pitch your project
connecting with
communities for
better engagement
Closing the engagement gap between public sector
institutions and the local communities they serve is a top
priority for public services. By using a familiar format from
popular television, thinkpublic are helping The NHS and
councils circumvent bureaucratic barriers and jumpstart
meaningful, productive conversations. Read on to find out
more...
social innovation and design

Engaging with local communities is a top priority
for government at every level. But the gap between
institutional public service providers and the
volunteer groups that often best represent local
people is a difficult one to bridge. Working in
collaboration with the Department of Health and
national volunteering charity TimeBank, Pitch Your
PITCH YOUR PROJECT
Project is thinkpublic’s answer to closing that gap.
Pitch Your Project borrows the format of the
BBC’s Dragons’ Den and was initially set up to
connect NHS Foundation Trusts with people who
are running projects that make a contribution to
the health of their community, and to get them
talking to each other. Since 2007, thinkpublic have
been staging Pitch Your Project days at hospitals
around the country, reaching out to local volunteer
groups and inviting them to present their ideas to
a panel of four “Dragons”: a social entrepreneur, a
designer, a hospital Chief Executive and a member
of the local media.
The volunteers have ten minutes to pitch to the Each of the schemes
Dragons. In return they receive advice on how [seen] today has
to communicate what they are doing to public targeted perhaps a
sector stakeholders and how to make their group of folks that
resources go further. The volunteers also get we wouldn’t have
a chance to win a £2,000 prize to put towards engaged with... After
developing their group. Afterwards, in the Pitch today I can go and
Your Project Green Room, the volunteers are have conversations
given time with design and communications with those groups and
specialists from thinkpublic to develop some of build that contact.
Andrea Green, Director
the Dragons’ suggestions.
of Foundation Trust
Development, University
Hospital of North
Staffordshire

Pitch Your Project works because the Dragons’
Den format breaks down barriers – as one of the
BBC’s most popular shows, it is as familiar to
NHS bigwigs as it is to weekend football coaches.
It circumvents bureaucracy and jumpstarts
meaningful, productive communication across
the institution-grassroots gap. Both sides benefit:
volunteers gain advice and resources, and public
service managers gain valuable and long-lasting
connections with their local community.
Pitch Your Project winners include a breastfeeding
peer support group in Northumbria, a network
of wrestling clubs set up for young people in
deprived areas of Manchester, and a scheme in
Northamptonshire that helps elderly people
take a holiday in their own home.
Today’s been a fantastic
day... it’s really given
us a taster of the sort of
voluntary groups that are
out there and the way in
which we could help them
as well as them helping us.
Christine Allen, Director of
Planning and Development,
Northampton Foundation Trust

find out more:
To find out how thinkpublic can
help design innovative ways to
connect with your community,
contact:
thinkpublic
5 Calvert Avenue
London E2 7JP
+44 (0) 207 033 9978
deborah.szebeko@thinkpublic.com
www.thinkpublic.com
www.journeystohealth.org