Hillsborough County, FL: Scalable Community Engagement for Disaster Recovery
Hillsborough County was honored with the Breakthrough Performance Award for transforming large-scale disaster recovery engagement into a seamless, scalable process. This case study highlights how the County used PublicInput to efficiently gather resident feedback and enable data-driven decisions for over $700M in recovery funding.
Community Profile
Hillsborough County, Florida, is home to more than 1.5 million residents across urban, suburban, and coastal communities. The County is economically and culturally diverse, with a mix of homeowners and renters representing a wide range of neighborhoods and housing types. Its communities include a mix of homeowners and renters, with more than 20% identifying as people of color and nearly 1 in 5 households living below the poverty line, highlighting the need for inclusive and accessible public engagement.
The Challenge of Large-Scale Disaster Recovery Engagement
Following Hurricanes Milton and Helene, the County faced the challenge of quickly gathering federally required feedback from thousands of impacted households while ensuring broad and equitable participation. Gathering this input quickly was essential to guide the allocation of over $700M in recovery funds, yet traditional methods (paper surveys, phone calls, and spreadsheets) were anticipated not to keep pace with the volume and diversity of the potential responses, creating a risk of delays and errors in critical reporting.
How PublicInput Was Used
Hillsborough County turned to PublicInput’s unified platform to make it easier for residents to provide feedback and for staff to track it in real time, ensuring everyone impacted by the storms could share their needs and priorities clearly and efficiently.
A mobile-friendly survey and centralized project site made it simple for households to provide structured feedback on damage, housing type, and funding needs.
More than 47,000 targeted emails helped reach residents where they were, while real-time analytics allowed staff to see participation trends and stay connected to the community.
All responses, including over 3,000 comments, were automatically captured in PublicInput’s CRM, giving staff the ability to organize and analyze feedback efficiently, reduce manual work, and ensure federally compliant reporting—all while keeping residents’ voices front and center.
The Results: Efficient, Scalable, and Transparent Community Engagement
The County collected nearly 80,000 survey responses and more than 3,000 comments, creating clean, ready-to-use data to support their action plan. Staff reported reduced administrative burden, faster analysis, and improved confidence in data accuracy. Residents experienced a seamless, mobile-accessible process, ensuring broad participation.
Key metrics include:
- 79,572 survey responses and 3,663 comments captured
- Email outreach to 47,364 residents with an 86.6% open rate and 9.8% click-through
- Subscriber engagement of 791 residents, supporting ongoing updates and communication
By centralizing outreach, tracking engagement in real time, and automating data collection, Hillsborough County set a new standard for large-scale disaster recovery engagement. Their approach demonstrated operational efficiency, scalability, and transparency, strengthening community trust and positioning the County for future readiness.
Transform Your Community Engagement Approach
Hillsborough County’s approach demonstrates how technology and strategic planning can streamline large-scale community engagement while ensuring transparency and accuracy.
Want to learn more about how PublicInput can help your agency capture meaningful input more efficiently?
