When Trust Goes Local
Updated: 12 hours ago
When Trust Goes Local: What 5,000 Voices Proves About Community Engagement
Trust is going local. The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer found that trust in national governments, major news organizations and business leaders all fell this year, while trust in neighbors, coworkers and employers rose. Our takeaway: it’s a shift we’ve seen play out locally, too: as fear rises, people trust what’s close to them, not what’s loudest online.
That trust gap is exactly what our client, Tahoe Forest Health System, was up against when it set out to hear from 5,000 community members in eight months to inform its next strategic plan. No mass email or ad buy was going to get them there. It took showing up, in person, in the places people already trust.
The Outreach Playbook
TFHS launched "True North: 5,000 Voices" to gather meaningful input from residents, patients, staff, second homeowners, partners and visitors across a large, seasonal service area — in time to inform a multiyear strategic plan. From launch through campaign close, ERPR owned the engagement strategy and channel execution, produced the bilingual materials, and handled partner coordination, tracking and monthly board reporting. A few examples of what that looked like on the ground:
Community resource organizations.
We didn't just email a flyer. We set it up so our client could show up at a weekly food bank distribution to reach local families who aren't looped into local news, in Spanish and English, in a place people already trust.
Local congregations.
We reached out to local faith-based groups with bilingual print and digital content ready to go. One Catholic parish priest included the effort in his newsletter, and gave True North a mention from the pulpit. You can't buy that reach, and you can't fake the relationship it takes to earn it.
The mobile home park pizza party.
We hosted a bilingual session with translation support, free pizza and a QR code postcard in Spanish and English. That single session reached residents who almost never appear in a hospital's engagement data.
Listening sessions.
We planned, organized and led community listening sessions in coffee shops, breweries and local gathering spots across the region. One was with the Golden Seniors, a local weekly meetup that drew 45 or so lively residents. People came ready to share frustrations and ideas, and they valued the one-on-one face time with a TFHS representative.
This work doesn't happen from behind a laptop alone. A lot of it runs behind the scenes — knowing the landscape, the players and the right people to call. The rest is in person, in the places communities already trust. As more of what people see online is automated or AI-generated, showing up is what earns belief.
The Results
6,500+ community and workforce voices collected, exceeding the original 5,000 goal
61+ engagement activities held across the region
140,000+ digital ad impressions across Meta, digital audio, programmatic display and regional news sites
Nearly 20,000 people reached through Meta alone
Bilingual materials and translation support delivered across every channel to reach historically underserved residents
TFHS leadership walked into strategic planning with a clear, community-backed mandate.
What the Client Said
“I can’t say enough good things about working with the East River PR team. We partnered with them on Tahoe Forest Health System’s 5,000 Voices initiative, and they were a great extension of our team. They understood both the big picture and the importance of getting the details right, and were always willing to jump in wherever we needed them.”
— Jen Malone, Director of Communications and Strategic Engagement, Tahoe Forest Health System
“We were grateful to be able to tap into expertise and relationships that ERPR had in place to meet one of the most aggressive timelines in my professional experience. Our success was built on the foundation they brought to the table.”
— Kim McCarl, Chief Strategy Officer, Tahoe Forest Health System
Why This Matters Now
Most of the organizations we support already have strong leadership and strategic advisors in place. What they need alongside them is a partner who can carry the message into the community and bring the community's voice back. We design the engagement strategy, build the bilingual materials, work the trusted local networks, help staff the events and track every touchpoint against a real goal.
Strategic plans, capital campaigns, public engagement processes, permitting fights: anywhere community trust is the whole game, that's where we do our best work. If your organization has a story that needs to be heard, or a community that needs to be heard, let's talk.
Read the full True North case study here.
