Building and Working with Stakeholder Groups

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Building and Working with Stakeholder Groups

• Eve Brantley
• Alabama Cooperative Extension System

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What is Participation?

• List some adjectives that describe a
  PARTICIPATORY process

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What is Participation?

• List some adjectives that describe a
  NON-PARTICIPATORY process

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Costs of Public Participation

• Participation is inefficient
• Participation wastes precious time
• Participation wastes financial resources
• Participation doesnt produce concrete results
• Participation creates false expectations
• Participatory decisionmaking is irrational
• Participation is elitist

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Meaningful Participation

• How active or passive do you want to be?
• Its likely different than your neighbor find
  your comfort zone

Awakening Participation Building Capacity
for Public Participation in Environmental
Decisionmaking
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Where are you on the continuum?
Apathetic
Radical

• It takes all kinds.

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Participation Cycle
Involvement in Planning
Involvement in Evaluation
Involvement in Implementation
Involvement in Sharing Benefits
Awakening Participation Building Capacity
for Public Participation in Environmental
Decisionmaking
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Why Involve the Public?

• Learn alternative viewpoints on issues
• A good source of ideas
• Gain support for projects or issues
• They need to be a part of decisions that may
  impact their quality of life, business, or future
  plans

Bring em to the table now and theyre your
friends exclude them and theyre your enemies
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Who is the public?

• Different segments of the public will be
  interested in different issues at different
  stages of the same issue
• Usual suspects
• Local watershed groups
• Clubs or social organizations
• Neighborhood groups
• Schoolchildren
• Development community
• Business / industry representatives
• Local, state, and federal agency representatives
• Journal of Stormwater, Buyers Guide 2002,
  Developing Technical Policy with Citizens Groups

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How do I find them?

• Now that you know who needs to join you, what are
  some strategies to finding stakeholders?
• Stakeholder analysis

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Stakeholder analysis worksheet

• Questions that can help answer who you need to
  target
• Who caused the problem?
• Who in the community is affected
• (directly or indirectly)?
• Who cares?

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Awakening Participation Building Capacity
for Public Participation in Environmental
Decisionmaking
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This used to be a pretty crick.
I dont catch as many fish as I used to.
Im losing my backyard to the stream.
Awakening Participation Building Capacity
for Public Participation in Environmental
Decisionmaking
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Ok maybe you dont have a project that is an
international concern
state
county
city
neighborhood
Awakening Participation Building Capacity
for Public Participation in Environmental
Decisionmaking
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Actually, you may not want to write this down
Awakening Participation Building Capacity
for Public Participation in Environmental
Decisionmaking
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Involving Stakeholders

• Now that you know who they are go and get them!

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Who is Interested?

• 5 Categories of People
• Enthusiast
• Visionary
• Pragmatist
• Conservative
• Laggard

E
V
P
C
L
Dr. Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations
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Enthusiasts

• Venturesome
• High education levels
• High social status
• Able to cope with uncertainty and high risk
• Great Let me at it!

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Visionary

• Second only in the speed with which they adopt a
  new behavior
• Others view them as decisive and influential
• More practical than the Enthusiasts

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Pragmatist

• More deliberate in decision making
• Rely on friends and colleagues advice
• Seek a lot of information on an issue before
  making a decision

Need unbiased research and knowledge of
others experiences (success failure) to feel
comfortable trying something new
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Conservative

• Set in their ways unwilling to change
• Skeptical about trying new things and adopting
  new behaviors

Need LOTS of unbiased research and knowledge
of others experiences (success failure) to
feel comfortable trying something new
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Laggards

• Most resistant to change kicking and screaming!
• Least likely to adopt a new behavior, no matter
  what the science says

Need you to mind your own business
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Keys to Successful Outreach

• Know your target audience
• Focus on the Enthusiasts or Visionaries

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Amount of effort
Enthusiasts
Visionaries
Pragmatists
Conservatives
Laggards
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Low hanging fruit.
Enthusiasts
Visionaries
Pragmatists
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Keys to Successful Outreach

• Get to know your target audience
• Youve got to know who youre talking to
• Education levels
• Age levels
• Job (teachers, engineers, foresters, etc.)

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Keys to Successful Outreach

• Get to know your target audience
• Youve got to know what youre talking about
• What does your audience already know?
• What are their perceptions and attitudes?

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Keys to Successful Outreach

• Get to know your target audience
• Youve got to know how to talk to them
• Where do they get their information newspapers,
  magazines, television

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Keys to Successful Outreach

• K.I.S.S. - Technology Transfer
• Use terms that your grandmother can understand.
• Package information in a friendly manner.

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Grandmother Terms

• Nonpoint source pollution dirty or unhealthy
  creeks

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Grandmother Terms

• High Biological Oxygen Demand
• fish may die because theres not enough oxygen

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Grandmother Terms

• Excessive Sedimentation Rates
• 40 dump trucks of dirt

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Grandmother Terms

• Watershed Management using the land so that her
  great-grandchildren will also enjoy healthy
  forests and streams

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Grandmother Terms

• NO ACRONYMS

USDA NRCS
EPA OWOW
EPD TMDL
RCRA, CERCLA
EIS
303(d) segment
OE, TSS, DO
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Lonely?Bored?Have a meeting!

• What is the worst meeting youve attended?
• Why was it bad?

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Meeting Tips

• Visuals and audience participation
• We remember
• 10 of what we hear
• 20 of what we see
• 65 of what we see and hear
• 80 90 of what we see, hear and do
• Maps rule

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Meeting Tips

• Make meetings count have a clear objective for
  what you want to accomplish
• Be realistic about what can be accomplished in
  one meeting
• Set Ground Rules
• Have a REASON
• Dont just meet to meet!

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Meeting Tips

• Make people feel at ease
• Body language
• Listen actively
• Ask questions
• Paraphrase
• Summarize
• Break up meeting monotony have fun every once
  in a while

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Meeting Tips

• Ask for feedback
• End on a positive note
• Accomplished goals
• Uncovered new concerns
• New direction to take

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Planning is critical

• What is your goal?
• Define your message
• Example Benefits of working together to
  implement stormwater BMPs

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Get the Word Out

• Media campaign, public service announcements
• Attend community meetings, make presentations
• Hold meetings on a regular schedule
• Create web site
• Distribute a non-technical newsletter
• Produce technical documents that address specific
  concerns

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Make it easy to understand

• One idea dominates the page
• Dont skip around between messages

USPS Graphic Design Features that sell
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Make it easy to understand

• One idea dominates the page
• Minimize different fonts
• A variety of fonts is distracting and annoying,
  not clever!

• USPS Graphic Design Features that sell

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Make it easy to understand

• One idea dominates the page
• Minimize different fonts
• White space is your friend! Dont fill every
  inch of space with words or pictures.
• Dense blobs of pictures text can look
  unattractive and turn readers away.

• USPS Graphic Design Features that sell

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Make it easy to understand

• One idea dominates the page
• Minimize different fonts
• White space is your friend! Dont fill every
  inch of space with words or pictures
• Use bullets and short sentences for easy to read
  text
• Dont make reading your information too much work

• USPS Graphic Design Features that sell

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Make it easy to understand

• One idea dominates the page
• Minimize different fonts
• White space is your friend! Dont fill every
  inch of space with words or pictures
• Use bullets and short sentences for easy to read
  text
• Use relevant pictures that are easy to see
• Outdated or poor quality pictures should be
  avoided

• USPS Graphic Design Features that sell

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Make it easy to understand

• One idea dominates the page
• Minimize different fonts
• White space is your friend! Dont fill every
  inch of space with words or pictures
• Use bullets and short sentences for easy to read
  text
• Use relevant pictures
• Have a clear Call to Action
• What is the next step you want your audience to
  take?

• USPS Graphic Design Features that sell

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Partnerships are Essential

• Alabama Water Quality Partnerships
• Alabama Department of Environmental Management
• Alabama Cooperative Extension System
• AL NEMO
• Clean Water Partnership

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Alabama Clean Water Partnerships

• 13 River Basin Facilitators
• Stakeholder meetings to develop watershed
  management plans
• Web site
• Educational materials
• Watershed plans
• Event calendar
• www.cleanwaterpartnership.org

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Educational Materials

• NEMO
• Local governments Nonprofits
• Cooperative Extension - local programs and Water
  Quality web site
• www.aces.edu/waterquality

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Keep it moving

• Start small with successes - community
  participation projects
• Volunteer monitoring, stream clean ups, water
  festivals

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Georgia Adopt-A-Stream

• Statewide Water Quality Volunteer Monitoring
• Watershed Assessment
• Chemical Monitoring
• Biological Monitoring
• Lake Wetland Monitoring
• http//www.riversalive.org/aas.htm
• 404-675-1635

 
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Alabama Water Watch is a statewide, citizen
volunteer water quality monitoring
program.  Training resources, certification
workshops, data management, and analyses.
http//www.alabamawaterwatch.org
 
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ENERGIZE

• Be the promoter and positive energy for the group
• Boat Anchors
• Weve all got em

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Summary

• People must understand issues to make good
  decisions
• Participation should be meaningful
• Make meetings count (dont waste anyones time)
• Have a clear goal and defined message