Optimal Engagement
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By Nick Bowden, Co-founder and CEO
Mar 27, 2012 Posted in Engagement, Gov 2.0, Community Participation | 1 Comment |
One of the most common questions we field from existing and prospective clients is “Once our site is up, how do we get participants?” It’s justifiably the most important question of any engagement effort – online or offline.
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Custom MindMixer Site Site Hosting Site Administration and Customer Service Client Access to Site Activity Dashboard
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User and Client Email Notifications Text and Idea Hotline Integration Detailed Project Reporting Civic Reward Program Participation Notification Texting and Text Surveys
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60-Watt Program
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6-month of live citizen input and discussion Up to 30 unique discussion topics 20-hours of user support services 20-hours of marketing and outreach services 1-month risk free |
120-Watt Program
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12-month of live citizen input and discussion Up to 60 unique discussion topics 40-hours of user support services 40-hours of marketing and outreach services 2-month risk free |
240-Watt Program
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24-month of live citizen input and discussion Up to 120 unique discussion topics 80-hours of user support services 80-hours of marketing and outreach services 3-month risk free |
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Omaha, Nebraska
Engage Omaha by Mayor's Office
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1241
Users |
639
Ideas |
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The MindMixer site has been incredible for the City of Omaha and its citizens. In the first 24 hours of the site being live, we received more ideas than we had in the previous year of the Mayor’s administration. Not only has the activity been fantastic, the quality of the ideas and feedback has been great.
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Nashville, Tennessee
Long Term Recovery by BNIM
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420
Users |
165
Ideas |
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The ideas that residents submitted were creative, insightful, and more extensive than we could have ever imagined. It was a perfect supplement to the extensive on-the-ground outreach process and reached a much wider range of people than we have in the past.
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Burbank, California
Burbank Town Hall by Burbank Senior Planner
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350
Users |
291
Ideas |
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Several members of the community contacted me directly to tell me that the MindMixer experience made them feel like someone was actually listening during the engagement process. In a town were public engagement has been difficult in the past, MindMixer exceeded expectations and was a wonderful way to expand our engagement efforts.
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Lincoln, Nebraska
Bright Ideas by Long Range Planning Manager
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500
Users |
100
Ideas |
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Mindmixer software helped us to reach a population that we may not have been able to reach with traditional open house and newsletter tools. The Bright Ideas campaign that we ran on the LPlan2040.org website brought in 100 unique ideas, many of which have been incorporated into the draft text of our 2040 Comprehensive Plan.
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MindMixer Raises $1.9M For Virtual Town Halls, Launches ImproveSF Website
San Francisco, California If you live in San Francisco, you probably spend a lot of time complaining about the lackluster public transportation. I’m no exception — so today, I was really excited to see a new government website called ImproveSF, where residents can submit and vote on suggestions about how to make Muni better, faster, and more reliable.
Not surprisingly, there’s a cool startup behind the effort. It’s called MindMixer, and it just announced that it raised a $1.9 million seed round from Dundee Venture Capital.
CEO Nick Bowden says that he and his co-founder Nathan Preheim both come from an urban planning background. The idea came from their experiences holding public meetings that no one would attend. The Web seemed like an obvious way to solve that problem, but when they explored existing services for crowdsourcing ideas, but Bowden says none had the “nuance” that was needed.
“Most of those products are idea-oriented — they solicit ideas,” Bowden says. “But in a government or city process, ideas are like the first element of decision-making.”
In other words, it’s not just about submitting and voting on ideas, but also channeling those ideas into specific strategies that are affordable on a government budget. So they created MindMixer to manage that process, keeping citizens involved every step of the way.
MindMixer now claims to work with more than 125 government organizations, including the City of Los Angeles, the National Park Service, and yes, the City of San Francisco. In San Francisco, the Muni survey is just the beginning — the city plans to post a new challenge every month asking for new ideas and offering rewards to participants.
The company is starting to expand beyond the initial model, Bowden adds, by serving some schools and enterprise companies. Moving forward, he wants to add tools that allow citizens to become more involved in making the plans a reality, for example by crowdfunding a project or volunteering.