Do you work in community engagement? Tick. Do you enjoy gifts? Tick (who doesn’t). Well, to be honest, that’s all you need to get some joy from this festive round-up of practical gifts.

We all know that community engagement is the gift that keeps on giving: you get to understand who your community is, unlock the voices of the minority, gain insights and feedback into what you are doing right, or perhaps what you might be doing wrong… it’s exciting, fulfilling, and crazy!

Even though your community is a wealth of knowledge and expertise on local matters, sometimes, you just need a little help and support to really make the most of your engagement efforts.

So, we thought we would wrap up the top five gifts you should that you should definitely purchase for yourself and your team.

1. One Time Machine

We know time machines aren’t entirely accessible, yet. But, we do know how beneficial one could be to your team. Just imagine having the ability to alter time!

Time is one resource we can all agree is lacking. Whether it’s the amount of time we have available to plan, design, and launch a new engagement project or perhaps just the length of the engagement period – it can go by, very fast. So we need to make sure we make the most of it!

A digital engagement platform can help you gather more feedback in less time because it’s accessible to your community 24/7. Especially when you have an experienced team of engagement experts supporting the design and build to help you launch within 24 hours.

2. Two Stress Balls

It turns out that stress balls actually deliver a string of benefits. Apart from the obvious relief of stress and tension, stress balls can act as a distraction device or improve concentration and creativity.

You see, the steps between planning and implementing a community engagement project can vary greatly. You might not run into a single roadblock and have a smooth sailing strategy in place, or you might run into the likes of a global pandemic that completely revolutionizes digital engagement (just saying, anything is possible).

With everything ready to go, you may have to pivot and adjust your community engagement at any time, so implementing a hybrid strategy that combines both in-person and online tools might be beneficial. Especially if it means you only need two stress balls, and not 200.

3. Three Calendars (Minimum)

I’m sorry, I know, calendars and time kind of go hand-in-hand. But, at least you know to buy at least three calendars for your 2022. Why three? Having one for your team, one for the community and one for changes ensures that you’re being flexible and responsive to every stakeholder!

What might be a great time to launch an engagement project for your team, might not be a great time for your community. So, shifting the goalposts and ensuring you conduct your due diligence in terms of community priority and focus may help you gain additional engagement and feedback when willingness and motivation are high.

To help you make the most of those calendars, you should be creating a promotional plan that effectively targets your key stakeholders. After all, who is going to give you feedback if no one knows what you’re working on?

4. Four Magical Elves

This is simply a no-brainer. We all need magical elves to help review feedback, tag common themes, analyze sentiment and package up our data into tidy reports. I suggest you track down at least four to help.

If you aren’t able to find any magical elves, however, you should utilize a digital engagement platform that does all of this for you.

5. Five Thousand Ready-to-Engage Community Members

In an ideal world, all of our community members would be motivated to engage and contribute their insights at the drop of a hat. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Whether it’s a time commitment, inaccessibility, poor promotion, or lack of trust, there are a few pivotal factors that might be inhibiting your engagement.

Our community’s time is incredibly precious, so we need to make sure our engagement projects are clear, transparent, and actionable. You want your community to trust that by spending their time engaging with you, they will see tangible results and outcomes.

We hope you enjoyed our take on the top 5 gifts for your community engagement team. Community engagement can be fun, rewarding, and busy, so having a time machine, some magical elves, or even just an accessible, cost-effective platform like Social Pinpoint will make your life a lot easier (we swear). Reach out to our team today to understand how Social Pinpoint can empower your engagement strategy.