Over our 25 years of business, The Improve Group has learned and honed our skills in community engagement. In each project, we seek to identify the most effective and culturally appropriate methods to engage the people who are impacted by policies, programs, and funding developed by our clients. It’s only with this engagement that we can obtain the data our clients need that they trust to make decisions and do their work.
Our approach to engagement uplifts how community members have and are creating knowledge in their everyday lives. We design our data collection and engagement processes to honor the fact that each person we talk to is an expert on their own life.This philosophy rejects the transactional relationships that communities may have with researchers.By approaching engagement and data collection with this lens, we’re able to share insights from communities to help clients make decisions.
When tailored engagement unlocks data
In every project, we spend time in the design phase developing a data collection plan that amplifies the experiences of communities and harnesses insights that achieve our clients’ goals. This helps us tailor our data collection to suit the communities that are impacted as well as produce input that can inform the policy decisions at hand.
One example of this is our research into child maltreatment reporting systems on behalf of Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) and the Legislature. Currently, local child welfare agencies in Minnesota take and screen reports of suspected child maltreatment for each of their counties or Tribal nations. DCYF was interested in perspectives from various interest-holders on the possibility of changing this to a more centralized model.
The State wanted to hear from many groups of interest-holders about this potential change. As we thought about effective engagement, it was important to care for several factors:
- Many people involved with the system have differing strong opinions about this change.
- There could be inherent power dynamics present if different groups were engaged in the same room.
- Many people have different working styles and ways of participating.
- People have limitations on thetime they have available to share their insight.
With these factors in mind, we used multiple strategies for engagement to gather the data DCYF needed:
Intentional listening sessions: We conducted listening sessions with county staff, people with experience reporting child maltreatment, and representatives from Tribes. These served as an opportunity for participants to reflect on the potential challenges and benefits if the State were to change to a centralized reporting system. We designed sessions so that each group of interest-holders had their own time to engage together as peers. This mitigated power dynamics that may have arisen if groups like county staff and people with experience reporting were in the same group, for example.
Short, tailored surveys: We also administered a survey to people who have or could report child abuse, like people who work in childcare, healthcare, and social services. This survey took less than five minutes, which allowed us to gather more information to inform our research and also served as another option for interest-holders to give input if they didn’tcouldn’t attend a listening session.
Tailoring questions to different groups’ expertise: For each listening session, we shared background informationthat was tailored to each group and asked specific questions so that we captured their expertise and insight for effective use. In the survey of people who have or could report child abuse, we asked to what extent respondents feel confident making a report with the current reporting system and what might change if the reporting system was different.
The engagement supplied data for a final report that DCYF used as an appendix in their report to the Minnesota Legislature, presented in June 2025.Our tailored engagement methods allowed us to gather data from experts in the child maltreatment reporting system, which contributed directly to DCYF’s recommendations to the Minnesota Legislature.
Consulting with The Improve Group
This project illustrates just one way that we engage communities to collect accurate and impactful data that answers our clients’ research questions. We combine our community-first engagement approach with a customized project design to ensure that decision-makers have the data they need, and that communities ultimately benefit. We know that hearing from the people who are impacted by policies and structures is critical for our clients to make positive change.
Is your agency looking to hear from interest-holders about proposed changes and ideas for future policy? Let’s work together to increase your impact and listen to the voices of the people you serve. Contact our business development team at dang@theimprovegroup.com to get started.