Public Policy Decision Making:
The Big Deal ™
The Big Deal ™ is a community priority setting tool developed by COPE to help diverse groups organize discussion and identify their most important issues for focus. It is generally part of a larger process and can be accomplished in as little as 1 hour. It is an activity that brings together a diverse group of people, provides structured discussion and participation, and produces information that clearly identifies what participants believe is important for their community’s continued progress. Big Deal cards are designed with both pictures and text so that a variety of people with varying habits and abilities can easily understand information presented.
Customized, color-coded cards with issue-specific information and pictures are developed and categorized by topic (e.g. technology, social, business, education, infrastructure, environment, etc). Community groups then use these cards in a facilitated process to discuss issues and identify priority both for issues within topics, and for topics overall. The result is a list showing the most important issue for each topic, and then a list of topics in order of priority, with the remaining issues also in order of priority for each topic.
COPE has used this methodology during the community engagement phases of several projects including:
- Government of Ulster County, NY to prioritize strategic economic development outcomes
- Town of Shelburne to prioritize open space and set priorities for natural resource conservation
- Government of Ulster County, NY to prioritize housing, development, and zoning strategies and solutions
- A 2-day Vision Conference for the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategies certification process in Chittenden County to establish priorities among 33 issues
- United Way of Chittenden County’s five community impact workgroups to prioritize community improvement strategies
