Engaging Your Community - City of Burnside

Community Engagement Administration Officer, Megan Taht, discusses the City of Burnside Council's tips & tricks for community engagement and getting your community involved in Garage Sale Trail which promoted council in a positive light. Watch the video presentation for more tips.

"It promotes council in a positive light and we get to engage with the community on positive issues. Being part of a national movement is really exciting too. It's a real feel good initiative that's not only good for the community and council, but the environment."

The activity you think achieved the greatest outcome? 
Emailing community groups, churches, schools and kindergartens a copy of the letter of introduction and the how-to guide from the Garage Sale Trail Council Dashboard. Then following up with telephone calls.

​We also promoted Garage Sale Trail on the front cover of our quarterly newsletter called Burnside Focus, which is sent to all residents within our area, and utilised social media, especially Twitter. 

We have had great support from Council and the Mayor, who posed for a photo with the REUSE Display Kit provided by Garage Sale Trail. We used the image on social media.

What has been the most rewarding aspect of your involvement?
We enjoyed logging in each morning to see new registrations! It is nice to know our community wants to get involved in such a good initiative.

Recommendations, or anything you would do differently next year?
In 2016, we may look at hosting a Garage Sale event in one of our community venues. This will allow people in our community to get involved by simply booking a stall.

​Your top 3 tips for other Councils?
Do your ground work. Follow up calls are important as you can assist the person with any questions they may have and it is also gives you a chance to talk about the benefits of the Garage Sale Trail. If possible, try to promote it in council publications as much as possible. Make use of the REUSE Display Kit boxes -  we used them to display flyers which kept disappearing every few days. This meant people were taking them which is great!

​City of Burnside Presentation

City of Burnside present their Garage Sale Trail experience during an informational webinar for the state of South Australia. Megan Taht, Community Engagement Administration Officer, discusses the steps they took to engage the program with their community.

"I gave community groups a follow up phone call. This was a chance for me to see if they had any questions and encourage them to register… It was really great to have a chat with groups and engage with the community around the program, it was a really positive experience for us… It promoted council in a positive light and we got to engage with the community on positive issues."
​Megan Taht, Community Engagement Administration Officer from City of Burnside Council.

Watch video presentation by Megan Taht 6min 56secs

City of Burnside highlights:

• I started off with the basics – compiling a list of the schools, churches and community groups in our area
• Then I downloaded the letter of introduction and relevant How To Guides from the Garage Sale Trail Council Dashboard and sent an email out to everyone on the database – just a few sentences with the letter and the How To Guide attached
• I left it a couple of weeks and then I gave each of them a phone call, that was a chance for me to see if they had any questions and encourage them to register - phone calls are rare and emails can easily end up in junk. It was really great to have a chat with groups and engage with the community around the programme. It was a really positive experience for us
• We posted on social media a lot, especially Twitter.
• We put the Reuse Display kit at the main doors to council and we put flyers all over all the boxes, I noticed that every time I went past I had to top them up - people were taking them as they walked past. They were very eye catching and people got curious. We also put Posters and flyers around the civic centre and library
• The library set up a colouring in corner at the weekend and gave out the colouring in sheet at every story time session to take home as a little present
• One of the big things for us is that the Garage Sale Trail image provided in the Council Dashboard was promoted on the front cover of our newsletter which went to all 19,000 dwellings in the area
• We mostly activated the program within the Community Engagement and Communications team, and also worked with the library team 
• In 2016 we are planning to use one of our community venues to host a group sale, if we do, we’ll be working closely with our community services team
• It’s important to do the ground work – all your introduction emails and follow up calls, I spread calls out over a two week period
• Start sending out emails in late July – one thing we heard was that people already had garage sales planned, charities recommend we call them at the start of the year when they plan their events for the year
• It promoted council in a positive light and we got to engage with the community on positive issues
• Being part of a national movement is exciting
• It has been fantastic and we have the full support of our elected member
• It's a real feel good initiative that’s good for community and council and the environment too.  I’d recommend it.
• 120 garage sale events happened on the day in 2015

​City of Burnside Media Examples

This case study was kindly shared by Megan Taht, Community Engagement Administration Officer from City of Burnside Council.