Author Archives: Sandy Heierbacher

Reminder about tomorrow’s NCDD Confab on Rockefeller’s GATHER

Posted on by
Reply

Confab bubble imageDon’t forget to register for tomorrow’s confab call! From 2:00 to 3:00 pm Eastern on November 20th, we’ll be talking with Rob Garris and Noah Rimland Flower about the Rockefeller Foundation’s new publication GATHER: The Art & Science of Effective Convening.

The Rockefeller Foundation and Monitor Institute released GATHER earlier this year as a free hands-on guidebook for all convening designers and social change leaders who want to tap into a group’s collective intelligence and make substantial progress on a shared challenge.

The call will provide a great opportunity to learn more about how foundations are thinking about their role as convenors, and think through your own role and strategies as a convenor.  Our featured speakers tomorrow are Rob Garris, Managing Director at Rockefeller Foundation (Rob oversees their Bellagio conference center, and oversaw the creation of GATHER) and Noah Rimland Flower of the Monitor Institute (one of GATHER’s two co-authors). NCDD’s Board Chair, Marla Crockett, will be facilitating tomorrow’s call.

Join us for “Text, Talk, Act” on Mental Health

Posted on by
Reply

On December 5th, we encourage all NCDD members to participate in the first-ever, nationwide text-enabled dialogue on mental health. All you need is 1 hour, 4 people, and at least 1 phone.

TXTTLKACT_Infographic

This is a project of Creating Community Solutions – a collaborative effort led by the National Institute for Civil Discourse, the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, AmericaSpeaks, Everyday Democracy, National Issues Forums Institute, and the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (with many, many partner organizations signed on — including some of you!). We’re excited to be experimenting with the use of text messaging technology to help groups of young people and adults, all over the country, get together in small groups for one-hour discussions on mental health.

Sign up today at bit.ly/texttalkact, and think about whether you can get your university, your classroom, your community group, your neighbors, or others involved in Text Talk Act!

And please share this infographic widely to help us promote the event! The infographic was created by Andy Fluke — NCDD’s Creative Director.

Small groups of 4-5 people will gather together for the event. Each group will need a cell phone and will receive polling & discussion questions and process suggestions via text message.

Results from the live polling questions will be tabulated almost instantly, so that people will be able to see how participants across the country responded. The discussion questions will provide a safe space for candid dialogue on mental health, one of the most critical and misunderstood public issues we face. The process will also provide an opportunity for participants to discuss actions they can take to strengthen mental health on their campuses and in their communities.

Harnessing Collaborative Technologies: Helping Funders Work Together Better

Posted on by
Reply

In November 2013, Monitor Institute and the Foundation Center released a new report called Harnessing Collaborative Technologies: Helping Funders Work Together Better. As part of the research, we looked at more than 170 different technological tools now available to funders, dove deeply into the literature on philanthropic collaboration, analyzed the results of recent Foundation Center surveys, and spoke with a wide range of experts from the worlds of both technology and philanthropy.

HarnessingCollabTech-coverThe Harnessing Collaborative Technologies report helps readers make sense of the dizzying array of technologies that are now available to help those engaged in both low- and high-intensity collaborations by parsing the different collaborative needs of funders. How can new tools help funders learn and get smarter about the issues they care about? How can the technologies help you find and connect with potential partners? How can they help you transact business together? Which technologies can help you assess collective progress and measure outcomes? The report encourages funders to start with these collaborative needs rather than with the technologies themselves, to ensure that solutions fit the wants, requirements, and limitations of users.

Harnessing Collaborative Technologies also provides a set of principles that offer guidance for tool developers and funders about how to make thoughtful choices when investing in the creation and adaptation of new tools that facilitate collaborative work.

In addition to the gorgeous 43-page report, a super-useful interactive tool has been developed by GrantCraft at http://collaboration.grantcraft.org to help people identify tools to facilitate collaboration. This must-see tool is a joint service of the Foundation Center and the European Foundation Centre.

The report’s main headlines won’t come as a huge surprise to anyone: (1) more than ever before, funders are recognizing that they will need to collaborate to effectively to address the complex, intractable problems that we now face, and (2) new technologies—from simple group scheduling tools to comprehensive online collaboration workspaces—are now available to help facilitate the often challenging process of working together.

But there’s a deeper story beneath the headlines: about how these emerging technologies are enabling new types collaborations that weren’t possible (or at least much were more difficult) just a few years ago.

While much of the talk about collaboration these days centers on large, formal “collective impact” initiatives and “needle-moving” collaboratives, these types of highly intensive collaborative approaches aren’t necessarily right for all funders, all situations, and all purposes. In some cases, funders are simply looking to learn together. In others, they’re just aiming to understand the broader ecosystem of activity so they can act independently but still align their efforts with those of others.

New technologies are changing the playing field and making it cheaper and easier than ever before to facilitate these different types of “lower-intensity” collaborative activities. New collaborative platforms are helping funders share files and information, and can provide important forums for ongoing dialogue and conversation. Online project management systems are streamlining processes for coordinating and aligning action. And new tools for aggregating data and visualizing information now allow funders to see the larger funding landscape that they are a part of in new ways.

These simpler, technology-facilitated collaborative activities may not yield the outsized results of more complex, formal efforts, but they often produce very real improvements and outcomes, while also helping to build relationships and momentum that can build towards higher-intensity efforts.

By getting smarter about how we develop and use these collaborative tools, we have an opportunity to alleviate some of the “friction in the system” that has made working together—even in lower intensity ways—difficult until now.  And in doing so, we can ease the path to collaboration and help aggregate resources and effort that can match the scale of the problems we now face.

Resource Link: http://monitorinstitute.com/blog/2013/11/07/collaborative-technologies-reducing-the-friction-in-the-system/

Grantcraft tool that helps you find EXACT tool you need:  http://collaboration.grantcraft.org/

Announcing the new Penn State Democracy Medal

Posted on by
Reply

Starting this year, Penn State University’s Democracy Institute will be awarding a Democracy Medal for exceptional innovations that advance the design and practice of democracy. The medal comes with a $5,000 award and tremendous publicity for the recipient, who will accept the medal and give a speech in the Fall of 2014. The medal celebrates the best work being done to advance democracy in the United States or around the globe. This year’s competition focuses on practical innovations, such as new institutions, laws, technologies, or movements that advance democracy.

The first medal will be given in 2014 for the best innovation in the practice of democracy. Nominations will be accepted through December 10, 2013, and the awardee will be announced in the spring of 2014. The winner will give a talk at Penn State in September, 2014, when they also receive their medal and $5,000 award. Between the spring announcement of the winner and the on-campus event in the fall, the Institute will provide the recipient with editorial assistance toward completing a short (20-25 page) essay describing the innovation for a general audience. The Institute will publish the essay electronically, possibly in collaboration with an independent press, and make it available to the general public at a very low price (e.g., $1-2), along with a similarly-affordable audio version. These print and audio distillations of the innovation are designed to aid its diffusion.

We encourage NCDD members to nominate themselves or others for this award!!!

It is important to act quickly, as the nomination period last just one month this year. Nomination letters must be emailed by December 10, 2013 to democracyinst@psu.edu. Initial nomination letters are simply that, a one-to-two page letter that describes how the nominee’s work meets the criteria for this award and what distinguishes it from other work on democracy. Both self-nominations and nominations of others are welcomed. The call for nominations is described in detail at http://cdd.la.psu.edu/research/penn-state-democracy-medal.

The Pennsylvania State University Democracy Institute promotes rigorous scholarship and practical innovations to advance the democratic process in the United States and abroad. The Institute pursues this mission, in part, through supporting the work of the Center for Democratic Deliberation (CDD) and the Center for American Political Responsiveness (CAPR).  The CDD studies and advances public deliberation, whereas CAPR attends to the relationship between the public’s priorities and the actions of elected bodies.

Launch of Voice of the People and its Campaign for a Citizen Cabinet

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s an important announcement from one of our supporting members, Steven Kull. Steven is Research Scholar and Director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. I’ve been watching Steven’s work with great interest over the last few years especially, and I’m exciting about Voice of the People.

Dear NCDD Community,

I would like to announce that our new organization Voice of the People (VOP) and its Campaign for a Citizen Cabinet had its rollout last month. The website is now up at www.vop.org.

VOP seeks to give the American people a greater voice in government by:

  • Working with Congress to establish a national Citizen Cabinet, a large standing panel comprised of a representative sample of the American public, to be consulted on current issues, using new online interactive tools to give voice to the people on an unprecedented scale; and
  • Making these same online resources available to all Americans, so they can get better informed and more effectively communicate their views to their representatives.

In the short term we will be developing interim Citizen Cabinets in a number of states and Congressional districts as well as consulting the public on a national level on issues currently in front of Congress.

VOP-largepic

We have also been having many meetings on the Hill with Congressional staffers and some Members and have been getting a very positive response to the idea of establishing a new Congressionally-chartered National Academy for Public Consultation that would run a Citizen Cabinet as well as doing other forms of public consultation.

We hope you will go to the website, find out more, sign the petition and stay in touch.

At the rollout event at the National Press Club members of our advisory board spoke, including former Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), former House Members Bill Frenzel (R-MN) and Martin Frost (R-TX), former House Member and Governor Mike Castle (R-DE), and Wendy Willis of the Policy Consensus Initiative. You can see the video of the event on the site.

The event led to press coverage in Politico, US News and World Report, Roll Call, the Christian Science Monitor and other places, as well as some television coverage.

The plan for the Citizen Cabinet goes like this… It will be comprised of 275 citizens in every congressional district—120,000 nationwide—scientifically selected to accurately reflect the American people, and connected through an online interface. Each Citizen Cabinet member will serve for 9-12 months, and Internet access will be provided to those who do not already have it, to make sure everyone is represented.

On a regular basis, members of the Citizen Cabinet will go through an online public consultation on a pressing issue facing the federal government. For each issue, Citizen Cabinet members will:

  1. Get Briefed: Get unbiased background information reviewed by experts and congressional staff from both parties;
  2. Weigh the Arguments: Learn about the policy options that are actually on the table and evaluate the pros and cons; and.
  3. Make Choices: Choose from a menu of policy options, or go through a more in-depth process that requires making trade-offs (e.g. creating a budget).

Finally, the Citizen Cabinet’s recommendations will be broken down by state and congressional district, and reported to each Member of Congress, the President, the news media and the public.

The Citizen Cabinet will be managed, with bi-partisan oversight, by a new National Academy for Public Consultation. All of the materials presented to the Citizen Cabinet—the briefing, competing arguments, and policy options—will be vetted by a bipartisan group of experts and available online for anyone to see.

VOP-graphic

While members of the Citizen Cabinet would be scientifically selected to be a representative sample of the public, VOP seeks to give all Americans the opportunity to use these same online interactive tools–getting briefed, weighing competing arguments and coming to conclusions on key policy options. We will also make these tools available to schools, community groups and other organizations.

Citizens will be able to better engage and make more effective recommendations to their representatives, as their input will be more informed and focused on the actual policy choices and tradeoffs Congress is facing.

We would be interested in hearing from people who have been doing related work. There may be ways we can work together. Please let us know.

Again, please do visit the website www.vop.org and sign up so we can keep you posted on how things develop.

Best,
Steven Kull

Launching a 3-year learning exchange with the Kettering Foundation

Posted on by
Reply

NCDD is pleased to announce that we are embarking upon an exciting three-year “learning exchange” with the Kettering Foundation.

This research with Kettering focuses on documenting and making explicit what NCDD is learning in areas of mutual importance to Kettering, to NCDD, and to our field. Specifically, under this agreement, we will:

  • Explore the capacity and track record of collaboration among practitioners in public dialogue and deliberation, while exploring new opportunities as well. This joint research will give us the opportunity to think through—with many of you—the obstacles to collaboration in our field and how to overcome them.
  • Leverage our network to help quantify the level of dialogue and deliberation in the U.S. We’ll be surveying you in a number of ways to find out where, when, and how often you’re engaging people; what your organizations’ strengths and specialties are; and what your hopes and challenges are. The goal is to inventory the assets that exist in our field as a whole—and present that information in ways that public administrators, funders, potential sponsoring organizations, the media, and all of you can access.

We will certainly need your help for these efforts to be successful. Many of you are working together on a wide variety of projects already. We ask that over these next few years, you help us to learn from your work and explore with us what’s possible. We’ll also be looking for people to help us catalog, report on, and map what we’re learning. Ideas, input and involvement from our members will be critical in all our upcoming work with Kettering.

I am so excited about this opportunity to work more closely with the Kettering Foundation and to create a better climate for dialogue and deliberation, at a time when our world so desperately needs it. Please join me in celebrating our new venture.

About the Kettering Foundation…

The Kettering Foundation is a nonprofit operating foundation rooted in the American tradition of cooperative research. Kettering’s primary research question is “What does it take to make democracy work as it should?” Kettering’s research is distinctive because it is conducted from the perspective of citizens and focuses on what people can do collectively to address problems affecting their lives, their communities, and their nation.

The foundation seeks to identify and address the challenges to making democracy work as it should through interrelated program areas that focus on citizens, communities, and institutions. Guiding Kettering’s research are three hypotheses. Kettering’s research suggests that democracy requires:

  • Responsible citizens who can make sound choices about their future;
  • Communities of citizens acting together to address common problems; and
  • Institutions with public legitimacy that contribute to strengthening society.

The foundation’s small staff and extensive network of associates collaborate with community organizations, government agencies, researchers, scholars, and citizens around the world. A monthly meeting series brings together Kettering staff, associates, researchers, and others with whom the foundation works to explore a tightly focused research question or area. Those working on related problems share what they are learning at the foundation’s many meetings, which provide space for an ongoing exchange of ideas and stories in an effort to develop research interests.

As the foundation’s learning progresses, Kettering shares its research findings through books, research reports, occasional papers, videos, and its website. The foundation also disseminates its research in three periodicals: Connections, the Higher Education Exchange, and the Kettering Review.

In addition, Kettering produces materials, including issue books and starter videos, for the National Issues Forums (NIF), a network of civic and educational organizations whose common interest is promoting public deliberation. The foundation collaborates with NIF as part of its research efforts.

Established in 1927 by inventor Charles F. Kettering, the foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization that does not make grants but engages in joint research with others. It is an operating foundation headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Washington, D.C., and New York City.

Registration open for Nov 20th Confab call on Rockefeller’s GATHER

Posted on by
Reply

Want to build your toolkit as a convening designer? Join us for our next NCDD “Confab Call” on Wednesday, November 20th from 2:00 to 3:00 EST to speak with the authors of the Rockefeller Foundation publication GATHER: The Art & Science of Effective Convening.

Leading the conversation will be:

  • Rob Garris, Managing Director at Rockefeller Foundation. Rob oversees their Bellagio conference center, and oversaw the creation of GATHER
  • Noah Rimland Flower, Monitor Institute. Noah is one of GATHER’’s two co-authors and led the content creation

Gather-coverEarlier this year, Rockefeller Foundation and Monitor Institute released GATHER as a free hands-on guidebook for all convening designers and social change leaders who want to tap into a group’s collective intelligence and make substantial progress on a shared challenge.

GATHER provides simple frameworks for the questions that are often ignored: whether convening is the right tool to use to advance a strategic agenda, and how a convening can be used to achieve a specific purpose. It then helps you understand how to customize the design to fit that purpose, laying out a clear series of steps for what is a naturally chaotic workflow. It then offers principles to use for each of the many tactical choices involved. GATHER and its accompanying workshop materials are designed for you to use in your own work, with a team, and with larger groups both inside and outside an organization.

On this Confab Call we’ll be discussing:

  • An introduction to how convening is a strategic tool for foundations
  • A case study of how convening can be used for social problem-solving
  • The top three mis-steps that convening designers make, and how to avoid them

A word on the format:  NCDD’s Confab Calls are opportunities for members of the NCDD community to talk with innovators in our field about the work they’re doing and connect with each other around shared interests. Membership in NCDD is required to participate in this call, as space is limited and we suspect this one will fill up fast.

Dues-paying members (supporting, sustaining and org members) get first dibs on this one, but non-dues members may register starting next Wednesday (November 13th) as space allows. A max of 150 people will be able to participate on the call.

Why NCDD is so great…

Posted on by
Reply

I’m feeling really grateful right now for this supportive network we’ve built up over the past 11 years, and all of the amazing people that make NCDD a special, one-of-a-kind community.

I just realized we had SEVEN people renew their membership today and yesterday, and I wanted to give them a quick shout-out. Thank you to John Vogelsang, Tim Steffensmeier of Kansas State University, Leanne Nurse of the U.S. EPA, Maggie Herzig of the Public Conversations Project, Kay Lindahl of The Listening Center, Tobin Quereau of Austin Community College, and Angela Lowrey of Delta Diablo!

Your ongoing support and involvement mean the world to us, and those of us on staff feel so lucky to be able to serve and work with who we consider to be some of the greatest people on the planet.

The photo collage below is a testament to that.

members_with_signs-collage-border

Back when we were organizing the NCDD national conference in Seattle last year, we asked our members to send in photos of themselves holding up signs about why their work has meaning for them (kudos to Susan Stuart Clark for the idea!).

We compiled a slideshow of these great photos (and photos from past events) that played while people were arriving for the first day of the conference, and you can check out that video here along with all the other videos from NCDD Seattle.

Invitation to 3rd round of dialogue on Race, Poverty & Wealth in America

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s an invitation from Ben Roberts of The Conversation Collaborative to participate in the third (and final) round of the innovative online conversation he’s hosting as part of the National Dialogue Network initiative…

From now through October 31st, please join us on hackpad, on the phone and perhaps in person as well, as we continue to explore the topic of race as it relates to the National Dialogue Network’s topic of Poverty and Wealth in America.

The stories we tell ourselves concerning race, poverty and wealth will be the focus of our Round Three inquiry. You can be a “story teller” and/or a listener/respondent. Thank you to Helen Roberts and Safeer Hopton for agreeing to share their stories to get us started. You can listen to Helen’s recording and then post reflections on our here on the “Story 1” pad, and read or listen to Safeer’s interview here on the “Story 2” pad. You can also…

  • Go to one of our additional pads and share your own story there
  • Pair up with a friend (live or virtually) and interview one another
  • Email me and request that I interview you (this Sunday afternoon or in the morning Eastern during the week is good timing).
  • Join the conversation on our “spin off” pad on “Race and Culture” or “Changes to Voting Laws.”

See the main pad for Round Three to get started on all of the above.

We also have two interactive MaestroConference calls next week. These calls will feature a brief orientation for those who are new to the conversation, plenty of time for dialogue in small and large groups, and two special guest conversation starters.  Stay tuned for more info. Note that if you’re receiving this email from me, you’re already registered. Here are the times for the calls:

  • Tuesday, Oct 29 from 3-5pm Pacific/6-8pm Eastern
  • Thursday, Oct 31 at 11am-1pm Pacific/2-4pm Eastern

Finally, as part of our collaboration with the National Dialogue Network, we request that you take their survey here. This is our way of connecting our thinking together with that of other groups having similar conversations as part of this initiative.

Hope to “see” you soon on the pads and on the phone, and thank you for your interest and participation to date!

Join us for an overview of Harwood’s work on November 5th

Posted on by
Reply

HarwoodLogoIt was clear during our August confab call with Rich Harwood that NCDD members are interested in learning more about the Harwood Institute’s approach to change.  I recently attended a Harwood retreat in Park City, Utah with a number of leaders in our field, and it occurred to me there that the Harwood Institute’s concepts provide a nice framework for all of us to think about our work and how we might present it to others in meaningful ways.

We’ve arranged for Harwood to run a one-hour webinar for NCDD members on Tuesday, November 5 at 2pm Eastern (11am Pacific).

Turning Outward: An Overview of The Harwood Institute’s Approach to Change

The Harwood Institute helps people and organizations address community challenges, improve their own effectiveness, and do their work in a way that makes communities stronger. They teach and coach people how to develop a deep understanding of their communities and then use that knowledge to fundamentally change the way they approach their work. They call this “turning outward” – using the community as the main reference point for both day-to-day and strategic decisions.

During this webinar, we will explore what it means to turn outward and Harwood staff will provide an overview of the Institute’s key frameworks that can help you accelerate your efforts to engage your community. Presenters will also talk about the upcoming Harwood Public Innovators Lab – a 3-day immersion into the Institute’s core concepts. The Lab will take place Dec. 10-12 in Alexandria, VA, and we’ve arranged a discounted rate for NCDD members.

Register now at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/119419411383244546

After registering, you’ll receive a confirmation email with instructions for joining the webinar. (View System Requirements)