Decision Thinking

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4. Outreach Method

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The next step in the creation of a participatory process is to determine how to engage the key stakeholders and ensure that they participate in the process. The choice of the most appropriate recruitment method for a particular case should be determined by the predefined purpose process, as the different recruitment methods will convey in various degrees of representativeness and diversity.

A diverse range of participants brings a wide range of perspectives, enriching the quality of deliberations and leading to more impactful discussions. Additionally, careful recruitment helps address power imbalances by ensuring marginalized or underrepresented groups have a voice, resulting in more equitable outcomes. 

Here are five options of outreach methods:

  • Open for All: Participation is open to anyone interested, regardless of background or affiliation. This approach is typically used for elections, referendums, traditional consultations, crowdsourcing, and large-scale e-democracy platforms.
  • Direct Invitation: These approaches seek to directly invite affected or interested communities. This can be done in a formal sense by inviting representatives of stakeholders, which is sometimes referred to as a “stakeholder-based approach”. This is a common approach in the United Nations (UN) system where organizations are invited to observe or participate based on their formal consultative status, for example, with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Major Groups and other Stakeholders (MGoS). Direct Invitation can also refer to less formal targeting of individuals or groups within communities (sometimes in an attempt to bypass formal and informal representatives), or to inviting specific experts or “influencers”.
  • Indirect (or Decentralized) Invitation: The invitation to participate is extended indirectly through stakeholder groups. This involves engaging local and/or topic-specific partners in the process, typically community-based organizations, to invite and/or convene their communities and communities of communities. 
  • Sortition Selection: Participation is determined based on random selection, or a lottery, with chosen individuals representing the demographic diversity on selected topics.
  • Hybrid: Participation employs diverse methods and integrates them into various tactics to ensure greater representation, inclusivity, and engagement in the process. For example, one might mix some open-for-all recruitment with targeted recruitment.

 

We’ve organized dozens of cases from Participedia and Latinno according to the SDGs targeted to support you in finding references and inspirations.

 

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