From the City of Sacramento Department of Neighborhood Services newsletter The Bridge.

By Derrick Lim, Area Manager serving all Council Districts

Neighborhood Services has engaged in a great deal of community outreach this year. Upon reflection, several themes come to mind in relation to levels of service and customer service. Neighborhood Services can do a better job of articulating outreach levels of service, which in turn results in better customer service to the public.

Using Olympic medals as an analogy, outreach can also be categorized into three major categories: gold, silver, and bronze.

Gold is the highest level because the objective is not only to get the word out, but to also get more than 50 residents to attend and participate. Neighborhood Services experience tells us a minimum of 6-8 weeks is needed to craft and implement a strategy. In addition, resources are needed for translation, partnering with community nonprofits, and establishing new contacts. Going for the gold is getting harder in these challenging economic times, and we need to work smarter to achieve it with limited resources.

Silver is the intermediate level of outreach. Getting the word out is important to neighborhood groups. There may or may not be an expectation of neighborhood participation. Resources may or may not be available to engage new participants.

Bronze is the basic level of helping only to get information out. There is no expectation of turnout or community participation. Translation assistance may be involved if resources are available.

Let me know what you think of these themes. Your feedback will help Neighborhood Services fine tune its outreach levels of service, improve its customer service, and maximize the reach of outreach.