Planning a Community Engagement Timeline

Why Timing Matters

A successful engagement process depends on more than just choosing the right methods — it also requires well-timed delivery. A thoughtful timeline helps:

• Align engagement with key decision points

• Provide participants enough time to engage meaningfully

• Avoid last-minute or tokenistic consultation

• Ensure internal teams are prepared to deliver and respond

Poor timing can lead to low participation, rushed analysis, or decisions made without real input.

Key Principles for Planning Your Timeline

1. Engage Early
   Begin planning engagement in the early stages of the project. This helps influence decisions while they’re still flexible and builds community buy-in.

2. Phase Your Engagement
   Break engagement into logical stages, aligned with the project lifecycle. For example:

• Pre-engagement: Define objectives, map stakeholders, develop materials

• Active engagement: Deliver activities, collect input, respond to questions

• Post-engagement: Analyse feedback, report outcomes, and close the loop

1. Allow Time for Inclusion
   Ensure you provide enough time for:

• Community members to respond

• Harder-to-reach groups to be contacted

• Internal teams to analyse and report findings

1. Avoid Overload
   Stagger engagement to avoid consultation fatigue — especially if multiple projects are occurring simultaneously in the same area.

Common Timeline Mistakes to Avoid

• Launching engagement without enough preparation

• Overlapping with school holidays, election periods, or major events

• Rushing the process to meet political or funding deadlines

• Promising reporting deadlines that can’t be met

Tools to Help Plan Your Timeline

• Project milestone calendars to anchor your phases

• Stakeholder availability maps (e.g. cultural calendars, harvest periods)

• Engagement delivery schedules that assign clear roles and responsibilities

• Gantt charts or shared planning tools to visualise phases and dependencies

What’s Next

After planning your timeline, the final step is to evaluate your engagement process and ensure you report back to participants.

Read the next guide: How to Evaluate and Report on Engagement Outcomes
Or return to the full guide: How to Write a Community Engagement Plan