MindMixer is a “virtual town hall” providing a forum for communities to share ideas, discuss, and create plans for the future. Without the time and place constraints, citizens can share ideas online, and leaders can gain input from their communities.
The New Orleans Survivor Council Story Circles were a meeting facilitation tool used in a larger grassroots effort to organize community members and ensure that post-disaster efforts met the needs of all those affected.
Participatory Budgeting refers to involvement of the community in public budget planning and spending decisions. The degree of participation ranges from giving citizens a voice during budget development to conferring actual citizen approval power.
Facing the possibility of a proposed five-turbine wind farm on Little Equinox Mountain in Manchester, Vermont, the Orton Foundation initiated a citizen engagement process to explore citizen’s interests and concerns regarding the proposed wind farm.
World Café is a tool that allows for meaningful collaborative discussions, sharing information, and positioning for action. As a metaphor, the World Café stands for bringing together diverse groups of people in open settings.
Open Space Technology is a system for facilitating group meetings based on the idea that planning, participation and action steps are strengthened when the participants lead the agenda and content of the sessions.
i-Neighbors is an online social networking service that connects residents of geographic neighborhoods. The goal of this site is to help individuals and their communities organize, share information, and work together to address local problems.
A start-up project in Burlington, Vermont creates online communities for residents of each city neighborhood, on which they can get to know each other, post requests for help or information, discuss neighborhood issues, and make announcements.
Community Needs Assessment techniques identify specific problems within communities that need to be addressed and some determination of priority for local needs. This generally entails the collection of first-hand information from relevant sources.
After an overwhelmingly positive response by community members to a proposed visioning initiative, the Manistee County Community Foundation embarked upon a community-driven process to produce strategies and action steps to guide the county’s future.