Communications & Community Engagement

Before your project’s first big milestone—whether that’s applying for a grant, breaking ground, or presenting to elected officials—you should have a communications strategy in place. Understanding community values early on, before key decisions are baked in, provides the flexibility to adapt the project design or process to reflect those values. This increases community buy-in and helps produce successful projects. We help public and private clients create strategic road maps that guide their projects toward successful outcomes. 

Meaningful public engagement is not a template but a strategy tailored to your project’s goals. We help our clients build lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with the communities affected by their work. Through principles of equitable engagement and tactics such as websites, door knocking, surveys, and stakeholder meetings, we help our clients understand their communities and participate in productive dialogue that results in project decisions responsive to community values.

Our team is well-versed in equitable engagement and can help clients navigate the requirements of Washington State’s HEAL Act, the Justice40 guidance, and other frameworks for engagement. For projects just getting under way, we can perform an environmental justice assessment that both satisfies regulatory requirements and helps inform communications strategies. And when we are not the right project ambassadors in a given community, we reach out to a network of partners and collaborators across the PNW to find the right people. 

MFA’s communications team includes skilled facilitators who can provide you with the neutral, third-party support necessary for construction conversations. Our facilitators design and lead workshops, focus groups, and long-running advisory group processes. Need to host a public meeting or other event? MFA can help you focus on positive outcomes by taking care of everything from strategy to event logistics to materials production. We will also coach your staff ahead of the meeting and capture input for follow-up reporting. 

We work with agencies and elected officials on a daily basis and are well-versed in the political realities facing local and state agencies. Our communications specialists can help you track legislation, present to elected officials, and coordinate with partner agencies.

MFA helps clients develop and implement media strategies, including drafting press releases, coordinating press events, managing media inquiries, and serving as spokespeople. We coach clients on media appearances and track and summarize news coverage about projects and client organizations.

Our in-house graphic design and multimedia professionals can help you convey your project’s story in arresting visuals. We offer logo and branding services, web design and storymaps, social media content, infographics and fact sheets, video, drone services, and photography. For clients with limited resources, we can create branded templates for future use or offer on-call graphic design services for discrete projects.

We know efforts like program assessments and long-range plans are often deprioritized in favor of immediate or external needs. MFA helps clients assess their communications programs to find efficiencies, prioritize resources, and plan for upcoming budget cycles. Our well-rounded experience and knowledge of best practices allow us to offer your communications team a fresh, outside perspective on what’s working and what’s getting in the way of your goals.