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Client Engagements — Public Affairs/Community
Urban Taskforce on Economic Revitalization
Need: The collaborative needed
a streamlined decision-making process so that 50 public and private
sector leaders could prioritize dozens of economic revitalization
initiatives and create action plans for those that were most important.
Our Solution: Using the strategic
planning version of our Audience Participation Technology (APT),
we helped the client prioritize and rate the projects against
multiple criteria, turning a multi-day meeting into a several-hour
session.
Non-profit Technology and Economic Development Agency
Need: This quasi-governmental
agency wanted extensive feedback from industry and community leaders
about how to diversify the rural economy before it made recommendations
to the Governor, State Legislature and other public bodies.
Our Solution: We helped the group
create a statewide research campaign. Our key role was to develop
and facilitate a series of statewide focus groups, design and
conduct interviews with individual CEOs and create and tabulate
written surveys, then collecting this wealth of information into
a summary report that provided a base for the agencyís initiatives.
Regional Economic Development Agency
Need: This regional planning council
was mandated by its state legislature to present a 25-year growth
plan for the region and it wanted to enhance its typical public
feedback processes with a more dynamic series of public feedback
forums.
Our Solution: We designed, managed
and facilitated thirteen public forums that solicited citizen,
business and community leadersí feedback, using APT to generate
anonymous public feedback and research demographic differences.
We also created the executive report that became the basis for
the Council's legislative report.
"Your efforts in the development and
execution of the event made all the difference to its
ultimate success. As a result, we were able to have the
data necessary to receive additional funding and move
forward on an important Foundation project."
-Vice President of Special Projects,
The Minneapolis Foundation
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National Philanthropic Foundation
Need: The Foundation was holding
its first multilingual conference and needed to solicit the opinions
of parents, childcare givers, health providers and community leaders
about how well the health system meets the health, development,
and cultural needs of children, ages 0-3.
Our Solution: We designed and
managed an interactive process that was engaging, educational,
and captured the data necessary for the Foundation to receive
additional funding to continue the important project.
Urban Business/Community Growth Collaborative
Need: This client needed to develop
a process for gathering candid public feedback in regard to a
recent regional study and the groupís economic development plans.
Our Solution: We designed an interactive
process for soliciting citizensí real-time feedback, trained the
moderators and collaborated with the authors of the study at a
well-publicized Public Comment Forum.
Urban Economic Council
Need: The client needed a process
for enlisting the opinions of 800 local business leaders on quality
of life issues and urban growth strategies.
Our Solution: We helped design
and manage an Economic Summit the client held for two years, which
utilized our APT technology to generate feedback from the audience
and panel experts on policy issues. We also developed the conference
report that was a launching pad for future public/private sector
actions.
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"I was impressed with your attention to
detail... the flexibility of the technology and the ability
to correlate many different pieces of data at once, which
led to some interesting conclusions. The total session
was highly informative, user-friendly and a great deal
of fun for our participants."
Director, National Center on Black Philanthropy
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Corporate Foundation
Need: The Foundation needed to
provide training and receive input from its many internal leaders
who facilitate its community contributions and volunteerism at
U.S. locations around the world.
Our Solution: We worked with executives
of the Foundation to plan and execute a training session for its
Community Partnership Councils to explore community issues, confirm
the Foundationís objectives for its citizenship program, evaluate
its progress, strengthen its grant making and volunteerism practice,
and explore its successes and challenges.
County Planning Office
Need: This major urban agency
was launching a county-wide strategic planning process and sought
to increase citizen involvement in the early prioritization of
initiatives and agenda setting.
Our Solution: We developed and
managed community forums of key county stakeholders. Using our
APT technology to facilitate feedback, the county was able to
hear and prioritize community leadersí concerns on sensitive topics
and build an action agenda.
National Association Of Philanthropists
Need: The Midwest arm of this
association gathered 100 leaders from local and regional organizations
involved in community philanthropy to set priorities for contributions
and volunteerism.
Our Solution: We helped develop
an interactive format using our APT for this first-ever event.
The results were publicized broadly among organizations that contribute
to problem solving on the organizationís critical issues.
Building Talent for Minnesota's New Economy
We organized this collaborative
between companies, public policy organizations, education entities, and foundations
concerned about growing the state's economy. Based on consultations
with top business and educations leaders throughout the state,
the Project seeks to enhance the growth and quality of a talented
workforce that can operate in increasingly technologically sophisticated
workplaces. The Project will recommend and build support for
a few high-leverage reforms in Minnesota's science, math and technology
education in K-12 and higher education systems.
Twin Cities Project on Media and the Public
We created and managed this collaborative project
to enhance the quality of the commercial media's news content
and reduce the media-public "disconnect." Our work included building
a broad-based sponsoring coalition, a concept paper and organizing
goals, fund-raising, developing a public forum series, establishing
working relationships with local media outlets and generating
media coverage. Our recommendations for strategic actions by
the media and the public to enhance local news coverage led to
the articulation and publishing of news standards and practices
by several news organizations.
Rethinking Work in America
We created this public, private partnership
aimed at redefining the nature of work and the new contract between
employers and employees during a period of major corporate reorganization
and high workforce anxiety in the mid-1990s. The top leadership
of several Minnesota-based international companies and the University
of Minnesota sponsored and participated in community consultations
and large public forums involving national specialists and more
than 1,000 participants from business, education, government and
labor explored. Vigorous discussion of the forces causing change
and new employer/employee relationships led to the production
and wide circulation of a workbook on best practices for use by
employers throughout the state.
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© 2008 Moss Cairns, Inc.