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About PlaceMatters

Our Mission: To support the creation and maintenance of sustainable and vibrant communities and regions through the application of innovative decision making tools and methods.

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PlaceMatters believes in informed, effective, and equitable citizen engagement.  We work to ensure that communities and organizations design and implement processes that garner broad public involvement and support, educate participants, and lead to sustainable, livable communities.

PlaceMatters achieves these goals by:

  • Using novel public engagement techniques
  • Employing innovative decision-support tools
  • Integrating ecosystem based management and community planning
  • Ensuring better understanding of tradeoffs during decision-making
  • Sharing outcomes of on-the-ground projects with others in the field through our conferences and website

PlaceMatters' History

PlaceMatters was conceived of during the Tools for Community Design and Decision Making (TCDDM) workshops, held six times from 1998 to 2005.  These workshops served as a gathering point for community practitioners, tools providers, and public agencies and foundations to establish more effective ways of determining the future of communities. To this end, TCDDM organizers and participants sought to build an enduring organization to greatly increase the resources for and impact of this work. With the help of an executive steering committee made of TCDDM participants, Ken Snyder launched PlaceMatters.com, a program of Civic Results, in 2002 to fill this roll.

For three years, PlaceMatters provided in-depth technical assistance and public process design, technical audits and tools recommendations to various projects at the community and regional scale.  In 2005, PlaceMatters staff became the Planning Tools branch of the Orton Family Foundation.  While with the Foundation, PlaceMatters staff worked to encourage and explore the innovative use of tools in community participation, planning, and design. 

In early 2007, PlaceMatters was re-created through a spin-off from the Orton Family Foundation.  PlaceMatters is now an independent affiliate of the Foundation, working closely with Foundation staff on some projects while also pursuing independent projects and creative opportunities for the use of decision support tools, civic engagement, and community sustainability.