Stakeholder engagement is the interactions between agency staff and actors with people and organizations who have an interest in or are affected by a program, policy, or process, implemented or decided by an agency.

When it comes to applying stakeholder engagement to evidence-building activities and research, stakeholder engagement is equally applicable to aligning research and evaluation questions, identifying data collection and quality needs, equity considerations, and addressing other key factors in the evidence-building and evidence-use processes.

Some agencies may already be participating in stakeholder engagement, though have never considered it as a part of an engagement strategy. Because the term stakeholder engagement can cover a broad range of activities, agency staff may find it helpful to use more specific terms when planning their activities to meet requirements for stakeholder engagement, but can use this toolkit to help understand how activities can provide benefit and fulfill evidence building mandates.

Who are my stakeholders?

A stakeholder is a person or organization who has a vested interest in the activities, a decision, or an outcome of the agency. A stakeholder may be a program beneficiary, decision-maker, partner, researcher, or even a program implementer.

One way to better understand who your stakeholders are is to consider the types of interactions with individuals and organizations across different contributions and knowledge types: internal to external, and generalist to specialist.

  • The range of views from individuals external to internal defines how closely stakeholders are intertwined with your agency. For example, in a large Cabinet-level Department, other agencies or bureaus may be considered more internal relative to an agency at a different Department in the federal government, but more external than other programs run by your own agency. In contrast, for federal agencies that collaborate with state partners, those partners may be viewed as external partners when receiving grants but have more internal cooperation as stakeholders under cooperative agreements or coordinated structures. The range from external to internal will vary based on the unique circumstances of individual agencies and program activities.

  • Working knowledge of stakeholders also ranges on specific topics from generalist to specialist. For example, a member of a federal advisory committee may have extensive specialized knowledge of a data product and be well versed in the challenges and policies associated with the technical development of the product. This puts them closer to the specialist end of the scale than a potential future general or public user of the product. In this example, a general user of the data product will also have valuable information to relay to the agency, however, their knowledge is likely not as focused on the technical expertise needed to create the product.

Agencies formulating or using evidence-building plans, evaluation plans, or conducting other related activities can readily identify individual stakeholders and stakeholder groups based on the external-internal and generalist-specialist considerations. The concepts can also be paired together. For example, for a federal-state program, a program office of experts on implementation may provide centers of expertise as internal-specialists (e.g., analyzing and interpreting, or using information), state partners and non-profit collaborators may be external-specialists (e.g., providing data and evidence), members of the general public may be external-generalists (e.g., affected by outcomes or beneficiaries).

To identify the relevant stakeholders your agency may want to engage with, you can bring together a diverse group or staff from your own agency to brainstorm and consider who may be external, internal, generalist, and specialist individuals or organizations to the project at hand. You may also choose to identify key stakeholders or representative stakeholders who can help identify other stakeholders for broad and inclusive representation. Activities such as stakeholder mapping can be beneficial to guide this work.

Developing a Stakeholder Map for Learning Agendas

From Making Federal Agencies Evidence Based. 

Many programs may have a general sense of stakeholders but not a comprehensive, shared understanding of the community that affects achievement of goals and objectives. The stakeholder mapping process is also useful for identifying indirect evidence producers and users who can support or otherwise affect implementation of identified activities. 

Agency staff must identify which stakeholders could affect the success of the selected program or strategic goal, including internal, external, oversight, partners, allies, and opponents. Consider the relative importance of the stakeholder for achieving program goals, their interest in execution, or the extent of their role in implementation. Stakeholders involved in implementation might include, for example, representatives of state or local governments, nonprofits, and/or private sector contractors involved in the delivery of the program or strategy. During the session, participants directly identify and note the relevant stakeholders, and discuss them with other participants in the process.