Engage Locally

Be local. Be engaged. 

Building inclusive engagement online to accelerate change today.

2012 Outreach Team

Starting at the neighborhood and city level we go deep in our network of E-Democracy communities. 

Our goal is to discover how to inclusively engage the highest percentage of households in daily civic and community engagement online. In our strongest neighborhoods, over 30% of households participate.

We also widely promote inclusive open government and civic technology innovation based on our 20 years of direct field experience.

Initiatives include:

  • Local Community Forums - Defined by geography, local community forums strengthen communities by helping build strong relationships and providing a mechanism to explore solutions to local challenges.
     
    • BeNeighbors - A three-year, Saint Paul-based inclusive community engagement online project funded by the Knight Foundation. Moving forward @newvoices.
       
    • Inclusive Social Media - A two-year, Minneapolis-focuses inclusive community engagement online project funded by the Ford Foundation. Moving forward @BeNeighbors.
       
  • Sunshine 2.0 - Indicators and resources to help local chapters of the League of Women Voters improve local support for democracy online.

Future Directions

  • Civic Tech - Create opportunities for the 20,000+ inclusively recruited Twin Cities Neighbors Forum members to help civic coders identify ways to harness the power of open data to build strong communities.
     
  • Idea Generation - Vote Now - Help prioritize ideas for next generation online civic engagement. (More background). This Ford Foundation funded exploration surfaced two key ideas:
    • DemocracyMap - Helping the public identify all their local elected officials and
    • PublicMeetings.info - Standardizing and making public meeting data more accessible.