How to Recruit Dialogue Participants

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

How to Recruit Dialogue Participants, published June 2015 by Everyday Democracy, includes five tips to for getting a well-rounded group of dialogue participants together. The one-page read has five recommendations for having a successful dialogue, including: reviewing dialogue recruitment goals, developing talking points, plan outreach strategies, give coalition members recruiting assignments, and take extra steps to recruit underrepresented groups. The article can be read below and found on Everyday Democracy’s website here.

From Everyday Democracy

To have effective community conversations, it’s important to get as many different kinds of people involved as possible. A program that involves a broad cross-section of the community is more likely to benefit the community as a whole. And, having a diverse mix of participants helps make for lively and rewarding dialogue. Use these tips to recruit dialogue participants from every part of your community.

Review your recruitment goals
First, the coalition must decide how many and what kinds of people you are trying to reach. Refer back to the recruitment goals generated when you first met. Now, it’s time to get specific about your objectives. Ask yourselves:

– How many people do we need to involve to bring about the changes we are aiming for?
– Who are the different kinds of people we need to recruit to make our program diverse? (Be sure to think about multiple kinds of diversity.
– Why would people from each of these groups want to participate
– What might keep people in each group from participating?
– Are there groups or individuals on our coalition who can reach out to groups not yet involved? If not, who can help to spark their interest?

Develop talking points
This will help keep your message clear and consistent. As a coalition, role-play describing the dialogue to action effort to each other so members become familiar with the messages. The goal is for all members to be comfortable asking friends, family members, co-workers, and community members to participate in the dialogues. They should be able to give a brief overview about the program, talk about what issue they’ll be addressing and why it’s important.

A personal invitation is the best recruiting strategy. There is no substitute! You can do this through face-to-face visits and through phone calls. The coordinator and coalition members can introduce the program to lots of people by speaking at community groups or meetings.

You may want to supplement your in-person invitations with other tools such as flyers, brochures, Facebook announcements, blog posts, or radio interviews. Be creative!

Whenever possible, give people a chance to take part in a sample dialogue. Be sure to allow plenty of time for questions and answers. Explain how the program can help them make a difference on the issue, form new partnerships and relationships, and strengthen their own organization. Capture the excitement that is generated on the spot by having sign-up forms with you.

To ensure your dialogues include a diverse group of people, design your sign-up sheet to collect basic information – such as name, age, occupation, gender, neighborhood, ethnic/racial group – and then use that data to help arrange diverse groups. Make sure you ask people for their preferred times and days for participating in the dialogues.

Give coalition members recruiting assignments
Ask the members of your coalition to reach out to people in their networks. You may even want to set specific recruitment goals for each member.

Think about people who can spread the word to their entire network and tap into their resources. Reach out to leaders of businesses, nonprofits, faith communities, clubs, and other organizations. If community members hear the message from someone they trust, they will be more likely to participate. And, it’ll make recruitment easier because you won’t have to sign up each person individually.

Take extra steps to recruit underrepresented groups
One of the biggest challenges is to recruit people who don’t often get involved in community events. This will take extra work, but without it, you will be missing many important voices in your program.

To reach out to groups you may not be a part of, you have to take time to establish trust. If you can, find a spokesperson or leader in that community that can help spread the word. Sometimes they can be found in unlikely places such as barbershops or restaurants.

About Everyday Democracy
Everyday Democracy (formerly called the Study Circles Resource Center) is a project of The Paul J. Aicher Foundation, a private operating foundation dedicated to strengthening deliberative democracy and improving the quality of public life in the United States. Since our founding in 1989, we’ve worked with hundreds of communities across the United States on issues such as: racial equity, poverty reduction and economic development, education reform, early childhood development and building strong neighborhoods. We work with national, regional and state organizations in order to leverage our resources and to expand the reach and impact of civic engagement processes and tools. Follow on Twitter: @EvDem

Resource Link: http://everyday-democracy.org/tips/how-recruit-dialogue-participants

From Public Policy Institutes to Centers for Public Life: Transforming People and Communities (Connections 2015)

Posted on January 25, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The six-page article, From Public Policy Institutes to Centers for Public Life: Transforming People and Communities by Alice Diebel, was published Fall 2015 in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter,“Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research”.

Diebel shares how Kettering’s research fueled the development of issues guides to be used in the National Issues Forums and ultimately, improve the ways that democracy works. She shares the beginning of the forums as Public Policy Institutes (PPIs) and how they transformed into a new approach, Centers for Public Life. Read more an excerpt from the article below or find it in full on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

In 2010, we called on four very experienced PPI directors to help us design a new approach to the PPI experience. We were going to work to understand deliberative politics, not just public policy. Martín Carcasson, Betty Knighton, Alberto Olivas, and David Procter joined me and my colleague, Kettering program officer Randy Nielsen, in creating a new design for a research-oriented exchange.

The idea of “research exchange” also reflected a shift for Kettering. Moving from the language of learning that occurs in workshops with a curriculum toward shared learning in exchange among mutually interested parties was a shift the foundation made that paralleled the change in our approach to PPIs. The research exchange creates the space to delve more deeply into the context of democratic, public deliberative politics and to learn along with new organizations beginning to use NIF to plan and design approaches to improve all of the politics and practices in the places in which they work. As a result, the design of the exchanges with new centers continues to change and develop along with the centers

How could we learn more about the challenges of building more democratic communities?

…

PPI commitments in the past focused primarily on holding forums. Commitments in the centers’ exchanges, however, focused on building relationships for democratic practice and change. Creating an identity as a center with a clear mission is part of the work. Structuring deliberative frameworks and forums involving key publics meant they had to look beyond civic education or individual change and instead work toward addressing difficult problems in real settings.

The first centers for public life cohort started in February 2011, so the experiment with the concept of centers is still quite new. Many of the organizations are young enough that their impacts aren’t as apparent as those with a 20-year history. However, we have a few insights from this short period of time. These insights speak more to the relationship with Kettering in a “learning exchange” than to the direct impacts they are having.

About Kettering Foundation and Connections
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.

Each issue of this annual newsletter focuses on a particular area of Kettering’s research. The 2015 issue, edited by Kettering program officer Melinda Gilmore and director of communications David Holwerk, focuses on our yearlong review of Kettering’s research over time.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn.

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Diebel_2015.pdf

Collaborative Communication Processes and Decision Making in Organizations

Posted on January 21, 2016 by NCDD Community

The 410-page text, Collaborative Communication Processes and Decision Making in Organizations, edited by Ephraim Nikoi (University of Wisconsin-Superior, USA) and Kwasi Boateng (University of Arkansas-Little Rock, USA), was published by IGI Global in August 2013.

Although organizational decision-making can be very complex, the understanding of technology applications is significant in not only determining the usefulness of virtual groups in organizations, but also in the designing of electronic collaborative activities.

In this work’s 16 chapters, international contributors present research and global case examples in organizational decision making and communication processes for enhancing the effectiveness of organizations and educational environments. Sections deal with themes concerning: e-collaboration tools, creating effective virtual teams, and collaboration and decision making in organizations. Some specific subjects addressed include: fostering social innovation through e-collaboration, promoting critical thinking in virtual teams, and mobile phone usage in organizational communication and decision making.

This title provides academics and management teams with current research in the field of virtual teams in organizations. It is an essential resource for instructors and students of organization and group communication, and institutions that have networks of offices and employees in multiple geographical locations.

About IGI Global
IGI Global is committed to publishing scholarly books, journals, cases, encyclopedias, handbooks of research and electronic resources of the highest quality that provide comprehensive insight into all aspects of information science, business science, medical information science and engineering science. As an internationally-recognized publisher, IGI Global seeks to facilitate the availability of academic excellence and disseminate innovative knowledge worldwide.

Resource Link: www.igi-global.com/book/collaborative-communication-processes-decision-making/75842

This resource was submitted by Ann Lupold, Promotions Coordinator at IGI Global via the Add-a-Resource form.

A Treasure Chest About to Open (Connection 2015)

Posted on January 20, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

This brief two-page article, A Treasure Chest About to Open by Nicholas A. Felts was published in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter,“Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research” in the fall of 2015. Felts shares some of the history of National Issues Forums, one of the most valuable assets to come from the forums, and reveals an exciting project soon to be released from Kettering.

NIF has been running for 30 years, making it one of the longest running citizen-to-citizen public engagement experiences. Over the last three decades, Kettering has stored all the data collected from the forums, including one of the most valuable aspects- all of the questionnaire responses. After years of laboring, Kettering will soon have a fully functional digital archive of all the data from the NIF forums! Below is an excerpt from the article. Connections 2015 is available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

One constant focus of the NIF questionnaires, though, is also one of their most uniquely valuable features. From the very beginning, each NIF questionnaire has always asked questions designed to capture which policy trade-offs citizens can and cannot accept. For example, a recent NIF questionnaire asked whether “Congress should raise the age of eligibility for Medicare to 67, EVEN IF that means seniors under 67 would have to get health insurance on their own or from an employer.”

Standard public opinion surveys do not usually ask questions that force citizens to reckon with the negative aspects of even their most preferred courses of action. NIF questionnaires have always done this and they are richer for it, because questions like this reveal what the public will do when push comes to shove. As someone who has both completed an NIF questionnaire and been in the room when others have done so, I know that participants usually note how difficult the questions are. In standard survey research, complaints about difficult questions are a glaring red flag and usually indicate that the wording of the question is unclear or confusing. However, in the NIF context, comments like this about the “even if” questions are a clear sign that participants are really thinking through an issue and grappling with all its complexities.

In a larger sense, the information that NIF questionnaires capture differs from that of standard surveys, even on the same topic. Standard surveys are generally administered to a randomly selected collection of individuals so the results will be representative of some larger population of interest. By contrast, those who complete NIF questionnaires are not randomly selected and, as a result, the opinions gathered from them are not necessarily representative of the larger population. For some, this lack of representativeness is a cause to dismiss information garnered from NIF questionnaires. However, NIF questionnaires are unrepresentative in the best possible sense. While they cannot tell us how the population as a whole feels about an issue, NIF questionnaires can tell us a great deal about how a concerned and informed subset of the population feels about an issue after deliberating with a group of their peers. NIF participants complete questionnaires after having the chance to think about, read about, and deliberate together about an issue. In this sense, NIF questionnaires provide a picture of public thinking that is truly public and truly thoughtful.

…

After several years of work and the help of an army of Ohio State University research assistants, we are now on the cusp of having a fully functional digital archive of all things NIF. This archive will contain data from the questionnaires described above, as well as copies of forum recordings, starter tapes, issue guides, and much more. ]

What questions can we ask of this information to help us better understand how issues have been named and framed for public deliberation? Moreover, what can the stories revealed by the NIF questionnaires tell us about the nature of public judgment on the shared problems we all face?

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn.

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Felts_2015.pdf

The Greatest History Lessons Are Those We Have Yet to Learn

Posted on January 19, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The article written by Jessica DeBruin, The Greatest History Lessons Are Those We Have Yet to Learn, was published August 2015 on Everyday Democracy‘s site. DeBruin shares some of her history, how it shaped her identity, and explores how our identities play out in our conversations and realities. She emphasizes the importance genuinely listening and participating in conversations where we explore the intersections of our own privilege and oppression. Below is an excerpt from the article and read it in full on Everyday Democracy’s site here.

From the article…

…There is a notion of being “all talk.” In truth, many actions must be taken to move us forward as a society. Humanity exists on the threads of a tapestry being woven, ever in motion. We may skip a stitch occasionally, or unravel bits of progress, but it is only through collaboration that we may continue. No one thread is more vital to the weaving. Likewise, there are many ways to take action. Some seek political recourse, some take to the streets, some create art, some tell stories, and we all talk.

In this arena I have found a useful application for the intersection of my privilege and my experience as a woman of color. At my core I am a storyteller, and that is just what I do. I can take all my experiences, all the confusion and micro-aggressions, and form them into something meaningful. Over the years I have seen subtle shifts in the attitudes of some of my white friends regarding race and, while I certainly do not take credit for the shift, I know that maintaining a relationship in which we talk about the hard stuff contributes to forming a habit of critical thinking.

I recall a conversation I had recently with a white, straight, cismale coworker of mine. In many ways he has what might be considered the trifecta of social privilege. And yet his nose crinkled in discomfort at the word. He quite earnestly expressed that he didn’t feel this had ever given him any undue advantage in life.

So we chatted about that.

I shared my perspective that privilege is not always about what is given to you, but often about what is not taken from you. Things like the ability to walk safely in public seem like something that should be a given in the United States in 2015, and yet a significant portion of the population does not take that privilege for granted.

When we finished our conversation he thanked me. He had never thought to see the world that way, frankly because he had never had to. As a queer, multi-ethnic woman I have no choice but to consider these things.

We both learned from each other: He left the conversation with insight into a different way of existing in the world. I left it with a better understanding of the ways in which our own privilege is truly a blind spot.

Conversations like these are vital to moving ideas forward.

In critically examining our place in the world and speaking truthfully about our experiences, we make small shifts to guide the direction of our broader cultural discourse. It starts with listening, really listening; the kind of listening that sends a prickle up your spine. Any democracy must be based first on our ability to listen, and then on the gumption to speak with honesty.

Yes, it will be uncomfortable. No individual is entirely privileged or oppressed, and learning your own privilege can be unnerving.

In school we learn that we earn what we have. The rags to riches mythology of extreme economic and social mobility has become a basic tenant of American society. Learning that hard work is not always enough for those who lack privilege can unsettle our sense of self. We want to believe that if and when we have good things it is because we have earned them. But this discomfort is productive if we can allow ourselves to sit with it. Indeed if we are not prepared to dismantle our assumptions about our place in the world, we have not truly learned our instrument.

Human beings possess one of the greatest privileges of all – the ability to intricately and meaningfully exchange ideas. This exchange of ideas has been essential to our advancement as a species. Through everyday conversations I have learned to appreciate the world from multiple perspectives, and I believe that has advanced me as an individual. It has helped me find the small actions I can take in my life to make this the kind of world I can be proud to be a part of.

The greatest history lessons I have ever learned are the testimony of so many remarkable individuals, each with their own set of experiences. The greatest history lessons are those I have yet to learn.

About Jessica DeBruin
Jessica is a writer and actress living in Los Angeles, dedicated to creating feminist, queer-inclusive art and media. Follow on Twitter: @JessicaLaVerdad

Resource Link: http://everyday-democracy.org/news/greatest-history-lessons-are-those-we-have-yet-learn

What’s Race Got to Do with It? (Video)

Posted on January 18, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The 49-minute video, What’s Race Got to Do with It?, published by California Newsreel in 2006, shows the journey of a diverse group of 16 UC Berkeley students who participated in a semester-long intergroup dialogue program sponsored by University of California, Berkeley Ethnic Studies Department and Stiles Hall. The students were part of the class, “FACING YOU, FACING ME: Race, Class & Gender Among UCB Student Leaders”, led by David Stark and co-facilitator, Jerlena Griffin-Destaco. An online facilitator’s guide is available on PDF here.

Below is a six minute clip from the video:

More about the film…
This excerpt comes from the film’s site, whatsrace.org.

More than 40 years after the Civil Rights Movement, America faces the paradox of being a nation “with racism, but without racists,” as sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has put it. Racial inequality is harder to recognize in a world where it no longer announces itself with white-only signs. Meanwhile, the idea of “colorblindness” conveniently allows us to condemn prejudice and bigotry while ignoring how racism contributes to the vast disparities that persist right under our noses.

Not surprisingly, many of today’s students, born in the post-Civil Rights era, don’t seek out opportunities to engage in diversity programs and interracial dialogue. They feel they’ve heard it all before or wonder why we’re still talking about a problem that ended a long time ago. More often than not in these discussions, structural racism is ignored and multiculturalism gets confused with equality. Even many students of color don’t realize how underlying conditions impact opportunity.

Too few resources exist to help young people scrutinize their own assumptions, beliefs and attitudes about race – using language they understand, spoken by their peers. At a time when campuses are struggling to close achievement gaps, foster inclusion, and promote diversity – while equity initiatives across the country are under attack – we responded to the demand for a new tool that is up to date and speaks directly to students’ doubts and concerns in today’s post-Civil Rights world.

What’s Race Got to Do with It? chronicles the journey of a diverse group of students participating in a 15-week intergroup dialogue program at U.C. Berkeley. As the students share personal stories, debate hot topics, and confront one another about the role race plays in their lives, they make discoveries about their preconceived ideas and assumptions, and in so doing, help us begin to disentangle our own. The film goes beyond identity politics, celebratory history and guilt trips to help viewers “see through” achievement myths and create a safe space for open, honest exchange, particularly within educational environments.

In some ways, What’s Race Got to Do with It? is a “sequel” to our earlier release Skin Deep, because it highlights an interracial dialogue and provides a window into the different attitudes and assumptions that young people hold about race and equality.However, it goes further by highlighting the unique challenges and obstacles that students from disadvantaged backgrounds face compared to their peers (e.g., isolation, discomfort, underrepresentation, lack of encouragement and support, financial and emotional stress, societal disparities) and helping us understand the structural and institutional conditions underlying those difficulties.

In addition, the film focuses not just on what’s being said but also what’s not being discussed openly – the underlying fears, frustration, ignorance and confusion that render unproductive so many of our conversations about racism. The film spotlights the stories young people use to rationalize (to themselves and others) the persistence of racial disparities as well as the rhetorical strategies and often-loaded language they employ to evade, resist or deflect ideas that are unsettling. And it reveals just how different our experiences and perceptions can be of the world we ostensibly share – how something that is painfully obvious to one person can be invisible to another.

What’s Race Got to Do with It? does not attempt to replicate the experience of the class nor does it supply easy answers or address the concerns of every group. What it does provide is a starting point for a deeper, more productive level of conversation – one grounded in real-life issues and experiences. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the students on screen, their stories help get the “high stakes” topics out on the table, in a manner accessible to individuals who have never thought much about race as well as long-time activists. Perhaps most importantly, the film challenges each of us to reflect on existing disparities and the responsibility we all share – individually and institutionally – to create more equitable conditions for everyone.

For more information about the UC Berkeley class or to learn how to start your own intergroup dialogue program, contact David Stark at 510-841-6010 or info[at]stileshall[dot]org.

Resource Link: www.whatsrace.org/pages/film.htm

The Issue Guide and the Issue Forum: Political Inventions

Posted on January 14, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

This three-page article, The Issue Guide and the Issue Forum: Political Inventions, by Brad Rourke was published in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter, “Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research” in the fall of 2015. In the article, Rourke discusses the relationship between Kettering’s research and the National Issues Forums; how the Foundation’s research lead to the creation of NIFI’s issue guides, which were put into practice within the forums. What emerged was a better understanding of how individuals wrestled with their most wicked problems on the community level, and the realization that public deliberation is necessary for true democracy. Below is an excerpt from the article and you can download the full Connections newsletter for free on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

The way issues typically get presented on a policy level are manifestly different from how citizens see those same issues. Citizens name issues differently, and these re-namings give rise to different options for action—re-framings. For example, citizens may not think about an “achievement gap” that professional educators must address, but may instead worry about why different kids seem to get different results for reasons that don’t seem fair. The latter formulation of the problem is one in which citizens may see themselves having a role. The options for addressing the problem will be different and are likely to contain much more that can be done on the level of community as opposed to institutionally. And so a barber may think to provide haircuts free of charge to children, if they will read aloud while he cuts. A community-level institution thus can be seen as one of the many actors that can productively be involved in the shared enterprise of educating local young people.

Kettering research increasingly shows that citizens see issues in terms of things that are deeply valuable to them and that wicked problems involve tensions The Issue Guide and the Issue Forum: Political Inventions between these things. Evolution has wired humans to seek security, for instance, and has also wired them to seek freedom to act. The more of one that we pursue, the less we have of the other. An effective issue framework will make these tensions clear.

This way of framing issues is sometimes (often) at odds with the way these same issues are framed in policy discourse. It is disruptive. This can pose difficulties when it comes time to demonstrate the value of public deliberation to policymakers. Kettering is experimenting with various ways of doing this as a part of its A Public Voice initiatives, an experiment to see how we might productively involve policymakers in developing issue frameworks that are rooted in public research and conducive to public deliberation.

Another, newer experiment with issue guides is just beginning. NIF issue guides are national in scope and, even though they are intended for use in communities, there can be problems getting community-based traction to hold forums. The facts on the ground or the potential actors may be slightly different. Or there may be other differences between how an issue looks locally and how it might look on a more national basis. We are beginning to experiment with changes in how we present issue guides to make them more easily “customizable” to local communities while at the same time maintaining the aspects that make them useful as self-starters

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn.

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Rourke_2015.pdf

The Issue Guide and the Issue Forum: Political Inventions (Connections 2015)

Posted on January 14, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

From the article…

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn.

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Rourke_2015.pdf

Leadership Compass Activity

Posted on January 12, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

This five-page activity from Everyday Democracy titled, Leadership Compass Activity, was published January 2015 and helps to determine the leadership styles of participants within an action group. The activity is meant to be done with an organizing or action group on its first or second meeting.

The group individually answers 27 questions to determine whether their leadership style is that of a: Nurturer, Teacher, Mobilizer, or Visionary. After finding out your personal leadership style, the group breaks into smaller groups to discuss positive aspects of their leadership style. The group then comes back together to discuss how to balance the group’s leadership style variety and how to work with challenges that may arise. The activity is available for free download on Everyday Democracy’s site here.

From Everyday Democracy

This is a team building activity for an organizing coalition or action teams to use during their first or second meeting.

Teamwork begins with self-awareness and awareness of other people’s leadership styles. We can’t be good at everything so we need to bring together people with different styles and talents. This worksheet will help you and your team figure out how you can work collaboratively across leadership styles

We have learned that some of the key components to ensuring racially-equitable systemic change include building relationships, establishing a diverse coalition, having trained peer facilitators during dialogues, building on assets, and linking actions to individual, community, and policy change. We provide online tools and in-person trainings on organizing, racial equity, facilitation, communications, and action planning. We act as a catalyst and coach for communities, knowing that the people of each community are best suited to carry out and sustain the work that will make a difference. The communities we serve are the focal point of our work. Our ultimate aim is to help create communities that value everyone’s voice and work for everyone, and to help create a strong national democracy that upholds these principles.

Follow on Twitter: @EvDem

Resource Link: http://everyday-democracy.org/resources/leadership-compass-activity

How Kettering Discovered Democracy (Connections 2015)

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The four-page article, How Kettering Discovered Democracy by David Mathews, was published late Fall of 2015 in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter, “Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research”. The article gives highlights of what Kettering has learned since the first issue of Connections in 1987 and how KF continues to evolve research practices to improve democracy.

In the article, Mathews shares how Kettering research pulled together many different concepts and ultimately, became unified by the concept of democracy. The alliance between Kettering and National Issues Forums created the opportunity to put KF’s research into practice and in turn, how NIF forums sharpened KF’s research to focus on a citizen-centered view of democracy. Below is an excerpt from the article. Connections 2015 is available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

Seeing democracy as a system in which the people collectively generate the power to shape their future has given the foundation a unifying concept for all of its research. We began to look at everything from the perspective of citizens and the work they need to do in order for democracy to realize its full potential. What we learned by using this perspective has become a distinctive characteristic of the foundation’s research. The litmus tests for Kettering have been (1) whether the research would respond to citizens who feel pushed to the political sidelines and aren’t sure how to make a difference, (2) whether it would be useful to communities that can’t solve their most wicked problems without the work only citizens could do, and (3) whether it would help institutions that are losing the confidence of citizens even as they struggle to reengage them.

This citizen-centered view of democracy pointed the way to a host of new studies and significantly shaped the way the foundation goes about its research, particularly the way the foundation relates to the networks that have developed around major areas of research. In fact, the foundation’s understanding of democracy helped Kettering recognize the value of networks.

…

For Kettering, the opportunities for collaboration are in networks of organizations that are interested in learning better ways to do their work. We all should learn from others, but no one can learn for someone else. In these networks, no one is dependent on others for answers; the relationships are based on a shared struggle to know more in order to be able to do more. As such, no one is at the center of these networks, like a hub of a wheel with all of the spokes attached. Communications flow in such a way that anybody can reach anybody else as directly as possible; that is, without having to go through someone else.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn.

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Mathews_2015.pdf

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Category Archives: All Resources

From Public Policy Institutes to Centers for Public Life: Transforming People and Communities (Connections 2015)

Collaborative Communication Processes and Decision Making in Organizations

A Treasure Chest About to Open (Connection 2015)

The Issue Guide and the Issue Forum: Political Inventions

The Issue Guide and the Issue Forum: Political Inventions (Connections 2015)

Leadership Compass Activity

How Kettering Discovered Democracy (Connections 2015)