Community engagement is an essential and perpetual component of developing and deploying your electrification strategy. In most cases, this should be the longest running and most intensive component of your roadmapping efforts.
Use the exercises in this workbook to develop pieces of your roadmap. Completing these exercises together as a team of local government representatives and community anchor partner(s) is the foundation of a community-driven planning approach.
Identify essential community and stakeholder groups and the individuals/organizations to represent them. Research each group’s likely needs, priorities, and concerns about building electrification to hone engagement efforts. Consider using the Stakeholder Mapping Tool and the Stakeholder Mapping worksheet in your Community Collaboration Workbook for this step.
Chart out your community engagement efforts by identifying which community groups can/should inform each step of the roadmapping process and how intimately these groups should be involved. Consider using the Process Planning worksheet in the Community Collaboration Workbook for this step.
Establish trust with the groups that should inform your community’s roadmap. This can be a multi-year process, especially for the underserved communities whose input is most important for developing an equitable electrification roadmap. If your local government does not currently have strong community ties, prioritize working with an anchor partner that can make contact and vouch for this effort within its network.
Determine how to best collect the input necessary to inform each step in your roadmapping process. Consider various outreach methods including surveys, public comment portals, and webinars/workshops. Balance your efforts with both public events and private events targeted at collecting feedback from specific stakeholder/community groups.
Establish methods for collecting community feedback on an ongoing basis to ensure the community continues to be engaged in the process of revising/updating your roadmap.
