Definition
The Community Engagement Score indicates a person's likelihood to attend a public meeting, volunteer with, or hold a leadership position in a community organization.
Technical Details
The model was built from the following survey question:
Which of the following describes an activity that you did in the last few years?
- Watched or attended a public meeting (for example. school board, city council)
- Spent time volunteering with a community organization
- Held a leadership position in a community organization
Respondents who answered yes to any of the above were labeled as targets in the model. Those who did not answer yes to any of the activities were labeled as non-targets.
The Community Engagement Score was trained on polling data from the 2023 Murmuration poll. We collected over 9,000 responses via phone and online from registered voters. The survey used stratified random sampling to ensure national representativeness across age, race, gender, partisanship, education and geography.
The model was trained using gradient-boosted decision trees. Model features were drawn from the Atlas by Murmuration dataset, which includes demographic (age, race, gender, etc.), commercial, geographic, and vote history information for all registered voters nationally.
Scores range from 0-100, where higher scores indicate greater likelihood that a voter will engage in community engagement activities, i.e. attend a public meeting, volunteer with a community organization, and/or hold a leadership position in a community organization.
We validated the model using a held-out test set of 20% of the original survey sample. Among individuals with scores in the top 20% of the Community Engagement Score, 46% attended a public meeting (31% more likely than the average voter), 53% volunteered with a community organization (36% more likely than the average voter), and 27% held a leadership position in a community organization (59% more likely than the average voter).
Use Cases
The Community Engagement Score can be applied in various ways to enhance community participation and drive voter engagement. Below are a few examples for how partners could use this score:
- Public Meeting Participation: The Community Engagement Score can be used to enhance civic participation in local governance. By identifying individuals with a high likelihood of attending public forums, partners can strategically promote town halls and council meetings. This targeted outreach not only has the potential to increase overall attendance but can also help generate support for specific local initiatives. By focusing outreach efforts on those most likely to engage in these ways, partners can drive participation in the local democratic process and ensure that a diverse range of voices are heard in key decision-making forums.
- Volunteer Recruitment: Voters with high Community Engagement Scores are the most likely to volunteer in the local community, so partners organizing local events or campaigns around specific issues can use this score to identify individuals most likely to join their efforts. For example, a local environmental group could prioritize its volunteer recruitment efforts by focusing on households with a high Community Engagement Score, potentially increasing volunteer sign-ups for a neighborhood clean-up event.
- Leadership Development: Partners can use this score as a starting place to find potential new leaders. By targeting individuals with the highest Community Engagement Scores in a particular community, partners can more efficiently identify potential candidates for board positions or committee roles. This targeted approach supports successful succession planning and ensures that leadership roles are filled by those most likely to actively participate and contribute.
- Community Education Initiatives: Partners running community education programs can use the Community Engagement Score to identify individuals who might benefit from or be interested in learning more about community involvement such as parent fellowships and other community-building efforts. By focusing their efforts on those with higher scores, these programs can more effectively engage participants, foster a deeper understanding of civic participation, and ultimately strengthen community ties.
Targeting Table
The table below shows the score values associated with each decile to help you more easily target using the Community Engagement Score nationally. Note: these score cutoffs may be different in your local districts.
| To target the top… | Set the minimum score value as… |
| 10% | 37 |
| 20% | 33 |
| 30% | 31 |
| 40% | 30 |
| 50% | 28 |
| 60% | 27 |
| 70% | 25 |
| 80% | 23 |
| 90% | 21 |
| 100% | 11 |