We sit with the folks who want to hire us and find out what the end goal is.  Then we determine who is in the "neighborhood", find out where they create community and decide how to bring them together.  Once we bring them together, we explain why we are there, give them the opportunity to talk with one another, with questions that will help us find out what the community needs.

We take all of the information that was reported at the session, whether verbal reports or written or with sticky notes on the walls, and create a report based on what was heard and said.  We then present that information to the customer/client and to the community.  The customer can follow up from there, but we also try to keep an information flow (newsletter) so that the community members don't become disengaged from the process.

All of this is part of the customer/clients original contract.

Our contract is with the customer/client, but we let the client know up front that we expect to play fair with them and the community.

For us, community is about bringing people together (ultimately knowing that someone may not be completely happy), but we want to live with a sense of fair play and continued trust, not only for the client and community, but also with ourselves.  We want to treat others as we would want to be treated.