Services

we provide

We specialise in supporting communities and governments to tackle some of the biggest and most complex problems of our times, including climate change, community resilience, environmental sustainability, and rebuilding democratic processes in war-torn regions.

We support our clients with the full cycle of democratic engagement, starting with engagement strategy design and advice, through to planning, training, implementation, facilitation and data analysis. Some of the tools in our toolkit include:

Community Engagement roadmaps

Deliberative Democracy

Facilitation Design & Delivery

Engagement Policy & Framework development

Training & Professional Development

Supporting Representative Democracy

Community Engagement Roadmaps

& strategies

We support our clients to build community engagement and stakeholder engagement into their policy and project development right from the beginning, helping to ensure that they are using the right engagement methods to maximise impact and avoid pitfalls. We do this through multiple services – but primarily by co-creating Community Engagement Roadmaps with our clients.

Our Community Engagement Roadmaps are more than just another strategy.

Community Engagement Roadmaps dovetail with our client’s project or policy development plans, ensuring that the engagement is purposeful, meaningful and meets project objectives. They respond to the complex political environments in which our clients work and are developed following detailed analysis of our clients’ stakeholders and communities, their needs and lived experience as well as with in-depth understanding of the historical context.

Central to the Roadmap process is a detailed risk assessment to ensure that there are no surprises and that we are prepared for any unexpected ‘detours’ on the journey. Our Community Engagement Roadmaps provide our clients with the confidence they need that their engagement journey will take them where they need to go.

Deliberative

democracy

We design, deliver, recruit and project manage deliberative democracy engagement processes from end to end. Our many years of expertise across all types and sizes of deliberative democracy and community engagement mean that we have a bank of knowledge and techniques which we can deploy for any engagement challenge.

Facilitation

design & delivery

We are expert deliberative facilitators. We manage and facilitate groups of any size.

We are exceptional at designing approaches which not only enable the individuals involved to move beyond their own personal concerns, but to effectively work together with others who have different views to find a way forward, drawing on facts, evidence and perspectives learnt along the way.

Our facilitation team focusses on inclusion, building relationships between participants and with the convening organisation as well as achieving the outcomes required. It’s about switching on their collective potential and getting the best out of people and groups.

Having an independent facilitator like DemocracyCo is of central importance to deliberative processes. It helps to avoid perceptions that the process is biased towards a particular outcome. Independent, non-partisan and non-political facilitation also ensures that there is an expert in room who is focussed on the process, and not the content.

As a migrant from non-democratic societies, it was so reassuring that such a respectful democratic process was alive and well. This is a right, not many societies, let alone individuals get the opportunity to participate in. It was facilitated beautifully. Our future is assured, as the knowledge, respect, insight of the younger jurors was so very impressive. A fantastic process to be involved in, Thank You!

Marcel

Nuclear Citizens’ Jury Participant

Engagement Policy

& framework development

Engagement policies or frameworks provide a clear articulation of your organisation’s commitment to stakeholder /community engagement, providing clarity about how your organisation will work others. Importantly, they are essential for establishing expectations for staff, providing an essential foundation for building skills and an engagement culture.

We are highly experienced in developing engagement policies or frameworks, with team members who have led the development of engagement policies to support organisational change agendas.

Because engagement policies are so often about building skills and culture, our approach to their development will involve a diversity of your team and where relevant your community and stakeholders. By involving staff in this way, they will be actively learning about engagement, why you do it, where, with whom and how – building skills throughout.

Deliberative Democracy Training

& Professional Development

We share our knowledge and experience through training and professional development – supporting others to learn, improve their practice and lead positive public discourse.

We know that our clients have a range of issues affecting their work – public outrage, mistrust, negative media, deep divisions in communities, only hearing loud voices…to name a few!

These issues can be overwhelming – but they don’t have to be. You can lead and work constructively with the public and stakeholders to build a social licence for change.

Our specialist training and professional development support is an opportunity to reflect, understand and plan how you can achieve constructive public or stakeholder engagement.

Interested in learning more? click here

We currently run a range of training through the Australia and NZ School of Government (ANZSOG) and IPAA (SA) and you can find out more here.

Internationally, we have a long-standing partnership with the Civil Service College in Singapore and conduct training and coaching throughout the year. We also contribute to Deliberative Democracy Exchanges annually at the Kettering Foundation in the US and are contributors to the Democracy R&D network – a global network of deliberative practitioners.

- Featured Case Study -

In 2022, the City of Unley commissioned us to undertake an engagement framework design, train and coach their team, and design & deliver a deliberative panel process which used our roadmap and facilitation expertise.

You can read more about this project here

Methods

we use

We support our clients to build deliberative democracy into their policy and project development right from the outset: helping them to ensure that they are using the right engagement methods in the most impactful way, at the right time and within budget. To do this we draw on a range of communications, community engagement and deliberative democracy approaches as part of our bespoke designed Community Engagement Roadmaps. Here are just some of the methods we use.

Citizens’ Juries or Panels

Decision-making about complex problems is often dominated by experts and special interest groups, with processes that don’t encourage the participation of the general public. Citizens’ Juries (or panels) are one way to address this, by incorporating the views of the community into decision- making.

They provide an opportunity to learn what the community think about an issue when presented with detailed information from experts. Citizens’ Juries rely on reaching a broad consensus among jury members around a series of recommendations after consideration of diverse views. Citizens’ Juries have the ability to incorporate into their deliberations values, ethics, societal norms and trade-offs. This helps to enrich their decision making, and arrive at sensible, logical outcomes.

Project Highlight: Motor Accident Injury Insurance

Community Conversations

Community conversations enable conversations to occur where a community is comfortable, and in a place in which they already gather. Community conversations draw on Kitchen Table Conversation methodology – an informal meeting that is underpinned with an intuitive structure. They enable large scale, community wide deliberation.

They aim to build and deepen a sense of community and explore the range of opinions on an issue. They foster community organising and can stimulate and nurture public debate. They are supplemented by a conversation guide (often written by a citizens panel) and host kit.

Project Highlight: Murraylands & Riverland Resilience Plan

Current project: Accelerating to Net Zero

Co-design

Co-design is the active involvement of a diverse range of participants in exploring, developing, and testing responses to shared challenges together. Bringing together people with different perspectives and experiences enables the development of innovative ideas and assists government in responding to community and or stakeholder needs.

Project Highlight: My Home Hospital

Strategic Planning

As experienced facilitators, we have the capability and expertise to conduct strategic planning processes at all sizes and scales. We apply collaborative and participatory techniques to our strategic planning, ensuring that the process, as well as the content moves the organisation forward. We have conducted strategic planning for Government departments, programs, businesses, not for profits, schools and community groups.

Project Highlight: National Education Summit on Wellbeing in Schools

The team at democracyCo provided an end-to-end service from engagement strategy design through to support in implementation. The deliberative engagement methodology used ensured truly meaningful engagement and input, allowing different perspectives to be heard and considered. The consultation process was instrumental in shaping a plan for investment in research, development and extension that is driven by the needs of Australian grain growers and supports buy-in from a diverse range of stakeholder.

Craig Ruchs