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Building Community Engagement

NCO (National Center for Outreach) is one of the most important resources available in public media, one that "The Takeaway" planners were eager to tap into as they built a program to fully reflect America and engage listeners locally. Unique to public broadcasting, NCO offers an extraordinary range of specialized services to help stations and producers of every size define, refine and meet even their most elusive community engagement goals.

Alvarez Stroud describes community
engagement at PRDMC
NCO's Executive Director Maria Alvarez Stroud says, "We exist for the sole purpose of increasing public broadcasters' ability to serve their local communities and to be a catalyst for community engagement. Everything we do is designed to help stations engage and educate citizens, expand community relationships and stimulate civic participation. It's our raison d'être, carried out across multiple service platforms."

That NCO is playing a major role in the rapid growth of community engagement activity industrywide is no accident.

Erika Monroe-Kane
NCO Community Engagement Director Erika Monroe-Kane says, "Public broadcasting is undergoing a critical strategic shift in response to listener expectations for greater interactivity. Stations and producers recognize that this is underway, and they are responding enthusiastically. We're very excited to have a significant role in the process."

NCO's expertise led to a partnership with "The Takeaway" and four of the show's pilot stations to create authentic community engagement: WEAA in Baltimore, WCLK in Atlanta, WGBH/WCAI in Boston and on Cape Cod, and co-producer WNYC® in New York. For "The Takeaway" to launch such an initiative is logical — it's the only program in the history of public radio engineered to help stations achieve authentic community engagement.

Standing room only at the
PRDMC session
The process begins with reorienting the station from being a one-to-many broadcaster to an organization created as a unique local resource, in keeping with the public broadcasting mission. As Monroe-Kane says, "Community engagement is more a mindset than a To Do List. Once a station is thinking about creating a dialogue with its community, it can transform existing events and activities into opportunities to hear from and engage with the community."

NCO has resources available to help throughout the process. It supports short- and long-term initiatives, from gaining new partners for a producer's recurring event to expanding a station's membership over time to reflect community shifts in age, gender and ethnicity. Once community needs are defined and goals set, a station can then turn to implementation, using NCO's resource-rich tools. PlanIt, for example, makes it easy to create initiatives, measure their impact, and prepare reports for stakeholders.

Users stay fully focused on their initiatives since the logistical details are prompted by the supporting tool. All are NCO-created. "We're good listeners," Alvarez Stroud says, "so we develop our resources out of the experience, preferences and practical use of hundreds of broadcasters."

Everyone in public media has access to NCO resources free of charge since the independent organization is fully funded by CPB. A sampler:
  • Webinars — presentations that outline station initiatives and demonstrate tools and techniques.
  • Professional development — one-on-one or small-group coaching and consultations.
  • Community mapping — techniques to identify and locate key constituents.
  • Peer-to-peer conversations — idea exchanges among NCO users.
  • Seed money — micro-grants for local initiatives.
  • National Community Calendar — roster of events around which local initiatives can be built.
  • Community Engagement Repositor — a forum for sharing tested approaches and creative solutions.
  • Online library — video, audio, articles, hotlink references and more.
    (Visit ncoengage.org.)
For "The Takeaway" pilot stations, community mapping is critical. This technique merges community data with Google software to plot critical information about a station's signal area on a map, e.g., neighborhoods, nonprofits, businesses, service organizations, churches, arts and cultural groups, as well as relationships and connections. Staff can, literally, begin to identify where the people who aren't being fully served by their signals and Web sites are located and target relevant organizations for partnership opportunities.

Kortni Alston
WEAA served as a model for an NCO webinar on community mapping. Kortni Alston, WEAA director of News and Public Affairs, says, "The mapping process is phenomenal! Our data is now centralized, and the process created a visual that provides us with a very clear, practical way to expand our reach and engage the community even more."

For example, WEAA produces a monthly feature called "Community Cares" that showcases an individual or an area nonprofit. Listeners send in ideas for the segments, and WEAA is developing on an online component for the show. Alston will use mapping to expand the program's reach on air and online. "Mapping lets us identify prospective partners and their proximity to our current strategic partners. Making those new connections is our next step."

Monroe-Kane says, "The station identified a way to expand an existing service. Not only does this build on an important community service, it raises the station's visibility, strengthens its relationships with new and established partners, and provides fresh content for local programming."

These kinds of initiatives contribute to a station becoming even more relevant — and therefore, more valued — communitywide. That's what community engagement is all about.

Alvarez Stroud says, "Working with 'The Takeaway' and its community engagement pilot stations is exciting. The coming months will offer us many learning opportunities, and we're delighted to help everyone take maximum advantage of them all."

If you'd like more information or are interested in becoming a pilot community engagement station with "The Takeaway," contact your PRI Client Relations Manager — now!