Community Engagement & Coalition Building
Ronald C. Rice built coalitions as a two-term member of the Newark Municipal Council, where he created his ward’s Education Support Committee and sponsored the legislation that created the city’s Environmental, African and LGBT Commissions, and later created and led for seven years the most visible and sustained federal lobbying cohort of charter school leaders of color. He has chaired the Joint Meeting of Essex and Union Counties and served on the boards of Newark NOW and the Essex County Municipal Council Exchange.
Public support rarely develops by accident. We help organizations identify important constituencies, establish relationships, build trust and develop coalitions around shared objectives.
From a stakeholder map to a mobilized coalition
- Community engagement strategies
- Stakeholder mapping
- Coalition development
- Community outreach
- Grassroots engagement
- Grasstops engagement
- Faith and civic engagement
- Community listening sessions
- Public meetings and forums
- Stakeholder communications
- Coalition communications
- Community ambassador programs
- Advocacy mobilization
Listen before you ask
Communities can tell the difference between being consulted and being informed, and they remember which one they got. Our engagement strategies start with stakeholder mapping, which is partly a list of organizations and partly a map of trust: who speaks for whom, who has been burned before, which pastor, principal, business owner or association president can open a door that a flyer cannot.
Then we go and listen. Community listening sessions, public meetings and forums are designed to surface what people actually want before an organization decides what it wants from them. The grassroots work, the grasstops work with established leaders, and faith and civic engagement each need their own approach, and we build them separately so the coalition that forms is real rather than a letterhead.
When it is time to act, stakeholder and coalition communications keep everyone on the same page, community ambassador programs give residents a role they can own, and advocacy mobilization turns support into attendance, testimony, calls and votes. This capability can be particularly valuable to schools, nonprofits, developers, advocacy organizations, government entities and institutions whose success depends on community trust and participation.
When community standing is the whole question
A school or network
Enrollment, a facility, a charter renewal or a funding fight that depends on parents and neighbors showing up and speaking.
A project with neighbors
A development, a facility or a public program whose approval and success turn on the people who live nearby.
A policy campaign
An advocacy effort that needs validators from faith, civic and business communities, not just an association’s own staff.
Coalitions are built to do something
Public Affairs & Government Relations
The policy objective a coalition is organized around, and the legislative strategy to reach it.
Learn more →Political Campaign Strategy
Coalition building and grassroots organizing as the ground game of a local campaign.
Learn more →Signature Events & Thought-Leadership Programs
Community conversations and forums designed as engagement platforms, not one-off meetings.
Learn more →Tell us whose support you need
The community, the objective, and where the relationship stands today. If trust has been damaged before, say so; it changes the plan.