigators to conduct neighborhood-based outreach. It
is also important to address barriers to participation; for
example, some households lack broadband access and
are best engaged using non-digital, more traditional tools
and methods.
The general community will want to provide input on
your goal setting, and their input is just as important as
the stakeholders’ contributions. In addition, community
outreach provides transparency. Consider how best to use
the following activities to reach your community.
Media management. Prepare press releases for your local
media that include updates of your goals and a request for
input by the local community. Include your email address or
the goal’s social media pages to make it easy for community
members to submit their ideas. Invite the media to attend
public meetings.
Charrettes are helpful tools for addressing
conflicts and devising solutions.
Be Strategic: Clearly Define Your Economic Goals, Before and After a Disaster
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