1

Establish Goals

One of the keys to an engagement program’s success is establishing at the beginning what success will actually mean. This requires clarity, purpose, and measurement.

Some examples of goals are:

“We want to inspire 150 ranchers representing 15,000 acres across specific counties to sign up for our conservation stewardship program by April 1.”
“We want 200 ranchers to visit our rotational grazing demonstration site.”
“We would like to increase active membership in our peer-to-peer learning community by 20% by the end of next year.”

Once a specific and measurable goal has been identified, the outreach program can be designed and tracked in support of its achievement.

What We Did

Our outreach began with the knowledge that inadequate social and cultural support for ranchers of varying mindsets was a key barrier to accelerated adoption of regenerative agriculture practices.

We couldn’t make broad presumptions about ranchers. Instead, we needed to listen to their interests and needs and understand how different engagement styles and value propositions could help them become more ready to adopt.

With that in mind, Environmental Initiative and Trust In Food set out to inspire a group of ranchers in North and South Dakota to place 10,000 acres under written grazing management plans. The team wanted to create data-informed outreach that would show improved interest and value.

Success for this four-month project would be measured by:

Ranchers reached during a media campaign from September 2025 – January 2026, which is prime planning time for ranchers.
Results of an outreach survey that indicates:
1. Number of acres managed by ranchers who downloaded a grazing management plan linked in outreach material.
2. Number of ranchers with intent to complete their grazing management plan within one year.
3. Number of ranchers writing their grazing management plan down for the first time.

Make it Happen

Download this worksheet to learn how to set clear, measurable goals. Define who you want to connect with, what you want them to do, when you want to act, and why the action is important.

Sample Success Measures

An essential part of shaping your goals is planning and communicating your methods of measurement. Attaching numbers to your goals helps track how far you’ve gone and how far you need to go.

We measured our success in four ways: awareness, understanding, interest, and value.