As the Head of Practice or Practice Lead, we work to understand what is happening in our field. In this case, predicting community engagement trends for 2025. Our role allows us to attend industry events and speak with current customers to learn more about community engagement.
But, once a year, we take a bold step and try to predict the upcoming trends in community engagement. So, as we move into 2025, here are five community engagement trends that we think will make a huge impact for the next 12 months.
Five Community Engagement Trends for 2025
Here are our five predictions for community engagement trends for 2025:
- Rebuilding Trust Through Community Engagement
- More Compensation for Participation Involvement
- An Increased Level of Diversity in Community Engagement
- Immersive and Hybrid Virtual Experiences
- Watch Out for Pickleball
1. Rebuilding Trust Through Community Engagement
Rebuilding trust between governments and their communities will be a central theme in 2025. Governments can foster trust by prioritizing inclusivity and demonstrating a commitment to addressing community needs through transparency, accountability, and ongoing dialogue.
For instance, governments can build trust by following some of these approaches:
- Actively listen to residents’ concerns
- Involve them in decision-making
- Demonstrate a commitment to addressing their needs
- Conduct regular town halls, participatory budgeting, and problem-solving sessions to help citizens shape policies that affect their lives
This builds a sense of shared responsibility and creates a stronger united community for building long term relationships. Through these efforts, governments will restore trust in public institutions. They will also create a stronger and more active civic culture. This culture will truly reflect the values and needs of the people it serves.
In most cases, this also includes using community engagement to go beyond decision-making. This is by using community engagement skills and tools to build connections around collective goals and outcomes that actually empower citizens.
This includes projects like Strathbogie Shire’s initiative, which involves community members to spend public money on public art. Or, another example – Port Adelaide of Enfield’s ‘Get Shady‘ initiative, which involves creating shade canopies across the city to help reduce heat and support the climate.
This also matches the theme for next year’s Global Community Engagement Day, on January 28. It highlights the importance of trust-building in community development. In addition, demonstrates how genuine and transparent engagement can lay the foundation for stronger, more cohesive societies.
2. More Compensation for Participation Involvement
In recent years, compensating participants for their involvement in community engagement has gained traction. This is by moving beyond a voluntary civic duty towards a more equitable and professional approach.
Programs like deliberative panels in Victoria and Citizens Juries in South Australia have successfully provided compensation, covering costs for time, travel, and other expenses. These programs help to boost face-to-face public participation.
Local governments in Australia are seeking innovative ways to use compensation methods to enhance community participation. Their goal is to increase inclusivity and to gather more diverse input for projects that often see less engagement.
Compensation offers several key benefits, including:
- Promotes inclusivity by reducing financial barriers to participation
- Ensures equitable representation from marginalised communities
- Acknowledges time and effort that residents contribute as experts by experience
- Helps boost engagement, especially among individuals who may be unable to participate because of work or personal commitments.
- Professionalizes community engagement by setting a standard for valuing public input and ensuring that people view engagement practices as legitimate and respected.
However, there are challenges to consider, including resource constraints, equity issues, and sustainability concerns. Striking the right balance in incentives is essential to prevent dependency or biased participation. This is while also ensuring that compensation structures remain fair and transparent.
When thoughtfully implemented, compensation can be a powerful tool for fostering deeper, more meaningful community involvement. This makes the engagement process more inclusive, and ultimately building stronger, more resilient communities.
An example of this is the South Metropolitan Health Service in WA. They set up an Advisory Panel, where they paid $40 per hour for meetings. This initiative aimed to involve individuals from diverse backgrounds. It underscores the importance of compensating for time in fostering engagement with key objectives and projects.
3. An Increased Level of Diversity in Community Engagement
In 2025, increasing diversity in community engagement will be a key focus for local and state governments across Australia. This will be as they work to make decision-making processes more inclusive and representative of their communities. Certain groups have often led engagement efforts. These groups are usually more affluent, well-educated, or have the time and resources to take part.
However, governments are now prioritising the inclusion of diverse voices, including:
- Indigenous communities
- Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) groups
- People with disabilities
- Other underrepresented populations
This change is happening because more people are seeing that inclusive engagement creates fairer results and improves decision-making. Local councils and state agencies are increasingly using targeted outreach, accessible digital engagement platforms, and culturally appropriate methods to reach underrepresented groups. This ensures that their concerns and ideas are being acknowledged and incorporated into policies.
This trend is being reinforced by the broader push for equity and social justice, as well as the recognition that diverse communities often face systemic barriers to participation, such as language, accessibility, or economic challenges. By 2025, governments are expecting to continue developing strategies to remove these barriers. This includes offering financial compensation for participation, providing translation services, and holding events in more accessible locations or times.
Digital tools, such as engagement platforms and even social media, is being used to reach a wider audience. This is apparent especially for those who may face mobility or transportation challenges. With these initiatives, Australian governments aim to not only meet legal and ethical obligations but to create more vibrant, cohesive communities where all citizens have a say in the decisions that shape their lives.
In July 2024, we conducted an Engaging for Equity survey with community engagement practitioners that garnered over 600 responses. The results showed that two groups are underrepresented in global engagement. These groups are people with limited English (32%) and those who identify as Aboriginal or Indigenous (32%). The primary barriers were a lack of trust, alongside feeling uninformed or unaware due to language and cultural differences, which ranked highly as significant challenges.
Given the significant political shifts in the UK, USA, and Europe, alongside the fallout from the Indigenous Voice to Parliament vote in Australia over the past year, we believe that diversity in community engagement will increasingly become a key focus for achieving equitable outcomes.
4. Immersive and Hybrid Virtual Experiences
With the rise of virtual and augmented reality, organisations will increasingly leverage these technologies to create immersive, hybrid environments for connection. Whether for virtual town halls, online events, or educational programs, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) will bridge the gap between online and offline spaces. This is because it will allow people to connect more naturally in virtual environments. For instance, this could include helping people visualise projects that includes urban planning and new playgrounds.
Integrating these tools creates hybrid engagement experiences. By combining digital and online community spaces, people can join meetings, planning exercises, workshops, or local events from home. This approach helps maintain a sense of real-world connection.
The Department of Infrastructure and Transport in South Australia has added a VR experience to its events. This is a recent development for future transport projects in the State. After completing a survey and receiving the results, people can immerse themselves in a VR experience. Individuals can explore future transport concepts using interactive maps, by zooming in and rotating to examine details more closely.
5. Watch Out for Pickleball
Pickleball is a sport played both indoors and outdoors, where players use paddles to hit a hollow plastic ball over a net. The game continues until one side either fails to return the ball or breaks a rule.
Invented in 1965 as a backyard game for children in the United States, pickleball was designated the official state sport of Washington in 2022. It’s been recognized as the fastest-growing sport in the U.S. for 2021, 2022, and 2023, and now boasts national leagues, including in Australia.
So why is it a trend in community engagement? In some consultations across North America, many municipalities are asking for feedback on new recreation spaces. It just so happens that pickleball fans have flooded these discussions about play areas and sports facilities.
Organized groups of pickleball enthusiasts have “hijacked” consultations by encouraging their members to repeatedly request that pickleball should be included in the development plans. This is often done by providing members with consultation links, suggested wording for submissions, and encouraging up-votes on other pickleball-related public submissions.
In 2024, we learned of an instance where a council in Victoria was overwhelmed by over 140 submissions on a Gather wall from pickleball enthusiasts, accounting for nearly half of all submissions. This trend highlights not just the involvement of pickleball players, but the growing influence of organized groups in community consultations.
As digital engagement has evolved in recent years, we anticipate that more organized campaigns and community groups will emerge around specific projects and potentially leveraging artificial intelligence (AI). This will likely lead to projects becoming targets for coordinated responses and submissions from determined groups that are seeking to influence or alter the decision-making process.
With AI’s assistance, this process will become significantly easier. AI can generate multiple similar responses and even automate their distribution. Users of digital engagement platforms should be more aware of the tools and processes they can use.
Community engagement practitioners must improve their skills in finding key stakeholders and potential disruptors. They must also incorporate strategies into community engagement plans to either engage these groups upfront or as part of the standard process. Whether it’s bird watchers, cat enthusiasts, or pickleball players, 2025 will be the year of organized groups shaping community engagement consultations.
Learning how to provide the right prompts and inputs for these tools can be a challenging process. That’s why we’ve created our ‘ChatGPT Cheat Sheet for Community Engagement’ – a handy guide to help you kickstart your journey in leveraging AI for streamlined content creation.
As we move toward 2025, community engagement will continue to evolve with a focus on inclusivity, innovation, and transparency. To stay ahead, practitioners must embrace these trends and adapt to the changing landscape, fostering stronger, more resilient relationships between governments and the communities they serve.
Additionally, the rise of organised groups in consultations, driven by digital tools and AI, will require practitioners to adapt their strategies to ensure authentic, balanced input. As the practice evolves, these trends will shape the future of community engagement, fostering stronger, more resilient relationships between governments and the communities they serve.
