Category Archives: collaborative action

New Toolkit Streamlines PB Evaluation in N. America

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We were excited to learn recently that Public Agenda and the Participatory Budgeting Project – two of our prominent NCDD member organizations – have released a new participatory budgeting evaluation toolkit in collaboration with the North American PB Research Board. The toolkit will help municipalities across the continent document the impacts and effectiveness of their local PB efforts. We encourage you read more about it in the Public Agenda article below or find the original here.

Evaluation Matters: A New Toolkit for Assessing Participatory Budgeting

PublicAgenda-logoFor those of us exploring ways to deepen and expand public participation in democracy, we know how essential evaluation is to our cause. Both government officials and the public have limited time, energy and resources. And furthermore, many may already be disillusioned by current and past efforts to include the public in decision making.

We need to be able to demonstrate to officials, the public, interested funders, community partners, and others that their investment in new public engagement methods will be worth it. Will more people participate, particularly those who have been historically less civically engaged? Will the new form of engagement lead to better decisions and policies that residents support? Will the public feel like their voices have been heard, and will they come to understand the complexities and trade-offs inherent in many policy decisions? Will the method build trust among officials and the public and open pathways for collaboration among community-based organizations and the government?

At the same time, we as public engagement practitioners are very busy. Evaluation can be time consuming and complicated, especially when we’re attempting to measure something amorphous like deeper public participation. As such, evaluation too often gets lost among everything else we’re doing.

For these and other reasons, we are particularly excited about one of our current projects: an initiative to help make it easier for practitioners to evaluate participatory budgeting efforts.

Communities across the country are experimenting with participatory budgeting (PB for short), which is one potential avenue for deeper public participation and engagement. Through PB, local residents get to decide how their community will spend a set amount of public money. Many of these communities, including some in New York, Chicago, Long Beach, CA and Dieppe, in New Brunswick, Canada, are also trying to track and measure how PB is affecting residents, officials, and neighborhoods.

Community members evaluating PB often have questions that are locally unique and relevant. At the same time, because many PB processes across the U.S. and Canada follow a similar structure, these evaluators are also often looking to answer common questions shared by communities.

To help foster collaboration among evaluators and facilitate shared learning on these questions, we have been working since the start of 2015 to support and coordinate local evaluation work. Ultimately, we hope that this will also lead to a better understanding of the successes and challenges of the PB movement as a whole.

One of our first steps has been to develop a toolkit for those tasked with evaluating PB in their communities. We developed the toolkit in concert with the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), the North American PB Research Board and local evaluators from numerous PB sites across the U.S. and Canada.

The toolkit includes key metrics – 15 in all – for capturing important elements of each local PB process specifically and the movement in North America generally. These metrics describe the way PB could impact things like civic life, equity, and governance.

To help ease the evaluation process and data collection, these metrics are paired with survey instruments that address the 15 key metrics. Evaluators can customize these survey instruments and use as needed. We also developed a questionnaire for evaluators that will help us and local evaluators to collect and share comparable data about PB processes across North America and over time.

The toolkit also includes a timeline to help evaluators best determine where and how to undertake PB evaluation at different stages of the PB process.

Download the Toolkit Here

While we developed the metrics and survey instruments for participatory budgeting, the underlying concepts are applicable to evaluating other forms of public engagement, like deliberative meetings, community conversations, and citizen juries.

We hope these tools will help those working on participatory budgeting in their communities by taking some of the guesswork out of measurement and making time for other things like constituent outreach and engagement. If you’re interested in hearing more about evaluation and our work with PB researchers, you can join our listserv for the participatory budgeting community by sending an email here.

Have you voted in a PB process and want to get more involved? Or are you curious about PB and looking to introduce it to your community? The website and people of Participatory Budgeting Project are a great resource for those who are new to PB and want to know more. Introduce yourself to the Participatory Budgeting Project.

You can find the original version of this Public Agenda blog post at
www.publicagenda.org/blogs/evaluation-matters-a-new-toolkit-for-participatory-budgeting#sthash.SQWKGkAR.dpuf.

Centering the “Cathedral View” of D&D’s Work

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We are pleased to share this thoughtful piece by NCDD member Beth Tener of New Directions Collaborative. She explores some deep questions about how we can keep the bigger picture of the work we do in focus when it may start to lose its luster. We appreciate Beth’s call to keep an eye on what we are building together as a field – stronger relationships, communities, and democracy – and we encourage you to read her piece below or find the original here.

The Meaning in Meetings

A few weeks ago, in the small talk before a meeting started, I was talking with a woman about our respective work. In reference to my work as a facilitator she said, “ugh, I couldn’t stand all those meetings!” I understand her reaction, particularly if you are used to the rather boring and tedious way many traditional meetings are run.

It made me think of the story of the stonecutters — all three doing the same job, one irritated and bored who saw his job as hammering rock, the second was a bit more motivated seeing how his stone cutting work was one part of creating a wall, while the third, who was most inspired, said “I’m building a cathedral!” The same work, imbued with a larger sense of purpose and meaning, created an inspired attitude to the work.

For me, the meaning in meetings is about building a field of collaboration and common purpose among people whose work is similar yet fragmented. Conversations are what weave together and connect the fragmented parts. The fruits of the labor are the magic moments when ‘emergence’ happens, when all the pieces come together and a new idea emerges out of this unique combination of people and perspectives. It takes good design to lay the foundation for this to happen, such as framing open strategic questions and creating a safe inviting environment for these kinds of cross-fertilizing conversations and good thinking to happen. Like a gardener who invests in good soil, it is a thrill to see a healthy seedling emerge.

The other kind of magic moments I love are when people’s varied perspectives and expertise combine and build on each other, almost like improvisational jazz. It happened in a recent meeting with New Hampshire Farm to School, as we discussed which communities around the state might be good candidates to evolve to the next level of “Farm to School 2.0.” In a short time we got perspectives from public health, current farm to school programs, educational curriculum, local farms and food businesses, hospitals that might support this work, and how this relates to other local food system work. You could see how all of us were gaining a fuller sense of the current situation from multiple related dimensions and starting to feel the potential if all these elements could work in an aligned way.

CathedralAnother way I see meetings in a “cathedral building” view, is that the process of the work (i.e., the quality of the conversations… the way we treat each other) is itself creating the world we want to see. I find it meaningful to be part of a global community of innovators (e.g., through Art of Hosting and NCDD) who are working to “rehumanize” and bring life back to our organizations and institutions, creating conditions for each person to experience fully contributing and working together effectively. As we create new ways of meeting that enable people to show up not just in their role or professional titles, but as full human beings, the lifeblood of authentic communication, connection, and creativity can flow again.

After working with many organizations, across business, government, and the non-profit sector, I have seen how traditional meeting structures and organizational cultures can lead to “co-stupidity” as Tom Atlee of the Co-Intelligence Institute says. And like him, I am inspired by the quest to see how we can come together and achieve “co-intelligence,” which involves “diverse people working really well together in ways that make things better from a bigger picture perspective.”

I recommend this video blog by Tim Merry, who names the price of what we take as normal ways of working, saying: “it is unacceptable to me that we create organizational structures and systems that de-humanize us and cause emotional and psychological damage to people. This over professionalism of our work places undermines our capacity to connect authentically and access different perspectives which would enable us to overcome some of our most pressing a seemingly intractable problems.” He speaks of the need for structures that support the quality of relationships among people so that we can get things done in ways that don’t fragment us, undermine our confidence, or undermine our sense of being in relationship.

Meeting structures, i.e., how we design and host conversations, are a key vehicle for making things better from a bigger picture perspective, for each of us as fulfilled people, and for our communities and organizations.

You can find the original version of this Beth Tener piece at www.ndcollaborative.com/blog/item/meaning.

The Fundamentals of Policy Crowdsourcing

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The 22-page research paper, The Fundamentals of Policy Crowdsourcing (2015), was published by John Prpic, Araz Taetihagh, and James Melton, and can be found via the Davenport Institute on their Gov 2.0 Watch blog. This paper is one of the first of its kind to provide research that dives deep into how crowdsourcing is being utilized for policymaking. Read the abstract below and download the paper here.

From the abstract…

What is the state of the research on crowdsourcing for policymaking? This article begins to answer this question by collecting, categorizing, and situating an extensive body of the extant research investigating policy crowdsourcing, within a new framework built on fundamental typologies from each field. We first define seven universal characteristics of the three general crowdsourcing techniques (virtual labor markets, tournament crowdsourcing, open collaboration), to examine the relative tradeoffs of each modality. We then compare these three types of crowdsourcing to the different stages of the policy cycle, in order to situate the literature spanning both domains. We finally discuss research trends in crowdsourcing for public policy and highlight the research gaps and overlaps in the literature.

Find the full paper here.

About the Davenport InstituteDavenport_Institute
Since our founding as a multi-partisan and non-profit organization in 2005, The Davenport Institute (formerly Common Sense California) has worked to engage the citizens of this state in the policy decisions that affect our everyday lives. It is our firm belief that, in today’s world of easy access to information, and easy connectivity to others, California’s municipal and education leaders are seeking ways to involve the residents of their communities in the important issues they confront. Done legitimately, this new kind of leadership produces better, more creative policy solutions and better, more engaged citizens committed to the hard work of self-governance.

Resource Link: http://gov20watch.pepperdine.edu/2015/08/research-policy-crowdsourcing/

New Research on Making Policy through Crowdsourcing

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For those interested in democratizing more of the policymaking process, check out this recent post below from NCDD organizational member Davenport Institute and their Gov 2.0 Watch blog that highlights recent research into policy crowdsourcing. You can read the post below or find the original here.

DavenportInst-logo

Research: Policy Crowdsourcing

For anyone really interested in diving deep into the question of crowdsourcing for public policy, various techniques and available research regarding their relative benefits, challenges, and effectiveness, a recent paper by John Prpic of the Lulea University of Technology (Sweden), Araz Taeihagh of the Singapore Management University, and James Melton of the Michigan University, College of Business Administration may be right up your alley.

From the abstract:

What is the state of the research on crowdsourcing for policymaking? This article begins to answer this question by collecting, categorizing, and situating an extensive body of the extant research investigating policy crowdsourcing, within a new framework built on fundamental typologies from each field. We first define seven universal characteristics of the three general crowdsourcing techniques (virtual labor markets, tournament crowdsourcing, open collaboration), to examine the relative tradeoffs of each modality. We then compare these three types of crowdsourcing to the different stages of the policy cycle, in order to situate the literature spanning both domains. We finally discuss research trends in crowdsourcing for public policy and highlight the research gaps and overlaps in the literature.

You can download the paper here.

You can find the original version of this Gov 2.0 Watch blog post at http://gov20watch.pepperdine.edu/2015/08/research-policy-crowdsourcing.

Don’t Miss Our Tech Tuesday Call with QiqoChat

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As we recently announced, we are hosting another one of our free NCDD Tech Tuesday webinars this Tuesday, September 29th from 12-1pm Eastern/9-10am Pacific, this time featuring Lucas Cioffi and Michael Herman, Tech_Tuesday_Badgethe creators of the phone-based dialogue and video chat tool QiqoChat.

QiqoChat supports a variety of online D&D processes, and it is a great tool for practitioners to be familiar with. But spots for the webinar are filling up, so make sure to register today!

This Tech Tuesday event will be full of great insights on hosting online engagement events as well as a demonstration of the QiqoChat platform’s capabilities. Lucas and Michael have also hosted two online open space conferences for a global audience, and we will discuss the rich lessons they took from those experiences as well.

Join us this Tuesday to learn more about the wide world of open space and online facilitation – you won’t want to miss it!

 

10 Tips for Better Attendance at Engagement Events

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Getting people to show up for public engagement events is a struggle many of us face in this field. But the great team of folks at NCDD member organization Everyday Democracy has years of experience hosting engagement events, and they recently published a list of tips for generating more turnout. We encourage you to read their strategies below or find their original piece here.

Where Did All the People Go? One Reason You’re Getting Low Turnout at Community Engagement Events and 10 Things You Can Do About It
EvDem Logo

If you’ve ever organized or attended a community event like a town hall meeting, a meet and greet with your lawmaker or a public forum and were surprised that not many people showed up, you’re not alone.

It sometimes seems like people are too busy or don’t care enough to take action. That’s probably true for some people. But for others, they’re tired of spending their time in programs or at events where people don’t value their opinion. They don’t want to participate in something that has a low chance of making any difference. No one does.

Unfortunately, traditional methods of engagement have gotten a bad reputation. Once people have participated in a poorly run event or community engagement program, they’re not likely to come back.

When you’re trying to mobilize people to become more engaged in their community, you have to overcome the negative connotation associated with public participation. It sounds like an impossible task to overcome this kind of barrier, but it can be done.

The good news is, when people get a taste of another form of engagement, they’ll want more. That means more people will want to participate again, tell their friends about it, and even volunteer to help coordinate the next program or event. It means you’ll be able to host a program or event that engages the community and see the room filled with people wanting to take part in creating change.

Here 10 ideas for how you can get started:

1. Acknowledge that some people may not have had a positive experience with public participation.

Whether your program or event builds on an existing form of engagement or you’re trying something new, preconceptions may affect your outcome. Now that you’ve recognized this reality, you’ll be able to take steps to build a good reputation for this kind of work.

2. Think like a skeptic when you are creating your messages and marketing materials.

What would you say to someone who has participated in the past and had a bad experience? How is your program or event different? People need to know that your way of engaging the community will be different, so let them know!

3. Invite people who haven’t been invited before or who don’t often attend community events.

The demographics of our communities are changing, and unfortunately the leadership doesn’t always reflect the diversity of our communities. Be intentional about reaching out to different groups in your community, especially ones who are underrepresented. Having those diverse voices, opinions, and ideas will make your event and your community stronger.

4. Start small.

Changing people’s perceptions won’t happen overnight.  Start with small events or activities and work up to a larger event if that’s your goal. Try things like incorporating engagement activities into your workplace or hosting sample dialogues at various existing community programs to start building a positive reputation.

5. Try different ways of engaging the community.

There is no one size fits all for any community or situation. Try different engagement processes or programs and adapt them to fit your unique needs.

6. Focus on quality.

When people participate in a well-run event or program, you’ll start to build a positive reputation for your organization, for the events you host, and for community engagement in general. Participants will recommend your event to their friends the next time around – that’s the best kind of outreach you can have.

7. Show participants that you value their opinion.

The best way to do this is to truly listen to what they have to say and to take action as a result of their participation. For example, if you’re inviting the community to talk about the city budget, perhaps the community can decide how to allocate a certain amount of funds. Even if the community is only able to influence a small percentage of the total budget, if they have a positive experience with the process then it will increase their respect and trust for the difficult decisions city officials have to make. Another option is to ensure that the city mayor is present in the conversations and will truly listen and take into consideration the community’s concerns. Whether or not people have a direct impact on decision-making, they want to know that their time, experiences and opinions are valued.

8. Get creative and make it fun.

People want to spend their free time doing something they enjoy. Think about how you can make your program or event something that people of all ages will want to attend. Food, entertainment, and activities for children are great additions to a more traditional program.

9. Keep track of what you’re learning about your community.

Test different locations, times of day, types of events, length of commitment, online and offline options, etc. Keep note of what works and what doesn’t so you can improve each time you ask the public to participate.

10. Share what you’ve learned with others.

We’ll be able to create stronger communities if we share what we’ve learned with each other.  Write an email, blog post or report with your findings to distribute with your network.

You can find the original version of this Everyday Democracy piece at www.everyday-democracy.org/news/where-did-all-people-go-one-reason-you%E2%80%99re-getting-low-turnout-community-engagement-events-and.

Join the National Deliberation on Health Care Costs

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Three of our long-time NCDD member organizations – the National Issues Forums Institute, Kettering Foundation, and Public Agenda – are teaming up to host a national deliberation around health care issues, and NCDD members are invited to join them! The deliberation will produce a report for policymakers next year that could have a real impact. You can learn more about this collaborative project in the NIFI blog post below or by finding the original post here.

You’re Invited – Join a National Deliberation Project about Healthcare Costs

NIF logoYou are invited to help your group, organization, or community join a national deliberation project about possible directions in healthcare costs. This is a special opportunity to help forum participants be heard in a national report that will be prepared by the Kettering Foundation and Public Agenda, and presented to policymakers in May 2016.

For a limited time, the issue guide titled Health Care: How Can We Reduce Costs and Still Get the Care We Need? is available as a FREE download to use at your forums. Companion materials include: a moderator’s guide (free download), a post-forum questionnaire (free download), a preview of a video overview of the issue (watch online for free), and a full length DVD video overview of the issue (order for $6.00 plus shipping).

Please join this national effort by planning to hold at least one forum; posting your forum information in the Events section of the National Issues Forums (NIF) website; and having each forum participant complete a post-forum questionnaire and then return all questionnaires to the address provided.

Public Agenda is encouraging conveners and moderators to audiotape or videotape their forums (a cell phone recording would be fine) if possible, and to send the recordings to Public Agenda. A transcript will be made and a copy returned to the forum conveners. No participants or exact locations will be named in information derived from recordings. Conveners are encouraged to hold forums prior to March 2016, and to return questionnaires (free to download here) by May 2016. For questions about this project, or about recording or reporting on forums, contact Chloe Rinehart at crinehart@publicagenda.org or 212-686-6610, extension 143.

Thank you for your interest in helping people deliberate about this important issue.

More information about issue guide materials here.

You can find the original version of this NIFI blog post at www.nifi.org/en/groups/youre-invited-join-national-deliberation-project-about-healthcare-costs-free-materials.

Discover the Secrets of Successful Community Engagement

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We are pleased to share the announcement below about a great workshop coming up this October 8 in Vancouver. NCDD Supporting Member Mark Pivon of Bang the Table shared this announcement via our great Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have news you want to share with the NCDD network? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

On October 8th, direct from Australia, Bang The Table’s CEO Matt Crozier, will deliver a free, fun and interactive workshop where he will reveal the Top Ten Best Practices of Community Engagement, distilled from thousands of events held by communities across Canada, and around the world.

Register here

Did you know, every week over 50 new consultations are launched using EngagementHQ? Over 140 organizations are currently engaging communities and stakeholders in important consultations this very moment. Organizations like The Canadian Department of the Environment, Alberta Energy Regulator, The City of Mississauga, The Regional Municipality of Halifax, The Vancouver Port Authority, The Vancouver Airport Authority, The Richmond School Board, The City of Richmond and dozens of others have chosen EngagementHQ and Budget Allocator from Bang The Table. What are they doing to ensure success? How are citizens responding?

These questions and more will be explored in our Vancouver EngagementHQ Roundtable.

Date: Thursday October 8th, 2015
Time: 7:30AM – 10:00AM
Location: SFU Morris J. Wosk Center for Dialog, 580 West Hastings Street, Salon B – ICBC Concourse

The registration desk will open at 7:30AM, and we will begin at 8:00AM sharp, so please be sure to arrive early.

Register here

What you can expect from attending this event:

  • Learn how to gather an unlimited number of ideas and enable your community to prioritize them in a democratic and transparent manner
  • Implement multi-channel communications strategies both offline and online to deliver consistency in messaging while securing the widest audience reach
  • Energize communities, build awareness, and secure consensus around important initiatives that eventually point to a record of accomplishment
  • Discover how to use social media in an effective and cross-collaborative manner
  • Mitigate risk and ensure compliance is upheld to all privacy standards while securing feedback from stakeholders, safely and securely
  • Gain insights from other practitioners in community and stakeholder engagement

Our demonstration and roundtable event is free and will provide the opportunity to review a variety of case studies, meet with fellow practitioners, and have your questions answered on online community and stakeholder engagement.

Hope to see you there. This event is free, but seating is limited. Please also note that attire is business casual.

Register here:
www.eventbrite.ca/e/discover-the-secrets-of-successful-community-engagement-tickets-18613955843

Support NICD’s Crowdfunding Campaign for Text, Talk, Act

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Earlier this morning, one of our great NCDD organizational members, the National Institute for Civil Discourse, launched an online crowdfunding campaign to support the important work of Text, Talk, Act (TTA) – an amazing youth dialogue program that gets young people talking and taking action around the difficult issue of mental health – and we want to encourage our members to support the effort!

TTA is one of the most successful programs to have come out of the Creating Community Solutions (CCS) initiative that the White House launched in 2013 as a vehicle for national conversation on mental health, and as one of the steering organizations for CCS, NCDD has been a supporter since the beginning. We’ve seen the impact that TTA can have in teens’ lives, so we want to join with NICD to urge you to consider making a tax-deductible donation in support of this important work by clicking here.

Text, Talk, Act dialogues can literally save lives, so please consider making a donation today! You can also help spread the word by sharing the link to the campaign on social media: https://crowdfund.arizona.edu/TTAhero.

All of the funds raised in the crowdfunding campaign will go directly to support TTA programming by providing text messaging technology, materials for youth organizers, outreach coordination, and more. The more that you can help us raise in this crowdfunding effort, the more young people that will be engaged in these important conversations about taking care of and finding support for their mental health.

For more info, you can watch NICD’s promotional video on the project below:

Thanks in advance for supporting this great work!

We encourage you to learn more about TTA and how you can host a youth dialogue on mental health in your community by visiting www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/texttalkact.