How we work.

Most community engagement fails for structural reasons, not because nobody cared. Programmes get designed inside the organisation, signed off, then delivered into a place that had no say in shaping them. They get judged on reach and attendance within twelve months, when place-based change takes three to five years.

We work the other way round. We start with evidence about the place, match it against what your business can credibly offer, and design for usefulness before visibility.

You can start with any of the three below. Most clients start with the first.

Our services.

  • Know what a place actually needs before you spend a penny on it.

    A structured piece of research into a specific location, delivered as a report you can act on or take to your board.

    We start with public data: ONS, Nomis, Census, local authority dashboards, public health indicators, police data, Charity Commission and 360Giving records. Then we map what we find against the eight-factor community needs framework developed with Oxford University and the UNDP: health and wellbeing, safety and security, culture and identity, economic stability, environment and sustainability, social connection, access and infrastructure, education and skills.

    Then we get off the desk. We identify the connectors and mavens in an area, the people who hold local trust and local knowledge, and we talk to them. Not a survey. Semi-structured interviews and small roundtables that surface what the data cannot: how an issue actually shows up in daily life, what support feels welcome and what feels intrusive, and what people make of organisations like yours.

    What you get

    • A grounded picture of the area, with the key statistics and what they mean

    • Three to five clearly framed local issues, each with the evidence behind it

    • An honest assessment of where your business is credible and where it is not

    • Community voice: the quotes, language and sensitivities that should shape your tone

    • Recommended directions and potential local partners

    How long: [6 to 8 weeks]

    What we need from you: your CSR and ESG commitments, your commercial objectives for the area, and access to anyone internally who has worked there before.

    Why it matters: one business we know funded training for a community facing unemployment. Attendance was low. The barrier was not apathy, it was transport costs and childcare. They had solved the wrong problem, and solved it well. Insight is the cheapest part of the process and the part that determines whether the rest is wasted.

  • Turning evidence into something worth doing.

    We take the community picture and your business reality and design initiatives that sit in the overlap. Not every issue is right for every brand, and this is where most programmes go wrong: doing too much, or stepping into territory where the business has no standing.

    We cross-map community priorities against what you can genuinely offer: your expertise, your reach, your assets, your people, your authority. Then we design for usefulness. Visibility tends to follow when something actually helps.

    What you get

    • One to three designed initiatives, each grounded in the research

    • A clear line from each initiative to both a community need and a business objective

    • KPIs and success measures for both sides, agreed up front

    • A creative platform and framework for how the work is communicated

    • A delivery roadmap: partners, channels, sequence, resourcing

    How long: [4 to 6 weeks]

    Can you buy this on its own? Only if you already have credible local evidence. If you do not, we will say so rather than design on assumption.

  • Building it, running it, and proving what changed.

    We onboard the local partners, tune the platform for each location, and get the work live. Then we stay long enough to know whether it worked.

    This is the part most programmes get wrong. Community engagement is routinely evaluated on marketing metrics within twelve months, when the research is clear that place-based change takes three to five years. Early results look thin, budgets get cut, the next attempt starts smaller and further from real need, and the pattern repeats.

    We measure on a horizon that reflects how trust is actually built, and we give you what you need to defend the investment internally in the meantime.

    What you get

    • Partner onboarding and local activation

    • Launch and amplification

    • Ongoing measurement across engagement, sentiment, community feedback and commercial indicators

    • Impact reporting you can take to a board or a stakeholder group

    • Recommendations that carry into the next cycle

    How long: [12 months minimum, with measurement designed over a 3 year horizon]

Not sure where to start?

The Community Connection Index scores how well your business currently connects with its communities, in five minutes, free. It’s a reasonable place to begin.

try the cci