Community Engagement Timelines

Rome wasn’t built in a day and incorporating Community Engagement into your organization’s DNA likely won’t happen in a month or even a year.  As you embrace community engagement as part of your organization’s mission, it may be several years until you are ready to begin your first community engagement activity. 

On the other hand, you may just meet your perfect partner on the very first meeting you have with a non-arts community organization and find yourself “off to the races”! 

Embracing community engagement is a long-term, multi-year organizational strategy, not a short-term program but opportunity can be around any corner when you listen and learn.  

Because of the variety of scope of community engagement projects, it is difficult to suggest a single timetable for any organization. 

In an all-volunteer organization, the engagement team might only meet once a month, so it may take considerable time to complete the community profile and build potential partner relationships. In other organizations, meetings might be more often and, with individuals actively engaged in different tasks, things could move quickly. 

Some projects might be short-term activities focused around a show you are presenting, while others may involve a full year or longer.