Leveraging Organic & Locally Grown Community Partnerships

About the Program

Category: Civic Education and Public Information (Best in Category)

Year: 2023

How Chesterfield, as local government, informs and engages with our community on important topics is rapidly changing. While we have witnessed success through traditional means and e-based services – community meetings, Chesterfield’s website, social platforms, e-newsletters, blogs and podcasts – we needed to identify a new approach to ensure we are truly reaching all segments of our population. Additionally, faced with a countywide, large-scale project, we knew we’d need help in the endeavor to educate and inform the public. Strategic and purposeful engagement, through the help of key community partnerships, enabled Chesterfield to achieve direct and far-reaching results. While a specific project led the county to reexamine its standard operating procedures, we have found wide use in how to deploy this strategic communications framework in other areas of the organization, as we address challenging community topics including mental health, public safety, and budgeting. It’s also provided opportunities to involve elected leaders in community conversations. This communications strategy has proved to be successful, particularly as the Community Facilities Bond Plan resulted in the highest approval ever with 76 percent voting “yes.” This approach has opened an opportunity for more organic community engagement as we are empowering our key community partners to have an active voice in the process when tackling complex topics. The exchange of information and approaches to engage with others is constantly evolving – requiring local government to adapt and deploy new strategies to meet the needs of the community. When Chesterfield began planning the educational campaign to inform residents about the upcoming bond referendum, local leaders knew it would differ from the last referendum nearly 10 years prior and decided to be intentional about best practices to inform the community on what they’d see at the ballot box. The county was requesting the issuance of $540 million in bonds to finance new capital facilities for schools, police and fire stations, parks, and libraries. During a time of softening economic conditions and rising inflationary pressures, seeking a bond referendum of this scale was a heavy lift. This task was further complicated with early voting – shifting the county’s target earlier for those hitting the ballot box 45 days ahead of election day. Throughout the bond referendum campaign, it became clear that the county would continue to face the engagement challenges that the bond campaign began to address. The solution provided by this engagement model can be applied to both intentional campaigns, such as the Marcus Alert rollout, and more informal meetings with the community that allow residents to raise topics that concern them.