Many worry that mandating registration for online community engagement activities will create a barrier to participation. While it is true that community members may be hesitant to provide personal details, it does not negate the benefits of registration when building your community engagement strategies.
As an engagement professional, you play a crucial role in shaping how your organization's leadership perceives and supports a registration process. Here are some strategies for increasing leadership buy-in.
Articulate the Value Proposition
Communicate the value of registration by:
Connecting to strategic goals: Demonstrate how a registration process aligns with organizational objectives, such as enhancing community trust, promoting transparency, and ensuring inclusive engagement.
Highlighting long-term benefits: Emphasize how a robust participant database contributes to better-informed decision-making, equitable representation, and stronger community relationships.
Showcase success stories: Share examples from other organizations or governments where registration processes have led to tangible improvements in engagement outcomes. To find examples, you could talk to surrounding councils or other organizations in your industry and see what they’ve done, or look through the Granicus success stories to read about methodology.
Communicate with Empathy
Assure your leadership team that you understand the potential risk of registration by:
Understanding their concerns: Address potential leadership fears, such as participant resistance or operational challenges, with practical solutions.
Framing it as collaborative: Position the registration process as a shared organizational effort to deepen community relationships.
Focusing on values: Align the discussion with the organization’s mission to serve the community transparently and equitably.
Present Evidence
Gather and present evidence-based arguments, focusing on:
Data-driven insights: Use statistics or case studies to show how registration processes improve participation quality and prevent spam or duplicate feedback.
Compliance focus: Stress the importance of adhering to data privacy regulations and how a formal registration process ensures compliance.
Risk mitigation: Highlight how an unmanaged or anonymous process can lead to biased outcomes, lower trust, or public criticism.
Showcase a Phased Approach
Outline a phased approach to introducing a pilot registration process, starting with minimal data collection and expanding as trust builds. In your pilot process:
Resource planning: Address potential concerns about costs or resources by showcasing scalable solutions and efficiency gains.
Start small: Propose a pilot registration process for a single project or initiative to demonstrate its benefits without committing significant resources upfront.
Evaluate and report: Collect and share data from the pilot to show increased participation quality, engagement diversity, and trust metrics.
Refine and scale: Use lessons from the pilot to improve the process and expand its adoption organization-wide.
Focus on Transparency and Integrity
Emphasize the ways that registration will benefit your organization and the community, including:
Emphasizing accountability: Explain how registration ensures all feedback is traceable, fostering confidence in decision-making processes.
Supporting equitable engagement: Highlight how registration data can reveal participation gaps and enable proactive outreach to underrepresented groups.
Building trust: Frame registration as a step toward ensuring everyone’s voice is valued and heard.
Engage Leadership Personally
Your leadership team will be personally engaged if you:
Create leadership buy-in: Invite leaders to experience the platform firsthand by participating in a mock engagement process to understand its potential.
Share stakeholder perspectives: Present feedback from community members who appreciate the transparency and tailored communication enabled by registration.
Focus on legacy: Position a robust engagement platform as a leadership legacy—something that strengthens the organization's reputation and community impact.
By framing the registration process as a tool for transparency, integrity, and stronger community relationships, engagement professionals can effectively influence leadership to view it not as a bureaucratic hurdle but as a strategic asset.
You can also remember some of these strategies and the lessons you learn from implementing them when communicating with your participants.