What we’re testing and what feedback helps
Read this before you start.
What this toolkit is
The Municipal Climate Communication Toolkit is a practical resource for municipal staff and elected officials in rural, remote, small and medium communities. It’s meant to help municipal staff and elected officials communicate local climate action clearly, honestly and in a way that builds public trust.
What we are testing
We want to know whether the toolkit works in practice—for someone in your role, in a community like yours, facing a real communication challenge. The most useful feedback answers one or more of these questions:
- Could you find what you needed? Did the toolkit point you to the right tools, or did you get lost or confused along the way?
- Did the tools work when you got there? Were the message maps, templates and guides clear and usable?
- Were there gaps? Was there something you needed that wasn’t there—a data source or guidance for a specific situation?
- Is anything unclear? Were there instructions or explanations that were hard to follow even after reading carefully?
Providing feedback
This toolkit is a preliminary release. We welcome your feedback to help us refine it before the full public launch.
Please explore the toolkit and share your thoughts using the feedback form. If you have comments on specific documents, download the document, add your notes as comments and email it back to us using the instructions at the end of this package.
Please:
- Focus your feedback on whether the toolkit works for your role and your community—for example, “I couldn’t tell which message map applied to my community type” or “The Make it Local guide didn’t have sources relevant to my region.”
- Frame comments as questions wherever possible—for example, “Would this template work for a mayor without communications staff?” rather than “This template is too complicated.”
- Flag anything that is factually inaccurate or missing for your specific region or community context—for example, a data source that’s wrong, outdated or absent from the Make it Local guide.
- Flag anything that was unclear or hard to follow, noting the specific tool and section so we can find it.
- Refrain from copy-editing or suggesting stylistic rewrites—the documents follow a deliberate plain-language approach grounded in communication research.
- Refrain from flagging the same issue more than once—if something needs to change throughout a document, note it once and add “Please apply to all instances.”
- Keep in mind that the regional message maps are examples to adapt, not finished messages to use as written. Feedback on the examples is most useful when it identifies a specific gap or inaccuracy, not a stylistic preference.
Thank you for your time. Your feedback will directly shape the final toolkit.