pitch your projectconnecting with communities for better engagementClosing the engagement gap between public sector institutions and the local communities they serve is a top priority for public services. By using a familiar format from popular television, thinkpublic are helping The NHS and councils circumvent bureaucratic barriers and jumpstart meaningful, productive conversations. Read on to find out more...

social innovation and design

Engaging with local communities is a top priority for government at every level. But the gap between institutional public service providers and the volunteer groups that often best represent local people is a difficult one to bridge. Working in collaboration with the Department of Health and national volunteering charity TimeBank, Pitch Your Project is thinkpublic’s answer to closing that gap.

Pitch Your Project borrows the format of the BBC’s Dragons’ Den and was initially set up to connect NHS Foundation Trusts with people who are running projects that make a contribution to the health of their community, and to get them talking to each other. Since 2007, thinkpublic have been staging Pitch Your Project days at hospitals around the country, reaching out to local volunteer groups and inviting them to present their ideas to a panel of four “Dragons”: a social entrepreneur, a designer, a hospital Chief Executive and a member of the local media.

The volunteers have ten minutes to pitch to the Dragons. In return they receive advice on how to communicate what they are doing to public sector stakeholders and how to make their resources go further. The volunteers also get a chance to win a £2,000 prize to put towards developing their group. Afterwards, in the Pitch Your Project Green Room, the volunteers are given time with design and communications specialists from thinkpublic to develop some of the Dragons’ suggestions.

Each of the schemes [seen] today has

targeted perhaps a group of folks that we wouldn’t have

engaged with... After today I can go and have conversations

with those groups and build that contact.Andrea Green, Director

of Foundation Trust Development, University

Hospital of North Staffordshire

PITCH YOUR PROJECT

Pitch Your Project works because the Dragons’ Den format breaks down barriers – as one of the BBC’s most popular shows, it is as familiar to NHS bigwigs as it is to weekend football coaches. It circumvents bureaucracy and jumpstarts meaningful, productive communication across the institution-grassroots gap. Both sides benefit: volunteers gain advice and resources, and public service managers gain valuable and long-lasting connections with their local community.

Pitch Your Project winners include a breastfeeding peer support group in Northumbria, a network of wrestling clubs set up for young people in deprived areas of Manchester, and a scheme in Northamptonshire that helps elderly people take a holiday in their own home.

Today’s been a fantastic day... it’s really given

us a taster of the sort of voluntary groups that are out there and the way in

which we could help them as well as them helping us.

Christine Allen, Director of Planning and Development,

Northampton Foundation Trust

find out more:

To find out how thinkpublic can help design innovative ways to connect with your community, contact:

thinkpublic5 Calvert AvenueLondon E2 7JP

+44 (0) 207 033 9978deborah.szebeko@thinkpublic.comwww.thinkpublic.com

www.journeystohealth.org