The goal of this activity is to identify all the people impacted by a decision, a project, or an issue and categorize them according to their roles and interest in the situation. Through this, we can understand how they will be impacted, what their expectations are, how they might benefit or be harmed by a situation. 

Assign them different colored sticky notes according to their categories, and draw lines between those that are connected through their interests and roles to create a web of influence.

Alternatively, a matrix could be created with four different boxes where a sticky notes representing these stakeholders may be placed along axes representing their roles and level of influence.

For example, a stakeholder assessment of a county's water systems could identify customers, water operators, government officials who make decisions about the finances and operations of a water system, perhaps businesses could be viewed as a subset of customers. Other categories could be those affected by clean or polluted water.  

One way to think about stakeholders is to do the following exercises:

• Go along each stage of the 'water cycle' to ask: who has a stake in this phase?

  • source water: diverse sources (springs, public water systems, bottled)

  • water intake into the public water system processing

  • facilities for processing water: sanitation, engineering, etc.

  • water outflow to consumers: lines, tanks, etc

  • customers, consumers: households, businesses (small & corporate), public entities, etc.

  • sewage flows & processing

  • nature: critters, forest, land that needs water too

• Think of big events that impact water / climate resilience:

  • extreme weather events: temperature fluctuations, sudden freezes, floods, droughts

    • emergency response

    • players and initiatives that try to proactively prepare for / prevent disaster

• Throughout - it is good to ask at each stage:

  • who is particularly vulnerable?

  • who has the power & who doesn't?

  • who might we be overlooking? who tends to be invisible?

• Throughout, make sure you are thinking about each sector:

  • community sector

  • government sector

  • specialist / expert sector

  • cross-sector players

The goal of this exercise is to gather insights and facts about the history of what you are studying. 

Strengths

• a straightforward way to bring many people together in telling a collective story

• Good way to identify causal factors

• Helpful to identify changes over time in the places, people, activities that have shaped a particular issue

Steps

1. Obtain a large surface that everyone can see well, on which you can draw. This can be newsprint, white board or black board on the wall, or you can draw on the ground, parking lot, side walk, etc.

2. Draw a long line that will run from the past into the present (or into the future if that is a research goal).

3. Using prompts, ask people what has happened at different times. As they answer, write down (or draw images of) people's insights in a way that makes sense to people in the present. Put dates onto the timeline as you start to understand the participants' time frame.

4. As a historical picture starts to emerge, facilitate deeper reflection about the questions you are hoping to answer. 

This is a powerful technique for getting people to step back and think about the ‘big picture.’  Even if you are not that interested in the history itself, it’s a great technique for pulling out hidden things & deeper reflections (people's memories and feelings are often most strongly tethered to actual events and places).

Tips:

• It’s best to make these timelines large – e.g., have sheets of newsprint going all along a wall. 

• Try to make your prompts as concrete as possible so that people get pulled back into real life experiences and can experience them afresh.  Otherwise, there is a danger that people will just regurgitate stereotyped ideas at the top of their minds. 

• Often good to put different types of things on top of line and below (e.g., if doing a timeline re/ local music, put the location where music played below & the names of musicians above). 

• Listen for hidden histories.  E.g., different ethnic groups, or types of stakeholders may bring up a different timeline – in that case you might need to add another line that either parallels or intersects with the other one.  You can also have timelines up during other exercises and let people come up and write things for themselves.

Free Listing:

Ask people to list all words and concepts related to a specific topic. For example, the request "please list all the healthy foods you can" will elicit a list of all edibles considered healthy by a person. Decide which domains you would like to define. For example, do you want to know what constitutes an illness, healthy food, color, or relative? Whichever domains you choose, be sure they relate to it, and use culturally appropriate terms to describe the domain. 

 A free list typically can provide terms or items needed for a pile sorting exercise.  

Pile Sorts:

Provide your participants with either a set of terms on index cards, pictures, or physical items.  These might come from free lists as above, or other data that you have already gathered. Next ask them to divide them into groups based on their similarities or relevance. Encourage your participants to places as many cards or items as they want in a group. This is considered a free single pile sort. 

A constrained pile sort requires you to tell your participants how many piles you want them to sort the items into; this normally consists of two piles. You may wish for your participants to divide their items into subgroups from the initial groups, this is at the discretion of your research design. 

Lastly, ask your participants to explain what prompted them to arrange the items the way they did. Also, ask them to name the groups. Jot all these findings down in your field notes.

Photovoice is a process in which people use video and/or photo images to capture aspects of their environment and experiences and share them with others. The pictures can then be used, usually with captions composed by the photographers, to bring the realities of the photographers’ lives home to the public and policy makers and to spur change. Participants should be involved from the beginning of the project design and should be mentored and supported throughout. Participants can be given cameras, or they can use their phones or their own cameras. They take photos that represent their experience and perspective. 

Facilitators set up appropriate settings for them to share and discuss what they have captured. This is a complex process that takes in-depth training. See the Community Toolbox's page for more information. It is particularly powerful when different types of stakeholders are gathering and sharing their photos. For instance, there can be fascinating differences between youth, elders, and different genders, as well as people from diverse ethnic and class backgrounds, in what people choose to convey. 

Power mapping is a way to understand the existing power system in order to build the power of citizens to achieve democratic change. The goal is to visualize: who shares a common agenda and who doesn’t; what kinds of power different people have; how to shift the power relationships to achieve a common agenda. This originally started as a tool for advocacy and activism, but you can change it to be less about change and more a neutral analysis of objective tendencies. 

Steps in power mapping:

1. Define the issue to be analyzed.

2. Define your agenda (e.g., your goal and vision) or the desired or possible change in power relations.

3. On a large surface that you can write on (white board, newsprint, etc.) draw a horizontal line on the bottom and write “allies” on the left, “unaligned” in the middle, and “opponents” on the right side.

4. Make a vertical line which will show either the type or amount of power each stakeholder has (it could be marked off by scale (local, state, national) or by types of power (wealth, fame, expertise) or just the amount of power and recognition (ignored / powerless, has “pull”, brute force of money). Your project goals should determine what you put on the vertical line.

5. Make a list of people who already share the agenda. Put group(s), allies, and supporters on the left side of the drawing.

6. Put opponents on the right side.

7. You can use geometric shapes to represent different types of groups & individuals that are part of the power struggle.  

8. Plot unorganized constituencies & put them in the middle.

9. Look for negative or positive feedback loops (e.g., vicious or virtuous cycles). What are the informal power structures? Are there social justice issues that affect power structures (e.g. race, class, gender, LGBTQ, immigrant, etc.) & how do they intersect ?

10. What are leverage points for evolutionary change? Are there leverage points or systemic tendencies for revolutionary change (e.g., a fundamental change in the structures of power, either towards greater or lesser democracy?) How can you increase your allies and minimize your opposition?

This exercise discloses priorities, preferences and felt needs. It gives an opportunity to rank them. It conveys information about which felt needs are more important, and why. 

Ask participants to list various services or resources that are important for them. Write one item on one card or paper. Place any one card on the floor. Pick up another card and ask if the item listed on the 2nd card is more or less important than that already on the floor. If more important, place the 2nd card above 1st and if less, place it below the 1st. Continue placing one card after another by asking if the service listed is more or less important than those on the floor. 

This exercise helps clarify priorities, so that people can make decisions. Discuss the ranking with them and ask why they ranked the items in this manner.