The most important elements of Community Engagement, and why they might just be your achilles heel

“Find the people holding the biggest consequence of failure” […and ask them]

You could hear a pin drop as the room processed, before applause rang out. Mic drop moment.

We hear provications often, such as this one at the recent Impact Summit in Brisbane Australia, convened by PLACE; and of course the room universally agrees. Yet somewhere along the way it still gets lost in translation, backgrounded, or steered left towards others also impacted but in lesser ways, such as funders or our KPIs. We want to whole-heartedly say yes, yet deep down know leaning into listening is harder than it seems. Why is that? How might we move through that challenge?

What does research tell us?

The case for community engagement is strong, we know that when people with lived and local experience are involved in defining the challenges and opportunities, designing solutions, deciding solutions, even implementing those solutions, things work better.

Today I’m going to dive deeper into one particular research conducted of 40 initiatives spanning many countries, including Australia, UK, Canada, Sweden, US, Ireland, South Korea and so on by Tanya Rong, Eli Ristevski, and Matthew Carroll. Their conclusion was unambiguous — community engagement makes a difference, core to its success is trust, direct involvement of local leaders and trusted Elders, respecting local expertise and knowledge, and that Community participation enables sustainability and success of community and place-based initiatives.

The first thing that becomes quickly apparent in their research, and I would suggest aligns strongly with what I see daily through this work, is that there is no commonly held understanding or even term to define and understand community. Some use community-led, others neighbouring, place-based or resident-led; “community” is equally inconsistent in understanding and thus its application when it comes to engagement and participation. In an environment where consensus and shared understanding is yet to form, we risk applying the easiest and most diluted definition, eroding the opportunity for benefit from the outset. We defer to the lowest common denominator of ‘community’ to listen, learn, and catalys change via.

In your initiative or context, how you do you define community currently?

Across the many contexts and research that were looked at, three (3) common themes emerged, interestingly they were both the enabler and barrier. Culture, trust and power form the critical components of engagement, working on a spectrum that either enhances or erodes overall engagement. Furthermore, each is interdependent on the other, weaving together across the journey or and environment of mutual engagement.

As we wade midway into 2026, the reality is that this gap between the promise and the practice of listening with and in community has progressively eroded community trust. Communities have learnt, over time and generations, whether participation actually changes anything. We sit at a challenging juncture…

Communities are rediscent to show up, sceptical of processes, power, and intention.

Organisations and practitioners interprete low participation as disengagement or indifference, foregrounding timeframes and close enough knowledge in the absense of being able to hear from lived and local experience.

SO, what in practice makes a difference?

When the Rubber hits the Road…

Tanya Rong, Eli Ristevski, and Matthew Carroll highlight a few practical elements that either help or hinder.

Time: No surprises here that time taken to build trust, relational infastructure, shared and safe spaces, understanding, and time in process were some of the biggest barriers and more importantly the most significant enablers. Documented timelines that talk of years are common, time in relation to whether power and pressure is externally held from funding cycles or agendas or not, and time for relationship that demonstrates commitment were all key. The take away, give time on the front end and hold commitment to the pace across time.

Recruitment and involvement: Intersecting strongly with culture; where we move quickly with early adopters and those already comfortable being involved and by-pass intention and consideration to cultural ways, language diversity, and trust as precursors to involvement of those less likely to jump right in, we often miss whole groups of people in a community. Put careful consideration to the spaces and times for people to show up feel like little things but are big things, the reality is this may involve working after 4:15pm on a Tuesday. Where we do these small things, we are able to “recruit” and involve a greater diversity of voices, perspectives and involvement. This in turn over time strengthens the overall social capital and collective confidence of the community to drive change together.

We must appreciating that many perspectives are important, not just loud ones.

Spaces and Settings: Spaces and settings for coming together make a significant impact. Meeting in mutual, neutral and community-held ‘third spaces’ immediately balances power and are often places where other forms of community interaction already occur, particuarly cultural exchange. If engagement and listening is occurring in a space because you feel most comfortable, you have potentially backgrounded someone elses comfort and safety to do so.

I learnt this personally a few years ago while coordinating a large-scale community volunteer committee. Meetings were usually held at the local church hall, MY local church hall. One week I needed to bring along my two young children, and so I organised the meeting to be at McDonalds. Now hear me out, in Australia most Maccas have a community board room, beyond its use as their training space and parties, most days and evenings it is available free of charge for community groups to meet in. It quickly became out set meeting room; it was central, neutral, kids could play on the play ground, others could grab dinner as they dashed straight from work or a chai for the evening. This particular week I realised these elements weren’t just helpful to me, they were beneficial to everyone and the tone and energy of the meeting reflected that almost immediately. There was more chatter, more willingness to contribute ideas, and people lingering afterwards to chat at will. Beyond our own experience, it kept us grounded in the reason we were meeting in the first place, community. Where is that place in your local?

Community development and Community engagement sitting hand in hand: Most exciting of the findings is the interrelationship and benefits of coupling community development and engagement, understanding them as mutually exclusive and reinforcing of one another.

… translated into feelings of pride and belonging within their community, improving mental health and wellbeing. Ultimately this can lead to community members becoming strong advocates over issues that affect their health and wellbeing

If listening enablers and barriers sit on a spectrum, so to do the implications

Listening has long been held as a nice-to-have but optional. Risks of doing engagement well are quickly to identify and not engaging often the apparent and preferred option, so as to minimise risk. Yet if we revisit the juncture we sit at, then not listening, engaging, and taking time now have a cost also.

In Australia, the ABSs most recent release on levels of trust found that all measures of trust declined between 2020 and 2025. In 2025, 50% of Australians felt that most people can be trusted, down from 61% in 2020 and 55% in 2019. Trust in the healthcare system, police and justice system also declined.

If Trust is a core foundation of listening and engagement, and trust is on the decline, then the risks of not engaging are getting real and the implications evident.

What can make a difference

• Plan for the process. Embed into the processes the time, funding, and resourcing that it takes.

• Listen with deep intention and contientous understanding to engage well and right

• Where the skills and time to engage are limited within existing structures, bring in partners to guide and facilitation with careful intention

• Center Culture, trust and power with deep literacy and careful intention

Most importantly… don’t avoid listening but rather lean towards continuous listening, walking a relational and committed journey.

Reach out today at crystal@goodimpactau.com to see how I could support your local community engagement design and implementation.