Reviewing Business and Community Engagement Activities

Reviewing BCE activities allows an organisation to identify its own BCE landscape and assess it in terms of its strategy and vision, or goals and objectives. Having identified the BCE landscape a GAP analysis can then be performed to evaluate whether all strategic objectives are being addressed, whether BCE work is being appropriately prioritised by all elements of the organisation and whether activity is being adequately encouraged, recognised, supported, co-ordinated, costed, resourced, monitored and, where appropriate, controlled.

Benefits and Impacts of a Review

By undertaking a review of BCE activity a number of impacts are immediately evident.

• the organisation recognises the activity and confirms it as desirable and worthy of continued activity
• the organisation is able to promote strategic objectives and priority areas and assess and/or demonstrate how BCE activity aligns to them
• the organisation brings BCE activity to the fore, perhaps bringing it to the attention of some people for the first time
• the organisation learns about or confirms the extent of such activity, its resourcing implications and its achievements and impacts both internally and within external partnerships and communities
• the organisation, by disseminating the findings of such a review, helps its staff to identify new possibilities and potential partnerships and/or areas of engagement through taking existing partnerships and activities from other parts of the organisation and applying them to new and different contexts
• the organisation is able to share both good practice and risk identification and assessment
• the organisation is able to identify strengths, weaknesses and areas for improvement, leading to a development plan for future growth and stronger engagement and relationships both within and external to the organisation
• the organisation has a record of activity that can be exploited to stimulate or inform future streams of activity or prove a track record to help justify future bids for funding
• the organisation can better understand the range of BCE activity undertaken, both formally as part of the organisation's formal activities and informally by staff voluntarily and/or outside of their work commitment
• the organisation can use the information gathered to promote its impact on local, regional and wider communities for both formal external assessment and to attract wider participation from potential students