What is this project?

The Bear Valley Exchange is a dedicated online platform designed to remove some barriers that make it difficult for you to be involved with our community’s governance.

What is the goal?

Our goal with this project is to empower our community and our Board’s decision-making process. In our experience, community participation at in-person meetings and town halls is not representative of the whole community. Therefore, we are working to help everyone have an equal voice on important matters.

Who does this affect, and how?

This platform gives you an easy way to get involved in your community’s governance when and where you choose. The information received from the community here allows the Board of Directors and staff to listen to what you say and make informed decisions based on community feedback.

How does it work?

The Bear Valley Exchange website is built on a platform called EngagementHQ. This software is purpose-built for online community engagement, and is designed to drive inclusive, transparent, and measurable collaborative learning, discussion, and debate.

In short, it lets you learn about what is going on, and then tell us what you think, share your ideas, voice your concerns, and ask questions in one centralized location. It also gives us the ability to quantify your responses into reports that will inform the board about how the community feels and thinks about the projects and initiatives they are pursuing.

Why did you choose EngagementHQ as the platform?

The short version – the cost is affordable, the platform is robust yet easy to use, and the services provided on the back end help us deliver a positive experience for you. Not only does EngagementHQ provide the software platform, but they also provide guidance in best practices and 24/7 professional human moderation.

EngagementHQ is a standalone civic engagement platform offered by Granicus. Granicus is well established as a trusted leader in civic engagement. They specialize in government communications solutions and are used by over 5,000 U.S. public agencies from the City of Ventura to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs.

What kind of information do you see on the backend?

This is the actual dashboard view from this site, taken 3 days after the launch.

Dashboard - shows a high-level overview of the site – how many people have visited, how many have registered, and recent community responses.

This screen capture displays the Project Report section. It was taken 3 days after launch.

Project reports - summarize visitor insights and participation, allowing us to understand which projects people are interested in and what the viewpoints are. The report breaks visitors down into three categories:

• Aware - Aware visitors have visited the site or a project page at least once, but did not stay. They are aware the site exists.
• Informed - Informed visitors have explored the site and clicked on projects, articles, photos, etc.
• Engaged - Engaged visitors have taken the next step and are participating by asking questions, sharing their views, and answering surveys and polls.

Tools report from this projects Q&A tool

Tool reports - these show us how you are interacting with the tools and help us stay on top of our responses.