TurningPoint Case Study

Trust for Public Land

BACKGROUND

The Trust for Public Land is a national, nonprofit conservation organization that works to conserve land for generations to enjoy as parks, gardens and other natural spaces. Since 1972, the group has collaborated with willing landowners, community groups and government agencies to protect over 2.8 million acres of land in 47 states. Since 1994 alone, the group has generated $25 billion in funding for state and community conservation projects.

TPL’s Greenprint process enables communities to identify and prioritize their conservation goals to make informed decisions regarding land conservation. Stakeholders identify conservation goals and then engage in an interactive process to create scenarios to come to consensus on a conservation opportunities map for their community.

THE CHALLENGE

The TPL Geographical Information Systems (GIS) team relies on the advanced technology of Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI) GIS to generate maps and spatial analysis using landscape data sets. Stakeholders identify conservation goals and then vote on those goals to produce a map that prioritizes the lands most important for conservation in their community.

Stakeholders previously used the "dot method" to vote on goals, taking paper dots and placing them on a map of a specific goal. The TPL project team would then count up the dots on each map, manually input the data into the GIS and create a map that detailed areas to target. After some internal discussions, it was clear that other, alternative methods of voting would prove useful for such meetings.

Bob Heuer is a TPL Greenprinting Project Manager, and oversees stakeholder meetings. "The dot method was not efficient and very time-consuming," said Heuer. "We did some research and found that Turning Technologies' audience response was much more robust and effective for our needs, not to mention affordable."

THE SOLUTION

Turning Technologies' audience response came highly recommended as having a solid product with good support. The TPL GIS team also saw the potential to combine the GIS with TurningPoint software to generate maps in real-time without manual input. TPL and Turning Technologies worked together to create a mechanism where information from the polling system feeds directly into the GIS software to update maps instantly. Stakeholders are now able to vote and moments later see a map generated that reflects their response.

"Stakeholders are extremely engaged. TurningPoint allows us to create real-time scenarios as opposed to our previous method. We can vote, see the map, have discussion and vote again to generate a second scenario map. It allows us to see how the landscape changes based on the different responses of the stakeholders," said Heuer.

CONCLUSION

TurningPoint is now a key part of TPL’s Greenprinting process. Real-time data updates allows for informed decisions in a matter of minutes. Heuer notices that stakeholders not only find the tool useful, but fun as well.

"The attendees love it. It's a fun process because the voting is live," said Heuer. "Getting a group of 30 or 40 to come to a consensus is invaluable. We would still use TurningPoint even if it didn't integrate with the GIS. However, the efficiency of using it with the GIS is great."

For more information about purchasing or renting Turning Technologies' audience response systems for your organization, contact us at 866-746-3015.