Starting engagement
Build an engagement approach your teams can follow
For organizations that value engagement but need a reliable process, guidance and a shared standard. CE Canvas helps your teams make sound engagement decisions from the first project.
Your situation
Why engagement is inconsistent without a strategy or framework
You value engagement but have no strategy, framework or shared process yet. Each project reinvents the approach, and the results depend on who happens to run it.
- Objectives and decision scope stay unclear, so staff cannot say what input will change.
- Stakeholders are missed because there is no consistent way to identify them.
- Evidence is scattered across inboxes and documents and reporting is rushed.
- Leadership loses confidence in the process and communities notice.
Building your engagement approach
What changes with CE Canvas
- A guided process that helps teams make sound engagement decisions from the beginning.
- An engagement framework and implementation playbook your organization or department can approve and apply.
- Templates, decision tools and minimum standards that non-specialists can use.
- Evidence captured as you go, so reporting and learning are built in.
Recommended first step
Engagement Readiness Assessment
A short guided assessment of where your organization stands on process, capability, governance and evidence before you commit to anything.
Best fit when
- You are starting, or restarting, a consistent approach to engagement.
- You need a credible picture of where you stand to brief leadership.
What you get
- A readiness rating across process, capability, governance and evidence.
- The three gaps most likely to undermine your first projects.
- A recommended path: the Strategy and Framework Builder, a guided pilot, or both.
The self-serve assessment is in development. Register interest to discuss your readiness needs.
Request a readiness assessmentEngagement practice
Practice guides for this situation
The thinking behind the path, written for practitioners. Useful whatever you decide about the software.
Operationalizing an engagement framework
Why the hard part starts after the strategy or framework is approved, and what consistent practice needs.
Read the guideWhat is community engagement?
A practical definition, how engagement differs from consultation, and what real community influence requires.
Read the guideThe community engagement process: 10 steps
An order of operations for engagement that informs a decision, from decision space to closing the loop.
Read the guideHow to write a community engagement plan
The sections a plan needs, in the order a decision-maker will read them.
Read the guideAlso on this path
When you are further along
Create the foundation
Engagement Strategy and Framework Builder
Create or substantially renew an engagement strategy, framework and implementation playbook your whole organization or department can apply.
Build your strategy and frameworkValidate
Guided Pilot
A paid, time-limited pilot on one real project, governed by agreed success measures, with fees credited toward the first annual subscription.
Design a pilotQuestions
Common questions about building your engagement approach
What is a community engagement strategy or framework?
A document an organization adopts that sets out why it engages, what it promises participants, how it decides the level and methods of engagement, who approves what, and how it reports back. Councils in Victoria and New South Wales are required to adopt one; many other governments choose to.
Do we need a strategy before we can use CE Canvas?
No. CE Canvas gives you a guided process from the first project. The Strategy and Framework Builder then helps you write a strategy and framework from what you learn, so the document reflects practice rather than theory.
How is this different from hiring a consultant to write the strategy?
The Builder produces the same deliverables, a strategy, framework and implementation playbook, with AI-assisted drafts reviewed by your staff, and then turns the approved document into workflows and templates in CE Canvas so it is applied on every project rather than filed.
Not the right path?
Choose the situation that fits, or compare the paths side by side.