Communicating the Community Benefits and Impact

It is important to provide research and data to help validate your projects and initiatives, demonstrating the value for the community. Say you are preparing a business case or a grant application for a cultural initiative or project. You would typically include the purpose or goal of the project and the anticipated benefits it will provide for the community.  Including research, data and analytics to demonstrate how beneficial your project is will substantially strengthen your proposal. The Cultural Satellite Account (CSA), “an accounting framework created to better measure the economic importance of culture, arts, heritage and sport in the Canadian economy” (Government of Canada, 2021, para.1), can guide you through this process. The CSA provides sound quantitative data that, when combined with our qualitative research such as case studies and stories from our communities, adds credibility. This technique of data triangulation proves valuable in making our case for cultural value in our communities and can help you in your own research.

Join us for another clip of our conversation with Bergum and Enger discussing how we demonstrate or articulate the value and or benefits of a particular project to help influence and gain support from decision-makers (See video 3:9 Interview with Carol Bergum, and Diane Enger).

Video 3:9, Interview with Carol Bergum and Diane Enger

Caitlin asks: “What does it look like when you’re trying to take something that might have been an informal coffee meeting and put it into a more formal kind of show of backing?”

Enger suggests “when you’re trying to move an idea along … you really have to understand what is the driver” (Zoom interview, July 2021).

Everyone has differing perspectives, for example in local government different departments will all have different motivations. For instance: The Engineer Department may want to review all of the technical details and the impact on services (i.e., water, utilities etc.) in the area. The Planning and Development Department may want to know whether you are following the land use bylaw as you design your project. Cultural Services Department may want to know how this will impact the Public Art piece or how your project might integrate or connect with the cultural history of the area and possibly impact other cultural organisations (Enger, Zoom interview, July 2021).

A great way to formalise this is to ensure the purpose and objectives of the project are clear to all involved. This includes engaging with the community and really listening to what is important to each group in relation to the project. Engagement can be through written submissions or verbal/written feedback during focus groups or stakeholder meetings, or informal conversations.

Enger emphasises the importance of listening to identify the drivers—in other words, what is important to each group. Think to yourself: What is important to them? What are their motivations? Once you are aware of what’s important to each of the players, then you can work on how to address everyone’s biggest needs. Enger notes that it is also important to remember to follow-up with each of the groups with which you have engaged. She suggests recapping what they identified as important to them about the project and then communicating back to them how that is specifically being addressed (Zoom interview, July 2021).

Interpersonal skills such as emotional intelligence will assist you greatly in helping to get things done. Emotional intelligence is sometimes referend to as “EI” or “EQ” and is defined as “the ability to understand and manage your own emotions and those of the people around you,” where people with a high degree of emotional intelligence “know what they’re feeling, what their emotions mean, and how these emotions can affect other people” (Mindtools, n.d., para. 5).

Being able to read the room, understand and appreciate what is happening and what others might be feeling or experiencing is an important skill. There are five key elements of emotional intelligence to keep in mind:

1. Self-awareness
2. Self-regulation
3. Motivation
4. Empathy
5. Social skills

(Mindtools, n.d.)

Enger shared how important it is to develop your own interpersonal skills, be self-aware, and understand others’ perspectives and motivations (Zoom interview, July 2021). There are a variety of different assessments and courses you can take to assist you on this journey. Developing your skills in group dynamics, interpersonal relationships, emotional intelligence, and communications will prove valuable when working in community development. Ensuring you have a balance of skills—those that are technical and those that are soft power-oriented—will make your project a success at the end of the day (Enger, Zoom interview, July 2021).

Many of the skills that were mentioned by Enger in our conversation have been identified by Joseph Nye as well. In an interview with Doug Gavel, Nye suggests three skills that are integral to soft power: “The first is emotional intelligence, the ability to control your own emotions and use them to reach out to others; second [is] the idea of composing a vision of the future that attracts others; and third [are] communication skills including both rhetorical skills and also the ability to use non-verbal communication tools” (Gavel, 2008, para. 3).