Bilingual community surveys measure outcomes and inform program evolution
The Client: City & County of Denver Office of Climate Action, Sustainability & Resiliency
The Challenge: From 2022-2024, Denver’s Office of Climate Action, Sustainability & Resiliency (CASR) piloted its first-ever Community Climate Ambassadors / Promotoras Climáticas program to raise awareness and action related to extreme heat and water scarcity in the city’s most climate-vulnerable neighborhoods. Partnering with five community-based organizations, each of which customized peer-to-peer programming to the neighborhoods they serve, CASR needed a unified approach to measure success. Without consistent metrics across the various campaigns, CASR could not as effectively use pilot learnings to inform program evolution.
Our Approach: IBE developed an assessment framework for the two-year program that flexibly met the unique needs of each neighborhood served. IBE created community engagement metrics and designed, administered, and analyzed a community survey that was voluntarily adopted by all five community organizations. Using a collaborative process, IBE worked closely with CASR staff and the organizations to design the survey to meet CASR’s needs while providing invaluable community insights to inform each organization’s programming. The survey measured awareness, understanding, and perceptions of climate change issues, and willingness, barriers, and motivators to adopt climate strategies. IBE designed and administered surveys, in English and Spanish, at both the start and end of the two-year program, lightly customizing them to each organization’s needs. IBE also conducted a comparative analysis of baseline and end-of-campaign survey results.
The Outcomes: IBE’s analyses illustrated that the program was a great success with notable increases in community understanding, confidence, and willingness to take action, as well as increases in actions taken. CASR and the five community organizations are using survey learnings to inform future programming. CASR published a summary of the Community Climate Ambassadors / Promotoras Climáticas program in its 2024 Annual Report (see page 12).
Key Outcomes
- Designed bilingual survey to measure program outcomes
- Helped inform community organizations’ programming
- Provided recommendations for future programming
Deliverables
- Community engagement metrics and tracking tool
- Surveys in English and Spanish, customized to five organizations
- Survey descriptive statistics reports
- Advanced analysis and report of overall campaign outcomes
- Workshop to discuss future opportunities, plus summary report
