You are here:
Applying Stakeholder Mapping to Identify and Address Diverse Needs in Community-centric Project Planning
Citation:
Rudman, A., Katherine Canfield, A. Rea, K. Mulvaney, W. Berry, Marty Chintala, Tim Gleason, AND W. Munns. Applying Stakeholder Mapping to Identify and Address Diverse Needs in Community-centric Project Planning. Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) North America 41st Annual Meeting, Virtual, Texas, November 15 - 19, 2020.
Impact/Purpose:
For community-centric projects in which a multitude of individuals, organizations, and researchers work together to support community needs, the ability to identify and understand these needs is paramount to project success. To ensure that a diverse array of interests and needs are both represented and accounted for, a collaborative and coordinated approach is necessary. This interactive presentation will guide participants through the process of stakeholder mapping, a communications tool rooted in collaborative discussion and analysis to assess the interests, influence, and roles of stakeholders in a project. An ongoing project piloting solutions-driven research at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development will be used as a case study to illustrate both the process and utility of stakeholder mapping. As part of this project, several dozen researchers, partners, and stakeholders are working together to address nutrient pollution in Cape Cod watersheds. Beyond generating a coherent understanding of diverse community needs among researchers, stakeholder mapping is a valuable way to manage and prioritize needs and set expectations for stakeholder outreach and engagement within large project teams.
Description:
The success of a stakeholder-centric project hinges upon identifying and managing the needs and expectations of a range individuals and organizations. For multi-sector projects involving many researchers, navigating a landscape of stakeholders to meet these varying needs can be challenging without a collaborative and coordinated engagement strategy. This interactive session will acquaint participants with a tool for building such a strategy: stakeholder mapping. Stakeholder mapping is a visual communications tool that uses collaborative discussion and analysis to assess the interests, influence, and roles of individuals and organizations in a project. In considering the contributors to and beneficiaries of a project, this mapping process guides project managers in prioritizing communication efforts while considering the unique social, economic, political, and regulatory contexts in which a project takes place. A team of researchers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) recently applied this process in the creation of a communications strategy for an extensive project piloting the benefits of a community-centric solutions-driven research approach. This collaborative effort involves fifteen internal scientists and two dozen partners and contributors across different public sectors working to create a framework for addressing widespread nutrient pollution in Cape Cod watersheds. This example will serve as a contemporary case study to illustrate both the process and value of stakeholder mapping. This session will guide participants through how to identify stakeholders, describe individual roles in the project based on levels of interest and influence, and prioritize engagement based on stakeholder categorization. It will demonstrate how stakeholder mapping is a valuable step to ensuring that research outputs address project beneficiaries’ needs, and towards ensuring that a diverse array of interests are represented. We suggest a collaborative approach to mapping for its advantage in promoting a coherent understanding of stakeholder needs and its utility in managing expectations within large groups.
