“We need a great idea.”

Public Engagement Partners approaches public-serving design with innovation, thought leadership, and creativity. We work with partners to harvest ideas, put some legs under the ideas, develop them out, and then actualize them. We work alongside institutions and organizations whose work affects the public to design community-focused, civic-minded, participatory, equitable programs or initiatives. We design with democratic outcomes in mind, including increased engagement, better collaboration, and greater trust between the public and their leaders as well as the public with each other.

“We need to adapt.”

Today’s civic life is dynamic, changing rapidly as new technology and globalization bring fresh information daily. Organizations can evolve quickly to keep pace and get ahead of the curve. We partner with clients to understand their mission and vision, prioritize goals, assess community influences and develop effective change processes.

“We need to understand our civic environment and potential impact.”

We conduct research to better understand the big picture of civic and democratic life in our world and evaluation to learn how your specific work is contributing to that big picture. We value shaping research and evaluation with those being studied, loyal to the adage “nothing about us without us”. We employ both qualitative and quantitative methods according to the questions we seek to answer.

As evaluators, we support institutions, organizations, and communities to reflect upon how their work is impacting community, civic-life, and democracy. As researchers, we examine how social trends affect civic life, and how we can strengthen the field of participatory, equitable, deliberative democracy.

“We need a solid plan.”

Public Engagement Partners supports civic-minded, public-focused institutions, organizations, and communities in reflection, growth, and forward advancement through visioning and strategic planning exercises. This includes goal setting, creating a mission and vision or logic model, creating desired program outcomes, and advising on an initiative or program’s direction. We specialize in designing a civic process – examples include creating a community dialogue, visioning session, creative ways to vote, community events to build goodwill and more. We can help you to get unstuck – rooting out existing problems in your work through research, identifying themes, and reflecting together on the best path forward.

“We need to be thought-leaders, persuasive and articulate.”

We’re skilled in writing white papers, academic publications, reports, blogs, news articles that contribute to the national and global discussion on strengthening civic life through participatory democracy. In addition, we write concept papers and grants to actualize civic-minded, public-facing ideas by procuring funding for your organization’s goals.

We don’t stop at the written word. Public Engagement Partners helps organizations find their voice through public speaking and events. We can develop presentations and workshops for you to learn more about public engagement, ranging from principles for the work to tried and true strategies to real life examples of success.