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How an outreach partnership helped Vermont Public reach voters and answer their questions

By Eric Ford of Vermont Public and Susannah Kerest of Front Porch Forum, January 2025Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Two civic engagement-minded community organizations teamed up to ask citizens what they want to know before they head to the polls.

Question: What problem were you trying to solve, and why was that problem strategically important to your organization?

A: Vermont Public, a joint NPR and PBS affiliate, was determined to center the voices of Vermont residents in its coverage of the 2024 elections. With that in mind, Vermont Public needed an effective strategy to motivate a diverse group of residents to actively chime in with their thoughts, which would ultimately shape news coverage and candidate debates.

Q: How did you go about solving the problem?

This posting by Front Porch Forum Co-Founder & CEO Michael Wood-Lewis was shared across Vermont on June 4 as part of its outreach partnership with Vermont Public.

A: In this Citizens Agenda project, Vermont Public planned a multi-pronged outreach strategy, including in-person events, on-air appeals and connecting through community organizations. During the planning phase, Vermont Public approached Front Porch Forum, Vermont’s unique network of online communities, to invite them to be a part of the project. Of Vermont’s 270,000 households, Front Porch Forum has 240,000 active members who receive daily messages submitted by neighbors, businesses, nonprofits and public officials. Vermont Public knew it would reach a large segment of the population while they were already engaged online.

Front Porch Forum was motivated to partner with Vermont Public because a strong part of its mission is to help Vermonters participate in their civic life. Attaching itself to the Citizens Agenda was a way to signal to the state that Front Porch Forum takes amplifying neighbor voices seriously. With that in mind, FPF provided substantial advertising space, as well as messaging areas not typically available for purchase, to encourage Vermonters to participate in the project. As part of the trade, Vermont Public named FPF as its “outreach partner” in all of its marketing materials for the Citizens Agenda project.

Q: What worked?

A: Vermont Public saw outreach results! The organization received over 700 responses online to the Citizens Agenda prompt, “What issues matter most to you?” and heard from folks in every county in Vermont.

Vermont Public wasn’t sure exactly how many responses to expect, but in talking to other organizations that participated in the Citizens Agenda project, this was a very positive response.

There were 22 “office hours” events around the state with a few journalists at corner stores and farmers’ markets to talk directly to people in rural communities. And, there were three larger “ice cream social” events that drew several hundred people in targeted communities where response is usually lower. These results were fueled by the FPF partnership, which created access to thousands of folks who aren’t typically listeners or viewers. In turn, FPF was able to reach Vermont Public listeners who might not be regular users.

Vermont Public reporter Nina Keck talks with attendees at a community ice cream social and listening session in Rutland, Vt., in September 2024. (Courtesy of Vermont Public)

Q: What didn’t work?

A: Initially, Vermont Public tried a traditional outreach campaign about 9 months out from election day — sending packets of postcards, posters and bookmarks to town clerks and libraries in the state.

This traditional outreach did very little to yield response, as it’s hard to prompt more than the superusers to go online to submit data without incentive. The Front Porch Forum partnership was the primary response-driver. The data wasn’t specific, but there were response upticks when an FPF email would go out.

Nine months may have been too far out — people really weren’t starting to focus on the election until late August.

Q: What happened that you didn’t expect?

A: Vermont Public wasn’t sure what to expect as a response, but it was affirming to see responses from every corner of the state. Some examples of reporting spurred by submitted questions include:

At first, it was a bit complex internally to navigate a new type of partnership, and one that was so closely tied to reporting. Cross-departmental meetings helped iron out the details, and once things were set in motion, everything went smoothly. Both entities are hopeful that this partnership can be expanded upon in the future, and collaborate on more civic engagement projects in the future.

Q: What advice would you give to others who try to do this?

An example of an ad run on Front Porch Media as part of its outreach partnership with Vermont Public

A: FPF is unique to Vermont, but other community-based organizations could be good to partner with for events and outreach. Possibilities include state-level organizations involved in the arts and humanities, regional planning commissions that help shape rural communities, and organizations that are already embedded in areas that you want to reach. Partnership was the key to reaching new folks who didn’t already follow Vermont Public reporting.

Q: What’s next for this work?

A: Vermont Public will continue to center community voices as part of its ongoing news and journalism practice. Both FPF and Vermont Public are hopeful to find other ways to collaborate on projects in-person and online that create civic engagement and dialogue among neighbors.

Recently, Vermont Public hosted a group of FPF employees for a One Small Step training, in hopes that this active listening process would help to inform their work and spark ideas to improve community dialogue.