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Equity Focused Engagement
Work with us to maximize your engagement effort and your budget.
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On the Ground is a women owned engagement and outreach consulting firm. We specialize in engaging and collecting feedback from communities historically left out of governmental planning and budgetary processes. Our firm hires and trains members of the community to help with outreach and engagement. We also have an in house team of on-call canvassers and outreach specialists for any size of project.
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On the Ground provides full service engagement planning and execution to local governments, non-profits and political candidates. We believe every aspect of your engagement plan can act as a multiplier. If a project budget includes food, we buy locally first and bring the business into the planning process as a stakeholder. When a public meeting is held in a local church, we work with the leadership to get information out through their networks. Engagement can involve a lot of little moving pieces, that's what we're here to manage.
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We are a registered DBE in North Carolina, and NCDOT pre-qualified vendor for public involvement.
SERVICES
Let us manage your engagement plan, meeting and outreach logistics.
On the Ground outreach
Our staff are available for door to door canvassing, distributing fliers to local businesses and tabling at festivals, parks or other public spaces. We will meet the community where they are.
Survey Administration
We conduct intercept surveys to collect feedback for transportation, parks, housing and other planning or budgetary efforts.
Yard Sign Placement
In compliance with local ordinances, locations selected using census data.
Peer to Peer Outreach
We recruit and hire local members of the community to help with outreach and engagement efforts.
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Engagement Planning
We can help identify your engagement goals, and craft a plan to fit your budget.
Hybrid Meeting Coordination
Venue rental focused on locally (where possible), ADA accessible meeitng spaces. A/V coordination to help meet your event goals. Room setup and breakdown.
OUR TEAM
Knocking on doors.
Principal
Sara has more than six years of experience in planning and local government, and more than ten years of experience with community and grassroots engagement. She holds a master's of Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She got her start in engagement work co-managing a neighborhood led redevelopment effort of a community garden. Since then, she's worked in private sector planning, non-profit management and wants to increase the diversity of response rates on municipal planning and budgetary surveys.
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Sara helped develop the City of Raleigh Planning and Development Department's first program to pay community members to help with outreach in 2021. She started On the Ground Consulting in 2022 with the idea that listening and talking directly to impacted communities can result in better outcomes for everyone.
On the Ground Consulting is a proud member of The Amalgamation, an ecosystem of small businesses fostering equitable partnerships in government contracting.
