Community Engagement

Community Engagement, also called public involvement, is a core practice area of our business. At Atlas, we deploy thoughtful strategies to gather the feedback you need from your target audiences. We implement modern and traditional engagement tactics to gather critical information on large infrastructure, transportation, master planning, new development and wastewater projects. As one of Idaho’s few registered DBEs in the public involvement/ community engagement space, we’ve built a trusted reputation in public and private engagement efforts—helping municipalities, state agencies and private companies hear from their stakeholders so their plans represent the will of the people.

Stakeholder Mapping

Every project is unique and the “stakeholders” – or those likely to be engaged or impacted vary widely depending on the issue, the community, the priorities of those involved and many other variables. Atlas will create stakeholder profiles to better understand the mindset of each of the constituents you need to reach. From there, we will lead a comprehensive stakeholder mapping process in order to better understand the groups who may be most likely to engage in an issue or project, how they are likely to be affected, and how we are most likely to reach them. This essential process lays the groundwork for ensuring crucial information reaches those who will be most affected.

Facilitation

Atlas has senior leadership professionally certified in facilitation. Our empathetic, inclusive approach ensures that any viewpoint is considered and recorded during feedback gathering. Our assertive facilitators are strong conversation managers, making sure that a group with introverts and extroverts have fairly balanced airtime and those with varying opinions feel heard no matter how controversial or contentious the subject matter. Further, we have modern record keeping mechanisms to ensure that all feedback is synthesized in a comprehensive way for clients.

Focus Groups

Atlas Strategic Communications has deep experience organizing, recruiting and facilitating focus groups. Our team can recruit a randomized focus group (self-selecting) or recruit based on specific feedback needs. Our expert facilitators and record keepers will ensure that the meeting is ran on schedule, members are heard and feedback is recorded in a meaningful way to the project.

Public Meeting Coordination

A popular and time-tested tactic for gathering public feedback is the public meeting. As a modern agency, Atlas is capable of hybridizing the traditional public meeting and providing both in-person and virtual participation options in a fluid, easy to understand way so that those who prefer to attend public meetings in person may do so and those who wish to stay home and participate virtually may do so.

Anecdotal Surveying

An important mechanism for gathering broad feedback is surveying. Atlas Strategic Communications will help our clients write simple, easy to navigate surveys for online use so that broad public feedback can be derived for a project. If you need a large constituency to offer input, surveying is a good tool to reach many. Atlas has experience working with private sector, nonprofit and public sector clients on robust surveying efforts to gather anecdotal feedback on projects to determine their next move.