Category Archives: All Resources

Reforestation of Parks in Seattle

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This four-page case study (2014) from The Intersector Project outlines how the City of Seattle used cross-sector collaboration to establish the Green Seattle Partnership to  help reforest the city parks in Seattle, Washington.

From the Intersector Project

In 1994 the City of Seattle and the Parks Department began to notice something wrong with trees in city parks. Research found that Seattle’s 2,500 acres of forested city parks were at risk from invasive plants such as English Ivy, Himalayan blackberry and bindweed. In 2004, experts projected that within 20 years about 70 percent of Seattle’s forested parkland trees would be dead. Previously, park-goers removed invasive species on their own, while non-profit and government organizations likewise worked independently. Rather than helping the problem, however, these piecemeal efforts placed an undue strain on the city’s existing resources. In order to save the parks, a shared effort between community members, experts in forestry, and the departments that held park resources was necessary. In 2004, the Green Seattle Partnership was formed, with the aim of arming citizens to help the city’s trees in partnership with the Department of Parks, Public Utilities and the Office of Sustainability and Environment. Under the leadership of Mark Mead, Senior Urban Forester, the Partnership created a 20-year strategic plan to sustain Seattle’s forested parks. Green Seattle Partnership is now the largest urban forest restoration project in the country. Mark’s use of agents across all sectors connected to the issue, and mobilizing community members to volunteer 500,000 hours by 2013 to the reforestation program, have put the Green Seattle Partnership in place to achieve their goal of planting 500,000 new trees by 2025.

IP_Seattle

“What really energized me and brought me into the fold of doing this work was in the very early days…working with the community members, seeing their enthusiasm, their drive, and their commitment to making their community a better place.”– Mark Mead, Senior Urban Forester

This case study, authored by The Intersector Project, tells the story of this initiative.

More about The Intersector ProjectThe Intersector Project
The Intersector Project is a New York-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that seeks to empower practitioners in the government, business, and non-profit sectors to collaborate to solve problems that cannot be solved by one sector alone. We provide free, publicly available resources for practitioners from every sector to implement collaborative solutions to complex problems. We take forward several years of research in collaborative governance done at the Center for Business and Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School and expand on that research to create practical, accessible resources for practitioners.

Follow on Twitter @theintersector.

Resource Link: http://intersector.com/case/greenseattle_washington/ (Download the case study here.)

This resource was submitted by Neil Britto, the Executive Director at The Intersector Project via the Add-a-Resource form.

Participatory Practices in Organizations

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This 17-page review article, Participatory Practices in Organizations by Caroline Lee was published 2015 in Sociology Compass, an online journal aimed at reviewing state-of-the-art research for a broad audience of undergraduates, researchers, and those who want to stay posted on developments in particular fields.

The piece is a relatively quick overview and digest of a range of historic and current research on participation (not just deliberation, but much that is relevant to it) in a variety of different types of organizations. It might be useful for NCDD members seeking a quick literature review, students looking for gaps in existing research, or anyone interested in how organizational scholars view the evolution of participatory practices over the last century.

From the Abstract…

The literature on participatory practices in organizations has been less coherent and more limited to subspecialties than the literature on bureaucracy in organizations – despite a number of celebrated studies of participation in 20th century American sociology. Due to the practical nature of participatory reforms and the ambiguity of participation as a concept, attempts to review participatory knowledge have a tendency to focus on refining definitions and clarifying frameworks within subfields.

This article instead provides a broad thematic overview of three different types of research on participation in organizations, all critical to an understanding of today’s dramatic expansion of participatory practices across a variety of organizations. Classic research studied participation as dynamic and central to organizational legitimacy. Institutional design research has focused on participation as a stand-alone governance reform with promising empowerment potential, but mixed results in domains such as health care, environmental politics, and urban planning. Finally, recent research seeks to place participatory practices in the context of shifting relationships between authority, voice, and inequality in the contemporary era. The article concludes with suggestions for building on all three categories of research by exploring what is old and new in the 21st century’s changing participatory landscape.

Download the article here.

About the Author
Caroline W. Lee is Associate Professor of Sociology at Lafayette College. Her research explores the intersection of social movements, business, and democracy in American organizations. Her book Do-It-Yourself Democracy: The Rise of the Public Engagement Industry was published in 2015 by Oxford University Press. Her co-edited volume with Michael McQuarrie and Edward Walker, Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemmas of the New Public Participation, was published in 2015 by NYU Press.

Resource Link: http://sites.lafayette.edu/leecw/publications/

This resource was submitted by Caroline Lee, Associate Professor of Sociology at Lafayette College, via the Add-a-Resource form.

Common Ground for Action

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Common Ground for Action is an online platform for deliberation sponsored by the Kettering Foundation starting in 2013, who partnered with Conteneo, a creator of serious decision-making games, to co-develop the forum. Kettering and Conteneo collaborated from scratch to create a unique online forum that engaged participants and produced an authentic deliberation space, which was then tested through the National Issues Forums (NIF) network.

NIFI_Common GroundFrom NIFI…

Common Ground for Action forums are the online version of traditional in-person National Issues Forums. Common Ground for Action is a simple but sophisticated platform that runs in any browser—no technical mumbo jumbo!

In CGA, small groups are able to learn more about the tensions in an issue, examine options for dealing with the problem, weigh tradeoffs, and find common ground just like in in-person National Issues Forums, but with visuals that let you actually see the shape of your conversation as it evolves.

From Kettering…

The online forum has five basic areas:

1. Lobby: Participants get introduced to the platform, other participants, moderator
2. Forum Home: Participants get introduced to the issue, other participants’ personal stakes
3. Baseline: Participants register a personal baseline with regard to the actions
4. Examination of Options: for each option, participants do:
* a personal sense-making and evaluation of the actions and tradeoffs within an option
* then discuss the option similarly to an in-person forum
5. Common Ground Reflection: Participants reflect upon common ground from across the options and see the difference their deliberation has made.

Check out this short video about how to participate in Common Ground for Action here.

More about 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. Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn.

More about the National Issues Forums Institute
The institute’s central activity is to publish and distribute an ongoing series of Issue Guides and videos that prepare you for thoughtful discussion of many of today’s thorniest problems. Moderators and conveners find our resources indispensable in organizing, leading and advertising their forums for public deliberation. We also provide guidelines for those who wish to frame their own issues. To keep the network and policymakers current, we publish reports about forum lesson plans, activities, and outcomes so groups can learn from one another. Follow on Twitter: @NIForums.

More about Conteneo
Our team of scientists, academics and practitioners use the science of serious games to unlock  engagement for our clients. Rooted in a range of disciplines (from cognitive science and evolutionary psychology to game theory), our proprietary software and services enable leading organizations to quickly and easily adapt to market and operational changes–on any scale. Follow on Twitter: @ConteneoInc

Resource Link: www.nifi.org/en/common-ground-action

Creating an Environment for Healthy Lifestyles in Brownsville

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This four-page case study (2014) from The Intersector Project outlines how the University of Texas School of Public Health used cross-sector collaboration with local clinicians and the City Health Department to create opportunities for healthier lifestyles in Brownsville, Texas.

From the Intersector Project

In 2001, the University of Texas School of Public Health (UTSPH) Brownsville campus began clinical research to identify and quantify what health risks existed in Brownsville. They found 80 percent of residents were either obese or overweight, one in three were diabetic (50 percent unknowingly), and 70 percent of residents had no healthcare coverage. After initiating a community media campaign called Tu Salud Si Cuenta, UTSPH formed a Community Advisory Board (CAB) in order to speak about the findings and promote change in the Brownsville community. They involved local clinicians, including Dr. Rose Zavaletta Gowen, an Obstetrician Gynecologist, to inform clinicians and encourage them to get involved. After agreeing actions needed to be taken, a team of UTSPH, the City Health Department, a local community health clinic Su Clinica, and Rose organized and designed a farmers’ market, with the goal of making fresh fruits and vegetables accessible and affordable to every income level in the city. The Brownsville Farmers’ Market opened in 2006 followed by an integrated network of initiatives including The Challenge, an annual weight loss event; CycloBia, an open streets program; policy changes including Sidewalk ordinance, Safe Passing ordinance, Complete Streets Resolution, and Smoking ban ordinance; and a Master Bike and Hike Plan aimed at providing a trail within one half mile of every residence in the city. The CAB, which today includes over 200 members, is actively involved in all of these programs in a variety of capacities to promote a healthier Brownsville.

IP_Brownsville“For cross-sector collaboration you might need to talk in terms that you’re not necessarily familiar with, but you have to do your research in order to find those connections to other areas and harness those partners. That is how we were able to make our projects work with very little funding and no line item in the city budget for what we were doing.”— Dr. Rose Zavaletta Gowen, Brownsville City Commissioner

This case study, authored by The Intersector Project, tells the story of this initiative.

More about The Intersector ProjectThe Intersector Project
The Intersector Project is a New York-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that seeks to empower practitioners in the government, business, and non-profit sectors to collaborate to solve problems that cannot be solved by one sector alone. We provide free, publicly available resources for practitioners from every sector to implement collaborative solutions to complex problems. We take forward several years of research in collaborative governance done at the Center for Business and Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School and expand on that research to create practical, accessible resources for practitioners.

Follow on Twitter: @theintersector.

Resource Link: http://intersector.com/case/health_brownsville/ (Download the case study PDF here.)

This resource was submitted by Neil Britto, the Executive Director at The Intersector Project via the Add-a-Resource form.

Activity to Explore the Impact of Skin Color

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ED_Activity_Skin ColorEveryday Democracy released this activity to show how participants’ may have different experiences based on their skin color. The goal is to prompt thinking about the different experiences because of skin color and provide an opportunity for dialogue. Part One is a true/false skin color survey and Part Two is a dialogue prompt about privilege.

From the intro…

This activity is meant to help us go deeper in our discussion about race. It may make some people uncomfortable and some may think this is contrived. Remember, one of the goals is to put the issues some people in our community are thinking about on the table. After the activity, we will discuss your reactions, thoughts on the issue, and how it impacts our community.

More about Everyday Democracy 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.

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/activity-explore-impact-skin-color (Available for download)

Intersector Toolkit: Tools for Cross-Sector Collaboration

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This 31-page Toolkit (2014) is the cornerstone of The Intersector Project’s work. It provides practical knowledge for practitioners in every sector to implement their own intersector initiatives. At The Intersector Project, we think of a toolkit as a resource that provides actionable guidance on how to solve a problem. Toolkits can be broad or narrow in focus, providing general guidance or sector-, industry-, or issue- specific guidance.

The Intersector Project_ToolkitIn a cross-sector context, toolkits assist practitioners in navigating the differences in languages, cultures, and work practices that exist across sectors, differences that can prove challenging to align when pursuing shared goals in a consensus-oriented environment. Our Toolkit is designed to be process-specific, rather than issue- or sector-specific because we believe there are common elements to all successful cross-sector collaborations and because we want to ensure that our Toolkit is accessible to practitioners working on a broad range of problems in varying types of collaborations.

Our Toolkit is composed of 17 tools organized into four stages of Diagnosis, Design, Implementation, and Assessment. It has been crafted as a flexible handbook that guides practitioners’ thinking on when and how to implement a specific tool, regardless of the practitioners’ sector affiliations. Each tool describes an action that practitioners can take together to help forge successful collaborations. These tools are not static. We encourage practitioners to select the tools that are most appropriate for their project stage and partnership structure, and to use them repeatedly at different stages when needed.

To date, this resource is informed by our library of case studies and correlating leadership interviews, literature reviews that address the theories and practices that characterize cross-sector collaboration, and in-depth analysis of similar guiding resources in the fields of collective impact, public-private partnerships, and other collaborative frameworks.

We consider this Toolkit a living document, which we are continually improving based on practitioner feedback. If you have suggestions on how to further enhance this resource, please share them with us at research[at]intersector[dot]com.

More about The Intersector ProjectThe Intersector Project
The Intersector Project is a New York-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that seeks to empower practitioners in the government, business, and non-profit sectors to collaborate to solve problems that cannot be solved by one sector alone. We provide free, publicly available resources for practitioners from every sector to implement collaborative solutions to complex problems. We take forward several years of research in collaborative governance done at the Center for Business and Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School and expand on that research to create practical, accessible resources for practitioners. Follow on Twitter @theintersector.

Resource Link: http://intersector.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/The-Intersector-Project-Toolkit.pdf

This resource was submitted by Neil Britto, the Executive Director at The Intersector Project via the Add-a-Resource form.