City: Des Moines, Iowa

Reporting to: Government Relations Coordinator

The Challenge

In January 2024, Mayor Boesen was sworn in as the Mayor of Des Moines. As Des Moines’ first female mayor and the first new mayor in 20 years, Mayor Boesen has focused on meeting Des Moines residents where they are, speaking with them about her priorities, and gathering their feedback. All three of Mayor Boesen’s priorities (homelessness, economic development, and youth empowerment) require engagement and communication with our residents and stakeholders, and we want to strengthen our current methods to build a stronger connection with the public.

Historically, the city of Des Moines operated with a Public Information Officer (PIO) in select departments and with a central communications director within the city manager’s office. To underline our commitment to deeper resident engagement, the communications office grew from two full-time staff to six full-time staff, an intern, and two city manager’s staff who occasionally assisted the team between the late 2010s and early 2020s. Each communications team member serves as a liaison to at least one of the departments, publishing content, fielding media requests, and assisting in communications strategy development. The communications office now offers media relations, photo/video production, internal and external communications, marketing, and web development to all city departments and the city council. Our team primarily utilizes earned media, major social media platforms, e-newsletters, our city website, mailings, and digital notifications to communicate with residents.

The team has grown to meet most of our department’s communications needs from our departments but hasn’t had the time to evaluate the effectiveness of all new strategies thoroughly. As the team continues to provide professional communications, we are keen to identify and implement strategies that make our communications with residents more effective and efficient. In addition, we know that we currently have a small group of residents who is deeply engaged with the city’s work (e.g., by attending budget meetings). We welcome this increased participation but would like to find ways of using our communication resources to reach a larger group of residents, particularly those who have long been unengaged. Understanding how our communications are being received across different groups of cultural and national origins is, therefore, a core aspect of research for the fellow.

Key questions include:

• How effective are the city of Des Moines’ current communications strategies and outlets?
• How can the city of Des Moines efficiently and effectively expand its communications presence to reach more residents?
• How can the city of Des Moines best engage residents of various racial and ethnic backgrounds, including those who speak a foreign language?

What You’ll Do

To address these questions, the fellow will work with the communications team, city leadership, and city departments, allowing them to learn a lot about the projects and programs of Des Moines. The fellow would be responsible for reviewing past communications, evaluating the team’s current work, and providing feedback, along with a report on the effectiveness of resident communications and any recommendations for improvement. Key deliverables from this work would be:

1. A comprehensive report reviewing our communications and public outreach efforts, including:
   • Analysis of existing data (e.g., social media reach, newsletter stats, event attendance)
   • Insights from peer communities (e.g., Omaha, Minneapolis, Kansas, or Madison)
   • Recommendations for improvements
2. An engagement strategy for the future, highlighting:
   • Alternative or innovative ways of engaging residents, particularly those who have historically been less engaged
   • An assessment of the need for providing comms in different languages and recommendations for cost-efficient ways to translate resources
   • Recommendations for how to gather more timely feedback on the value and success of different communication and outreach efforts (e.g., through the resident satisfaction survey or a new comms-specific survey)
3. Engagement with and support of ongoing cross-departmental efforts around homelessness as part of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative Innovation track, which might involve:
   • Support of the communications and resident engagement efforts related to the initiative chosen for testing during the track; or
   • Draft comms/engagement plans for other initiatives from the portfolio

What You’ll Bring

• Data Analysis
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Marketing
• Communications