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Technical product tutorials, best practices, and FAQs

Outreach & Engagement

Customizable templates for community engagement

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EmilyCommunity Manager

FAQ's

Custom Benchmark ComparisonsF.A.Q.

Custom benchmark comparisons are a powerful tool for evaluating your survey results or metrics against a tailored set of standards. By comparing your data against these benchmarks, you can gain valuable insights into your performance relative to specific targets or similar entities. When you purchase this add-on, you can select a combination of up to 3 criteria (your project manager will determine if that is too specific to have enough comparison communities). Below are the available custom benchmarks to choose from for your projects! Before You BeginMake sure you have clear objectives and a solid understanding of the metrics you’ll be comparing. This will help you choose the most appropriate benchmarks and yield more meaningful insights.Define the purpose of your benchmark comparison Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to your goals Gather data sources for both your metrics and the benchmarksAfter Benchmark Analysis Act on your findings to enhance performance or addre

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7 months ago

Team PolcoCommunity Manager

The Community Assessment Survey for Older Adults (The CASOA)

CASOA Outreach Kit and CalendarTemplate

To get the most accurate results from your nonprobability-based survey efforts, share your survey as widely as possible. Below is our suggested calendar for outreach, assuming a survey is active for four weeks. Adjust as needed to accommodate your timeline, available resources, communication channels, and community’s needs.Save time with our outreach templates (see attached), which are designed for a wide variety of platforms and delivery modes! Before Survey LaunchLet your community know about the upcoming survey! Share a quick link to your Polco profile to encourage residents to join Polco in advance, so you can easily notify subscribers when the survey goes live.Publish a blog post or e-newsletter announcement Share social media posts Email existing community listsAfter Survey LaunchWhile the survey is active, provide frequent reminders across multiple platforms (both digital and physical!) to meet residents where they are. Try out different messaging and call-to-actions to see wha

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9 months ago

Team PolcoCommunity Manager

Balancing Act

Taxpayer Receipts User GuideTutorial

After you’ve logged in, click on the "Taxpayer Receipt" button on the left and then "Create Taxpayer Receipt" on the right.Give your new Taxpayer Receipt a name:Adding ContentYou will be adding Revenue, Spending, and General Settings content to your Taxpayer Receipt. RevenueFrom the Revenue tab, choose the calculations you wish to include for your taxpayer receipt. If you do not wish to include a calculation, ensure that it is unchecked.Property TaxQuestion Text: You can specify what type of value you want to use to estimate property taxes. The most common is assessed value because it is the most precise but some users have used actual or market value.Multiplier Value: For example, if you are using assessed value, simply enter the mill as a decimal (e.g. for a mill levy of 80.7860 enter .00807650). If you are using market or actual value, enter whatever value is required to estimate property tax. In most cases, this will be the product of the assessment rate and the mill levy. Unless y

400

9 months ago

Team PolcoCommunity Manager

Balancing Act

Using Balancing Act as a Teaching ToolBest Practices

Balancing Act is an excellent tool for teachers to provide students an interactive way to learn about government and civics by letting them experience what it is like to build a budget. Hundreds of thousands of students have used Balancing Act simulations, both online and in person, synchronously and asynchronously. Here are a two features that might be useful in your teaching: Meeting Mode: Meeting Mode will allow you to create a link to distribute to students, who can then go through the simulation either alone or in a group. Their aggregated responses will be visible in real-time on a facilitator screen. This feature is great for reviewing results and discussing them as a group. Save and Share Progress: If a student wants to continue working on their simulation beyond the class period, they can save their progress with a unique URL. This feature can also be used for group projects, allowing one student to share their budget choices with others who can then add new input. Note: The

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9 months ago

Team PolcoCommunity Manager

Balancing Act

Simulation Quick Start GuideTutorial

Once you’ve logged in to your account, click on “Simulate” in the left sidebar and then "Create Simulation" on the right. In the modal that appears, give your simulation a name, choose the language, and select the desired simulation mode (Budget or Housing). You can opt to duplicate an existing simulation, use a template, or start from scratch. Once you have created the simulation, you will see a screen with tabs for "Revenue" and "Spending." Click one of these and follow the next instructions to either upload your data individually or in bulk using a .CSV template. Entering DataThe most common way to get your initial data into a simulation is by importing a .CSV file that you create from your budgeting software or spreadsheet. In almost every case, you will have much more data at a finer level of detail than what you ultimately present on the simulation, so you will have to roll data up into the simulation’s category/subcategory structure.For an in-depth walkthrough on adding content

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9 months ago

Team PolcoCommunity Manager

Balancing Act

Using Meeting Mode for Remote and/or In-Person FacilitationTutorial

The “Meeting Mode” feature was designed for using a simulation at an in-person or remote/online meeting. This mode allows the simulation to be a facilitation tool, creating the opportunity for informed, two-way communication with constituents. The meeting facilitator can view the budget preferences of the group in real-time, and then use that information to frame the conversation. Note: Meeting Mode can only be used on an ACTIVATED simulation. It is optimized for computers, phones, and tablets.Setting Up Meeting ModeTo activate meeting mode, go into Edit mode on an active simulation, then select the Meeting tab. Click the “Create a meeting” button. Once you give your meeting a name, you’ll see fields to add additional meeting information:Location (optional) Description (optional) Use entire budget?Unchecking the “Use entire budget” checkbox will then display additional fields, where you can select which specific categories to review or exclude during the meeting.Once you save those det

320

9 months ago

Team PolcoCommunity Manager

Balancing Act

Using Balancing Act in Budget CuttingBest Practices

Note: Some features in this article are only available in full accounts. During difficult economic times, it becomes necessary for many organizations to cut spending. Balancing Act can help with this unfortunate task by presenting cut options, with whatever level of detail you want, so that stakeholders can consider all the options, see their cost impact, and provide informed input to decision makers.These simulations can either be complex, with layers of detail and information, or extremely simple, letting users just answer "yes" or "no" to an item. You can also let users choose their preferred revenue scenario.Click here to explore the above example of a quick, internal-facing budget-cut simulation for a department. If you find yourself in the position of needing to create a budget-cut simulation, we recommend using our budget simulation tool with the following settings:Use the scenario question creation feature to quickly create yes/no scenario questions. By default, the dollar valu

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9 months ago

Team PolcoCommunity Manager

Balancing Act

Select Multiple Options in Scenario QuestionsTutorial

Note: This article only applies to projects using scenario questions. If you are creating a scenario question, you have the option to allow users to select multiple response options. Some examples of when this feature can be useful include:Capital budgets Planning processes Economic development Deciding which features to include in a building project budget (e.g., indoor track, splash pad, yoga studio, etc.)Within the scenario question control panel, you will see a check box for “Allow users to select multiple options?”. Enabling this checkbox will allow users to select multiple options for that particular scenario question.You can also identify which options (if any) should be selected by default, using the “Selected by default” checkboxes on each option card. Here is a sample of what the user would see with multiple selections enabled:

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9 months ago

Team PolcoCommunity Manager

Balancing Act

Dedicated FundsTutorial

Dedicated funds custom questions allow you to specify an amount to be allocated from a particular revenue subcategory into specific spending subcategories. You may configure multiple options.Make sure your spending subcategories are set up prior to creating a dedicated funds question! To begin, open up your simulation project and click on the “Revenue” tab. This will display all of your existing revenue categories and subcategories. Next, click the pencil icon next to whichever sub-category you'd like to add a dedicated funds questions to. After selecting "Convert to Dedicated Funds Question", a modal will appear. This is where you will input the following details:Scenario Name: a private name for this question that is not shown to the public Scenario Question: the question or description (if only 1 option) shown to the public Info Bubble Text: information pertaining to the question More Details: Additional information pertaining to the question with the ability to add links, images,

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9 months ago

Team PolcoCommunity Manager

Balancing Act

Impacts in SimulationsTutorial

Budget simulations help demonstrate the effect line-item choices have on the bottom line. But the consequences of budget decisions don't stop at the finance office. Each item can reflect trade-offs between financial resources and other important priorities like equity, sustainability, and long-term financial outlook. Adding an impact to a budget simulation helps you show how changes to some budget items affect both this year's bottom line and that additional priority.To add one or more impacts to your simulation, follow the steps below: While editing a simulation, navigate to the Impacts tab. If you don't see it, contact us to get it enabled. Then click the "Create Impact" button. Fill out the fields in the pop-up modal and click "Done".Next to the impact you just created, click the gear icon. Enter multipliers for any budget subcategories that should affect the impact. The subcategory's contribution to the impact total during the simulation will be the subcategory's current dollar amo

250

9 months ago

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