Category Archives: decision making

NCDD-CRS Meetings Catalyzed Projects, Continue in 2016

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In the last year, we’ve been reporting on the collaboration that NCDD formed with U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service to organize meetings between NCDD members and CRS staff at their fourteen regional field offices. To date, meetings or conference calls have been held with CRS offices in Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Kansas City, New York, Dallas, and Seattle. Meetings are still in the works for Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, and San Francisco in 2016, so be on the look out for more news if you live in those cities. The meetings are limited to dues-paying members and 2014 Conference attendees, so if you want to participate in one of the remaining meetings, make sure your dues are current, then contact NCDD’s Program Director Courtney Breese at courtney@ncdd.org.

NCDD Supporting Member Janice Thomson helped organize the NCDD-CRS meeting in Chicago, and it was a great example of the powerful collaborations that are being catalyzed by this initiative. She wrote up some insightful reflections on the meeting and the partnerships it made possible it on her blog, and we encourage you to read them below or find the original piece here.

How D&D Can Help Communities Adapt to Rapid Change

Since the 1960s, the US Department of Justice has provided peacekeeping services via its Community Relations Service (CRS) for community conflicts and tensions related to race, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and disability.

In 2015, the heads of the CRS and the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) organized a series of nationwide meetings to identify possible areas of cooperation between the two groups. I and a dozen other NCDD members from Illinois, Iowa, and Michigan met with CRS staffers in Chicago and Detroit on February 23, 2015.

During our meeting, it became apparent that the types of conflicts the CRS commonly addresses are often symptoms of multiple stresses communities can experience as a result of rapid demographic, social, and economic change. The CRS can legally only act as a first responder after a crisis event. However, NCDD members can help support these communities to address the underlying stresses and so prevent crises from ever occurring.

As farming and manufacturing declined in the Midwest, service sector jobs grew, and real estate values fell, newcomers with very different histories, needs, and values from those of long-time residents moved into what previously were fairly stable and homogeneous communities. As a result, traditional ways of handling everything from public safety to education to transportation planning just aren’t working anymore. Resources are stretched. Residents are frustrated. Community leaders are desperate for new ways to meet residents’ needs and resolve issues before they fester into anything as destructive as hate crime. Importantly, this is happening not only in the Midwest, but throughout the country and in many other parts of the world.

As specialists in dialogue and deliberation, methods for helping communities to engage in meaningful conversations and make wise public decisions, we NCDD members knew that we had powerful tools to bring to communities struggling with rapid change. But how could we convince more communities to try them?

Three of us, Tracy Rogers-Tryba, Hubert Morgan, and I, decided to start answering this question by creating and testing an introductory D&D training designed specifically for communities struggling to adapt to disorienting demographic, economic, and social change.

With the support of The Center for Governmental Studies at Northern Illinois University (NIU) and the DeKalb County Community Foundation, on August 5, 2015 we shared this day-long training with members of DeKalb area civil society. We showed how 12 D&D methods have been used in other towns, suggested ways they might be applied to a fictitious case study city, and then provided time for participants to reflect on how they might be used in their own community. D&D methods were chosen to represent diverse approaches. Each was well-developed, time-tested, and supported by organizations, trainers, and resource materials.

We used the NCDD four streams of practice model to structure our discussions. This framework was originally designed to help practitioners decide which D&D methods to use when. However, it can also be a very helpful way to show how different D&D methods could complement each other when used by various groups within the same community (e.g., government, museums, schools). Below is a summary of methods we shared from each stream.

D&D methods from the Exploration stream encourage residents to learn more about themselves, their community, and/or an issue. They also teach skills in respectful listening and considering diverse viewpoints. They can thus provide a low-risk way for communities to begin to discuss difficult issues. We shared the Civic Reflection, Conversation Café, and Study Circles methods. For the case study city, we suggested using the first with teachers to address issues of burnout caused by growing student needs and declining resources. Conversation café would be used to explore community aspirations and address the issue of declining community spirit. Study Circles would explore public safety, both examining causes of increasing crime and identifying potential solutions.

Conflict Transformation approaches are used to resolve conflicts, foster personal healing, and improve relationships between groups. They provide safe ways to discuss divisive and sensitive topics, including issues linked to race, ethnicity, religion, and social class. We shared the Public Conversations Project (PCP), Restorative Justice Circles, and Nonviolent Communication (NVC) methods. In the case study city, we proposed using PCP to diffuse religious and ethnic tensions related to immigration. Circle would be taken up by schools to resolve non-violent student conflicts. NVC would be taught within diverse faith groups as a way to embed conflict transformation skills in the community.

Decision-making processes seek to influence public decisions and public policy, and to improve public knowledge on topics such as public education, policing, and economic development. We outlined the 21st Century Town Hall Meeting and Citizens’ Jury methods, as well as various approaches to informal and online engagement. For the case study city, we suggested using the first method to get resident input when cutting the city budget. A Citizens’ Jury would provide neutral guidance to voters on a contentious ballot initiative to change the tax structure. Informal and online engagement would both be used to get the input of “hard to reach” residents on a regional transportation plan.

Collaborative Action methods empower groups and individuals to solve complicated problems and take responsibility for the solution. We presented World Café, Open Space Technology (OST), and Appreciative Inquiry. World Café would be used to improve university-resident understanding and identify common goals. OST would help residents and economic development stakeholders to collectively identify ways to build a more vibrant economy. Appreciative Inquiry would help kick off a housing summit on a positive note by reminding participants of current assets and successes.

Our primary goal with this training was to introduce participants to dialogue & deliberation by demonstrating how a dozen different methods might be used in a community similar to their own. That we achieved.

We also wanted participants to start thinking about how they could use these and similar methods in their own work. They did. Collectively, they identified about a dozen potential projects or areas to explore.

What we could have done better, however, was help them to overcome risks inherent in trying something new in a potentially volatile environment. While they saw the need for and benefits of D&D, they were also worried about possible negative outcomes. Careful planning, involving key stakeholders from the beginning, and starting small could help reduce some of these risks. However, ultimately it takes courage to be the first to host a community dialogue on sensitive topics. Hopefully, we will have inspired some individuals and organizations to try and that their efforts will in turn make it easier for others to follow suit.

You can find the original version of this Janice Thomson piece at www.janicethomson.net/new-faces-changing-towns.

#CGAFridays Economic Opportunity Deliberations Return

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Last November, the Kettering Foundation and National Issues Forums Institute – both NCDD member organizations – teamed up to host #CGAFridays: a series of events where people can try out the new online deliberation tool, Common Ground for Action (CGA). The series is back this month, and we encourage our members to join, or if you can’t, to share this post with others you think should know about this great new tool! Learn more in the Kettering post below or find the original here.

#CGAFridays Return – Register for a Making Ends Meet Forum Today!

NIFI-CGA_Branded_LogoCommon Ground for Action, KF and NIF’s new platform for online deliberation, has been steadily growing over the past year. In fact, demand for opportunities to try the new platform has been so strong that in November of last year we launched #cgafridays, a recurring series of CGA forums held each Friday for anyone who wants to participate. This Friday forum series has been such a success, we’re continuing it into 2016!

Our January forums will be using NIF’s brand new issue guide on economic security, opportunity, and equality, Making Ends Meet. And all these forums will be included in the reporting Kettering is doing to policymakers on this issue throughout 2016, so it’s a great chance for participants who want to make sure their voice is heard!

To participate in a forum, all you need to do is register at one of the links below! And even if you can’t make one of these forums, please help by sharing this post with your networks!

You can find the original version of this Kettering Foundation blog post at www.kettering.org/blogs/cgafridays-2016.

Making Ends Meet: How Should We Spread Prosperity and Improve Opportunity? (NIFI Issue Guide)

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The issue guide, Making Ends Meet: How Should We Spread Prosperity and Improve Opportunity?, from National Issues Forums Institute and Kettering Foundation, was published December 2015. NIFI_MakingEndsMeetThis guide will provide the framework for deliberation that will happen in 2016 between January and May. The results from the deliberation will be given to U.S. policy makers and elected officials in May 2016. Below is an excerpt from the guide and a short video about the guide. Download a free copy of the PDF on NIFI’s site here.

From the guide…

For many Americans, the recovery from the 2007  recession, a recovery that officially began in 2009, feels very remote, or nonexistent. Even as the stock market surges and millions of jobs have been created, they see a very different picture.

This issue guide presents three options for deliberation:

Option One: “Create New Opportunities”
We should make it easier for people to start new enterprises that will improve their circumstances. Whether it’s starting a house painting business on the side or opening a restaurant, when individuals start new firms, it helps spur economic growth. More skilled tradespeople are needed, for example, as construction bounces back. Half of all private-sector jobs in the US are at small businesses, and in recent years small businesses have supplied two-thirds of all new jobs.

Option Two: “Strengthen the Safety Net”
We should secure and expand safeguards so that changes in the economy don’t push people into poverty or leave families with children homeless or hungry. In the last decade, millions of people found themselves unemployed or underemployed with few or no benefits, sometimes indefinitely. Fewer people work with one company for decades, employee benefits have shrunk, technology and globalization have eliminated jobs, and more people are employed in freelance work. We need to make sure people will not face catastrophic losses as they adapt to these changes. To do this, we should strengthen the unemployment insurance program, protect workers’ retirement, and make benefits more portable.

Option Three: “Reduce Inequality”
We should shrink the income gap. Today, the richest 10 percent of the country’s population earn more than half of its total income. It is not right that CEOs make hundreds of times more than their employees, even as their companies cut workers’ hours to avoid paying overtime and offering benefits. Some inequality helps drive people to succeed and become wealthier, but if people can’t move into or stay in the middle class, or if the wealthy manipulate the system to their benefit, then we all lose. To reduce the large gaps between the very rich and the rest of society, schools should be funded more equally, we should do more to control college costs, and people who don’t go to college should be able to get decent-paying jobs that allow them to stay in the middle class.

About NIFI Issue Guides
NIFI’s Issue Guides introduce participants to several choices or approaches to consider. Rather than conforming to any single public proposal, each choice reflects widely held concerns and principles. Panels of experts review manuscripts to make sure the choices are presented accurately and fairly. By intention, Issue Guides do not identify individuals or organizations with partisan labels, such as Democratic, Republican, conservative, or liberal. The goal is to present ideas in a fresh way that encourages readers to judge them on their merit.

Follow on Twitter: @NIForums

Resource Link: www.nifi.org/en/groups/new-issue-guide-making-ends-meet-how-should-we-spread-prosperity-and-improve-opportunity

N. Am. PB Research Board Seeks Input on 2016 Agenda

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In case you missed it, the North American Participatory Budgeting Research Board recently announced that it’s seeking input on what topics folks in the field think PB researchers should prioritize next year. The Board was originally launched by two NCDD member organizations – Public Agenda and the Participatory Budgeting Project – and we encourage the rest of our members to weigh in. You can learn more in the Public Agenda post below or find the original here.

What do you want to see PB research address in 2016?

PublicAgenda-logoAs part of their work coordinating research on participatory budgeting processes in the U.S. and Canada, our research and public engagement teams have asked for input on potential tasks for the North American PB Research Board to tackle in the coming year (2015-16).

Below are five suggestions. What would you add or amend? Comment or tweet your suggestions to @PublicAgenda with #PBResearch.

  1. Building capacity for data gathering. This group would focus on the challenges facing local evaluators, such as: the lack of staff and volunteering time; lack of capacity to administer, collect, and enter data from surveys; translation of instruments; increasing survey response rates, and so on.
  2. Making PB data more usable, visible, and powerful. This work would work on ways to improve, facilitate, and institutionalize the collection, storage, and sharing of metrics data from all North American PB sites. There are a number of technological, ethical, logistical, and research challenges to making this happen. The final product would a rich, open data source for local PB evaluators and implementers, other PB researchers, and experts to draw on and share.
  3. Building a better infrastructure to support PB. Around the world, many cities have started doing PB without figuring out what kinds of supports they might need to make PB successful. At the same time, other engagement structures and processes that may already be in place may be far less effective from PB. This group would consider ways to use our research and evaluation efforts to help cities learn about PB, and learn from PB, in order to create a stronger engagement infrastructure.
  4. Organizing the evaluation and research track for the PB Conference in May 2016. This group would develop some interesting and thoughtful ways to present PB evaluations and evaluation data at the May 2016 conference in Boston. The overall goal would be to highlight the efforts, experiences, and insights gained through on-the-ground evaluation.
  5. Designing and supporting a larger research project to estimate the impact of PB in North American communities. This group would review the list of research projects that last year’s board members discussed during the development of the key evaluation metrics as important for further understanding PB in North America but beyond the scope and interest of individual, annual evaluation efforts. This group would focus on one of these project areas, design the study and develop a proposal for funding.

You can find the original version of this Public Agenda blog post at www.publicagenda.org/blogs/what-do-you-want-to-see-pb-research-address-in-2016#sthash.qDecnO6t.dpuf.

New Curricula Teach Deliberation through Historic Decisions

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The team at the Kettering Foundation recently shared a fascinating post about a new, innovative set of tools they’re creating to help teachers teach history and deliberation in classrooms that we wanted to share. Kettering and the National Issues Forums Institute are rolling out a set of deliberative decision guides based on historic decisions that shaped US history, and they’re finding success using them in classrooms. Check out the Kettering post below about the project or find the original here.

Historic Decisions Create Citizens of Tomorrow

kfLisa Strahley of SUNY Broome recently shared a video her college and a local middle school produced based on their experience using NIF’s Historic Decisions curricula in their classroom. Historic Decisions issue guides take important decisions from American history and frame them, not as stories of great men making decisions for the country, but in terms of the difficult choices citizens at the time were confronting.

The goal of these issue guides is to allow students to feel the difficulty and power of making such choices and to learn to look at current-day problems with the same lens and sense of agency.

KF program officer Randy Nielson noted, “This video provides a really nice illustration of what political learning looks like. It shows what the subjects of the learning are (the practices of choice making and the effects of making the practices deliberative) and also the feeling of it – the kids were excited, because they had come to a different way of seeing the past, but also because their sense of themselves as actors in a life of choices with other people had changed. They had learned a new way of interacting and they knew it and could feel it. And that self-consciousness was beautifully evident.”

The 1776: What Should We Do? and A New Land: What Kind of Government Should We Have? guides are both available in print or digitally on NIF’s website. Eight more historic issues are currently being framed as part of a research exchange led by KF program officer Joni Doherty.

You can find the original version of this Kettering Foundation blog post at www.kettering.org/blogs/historic-decisions-create-citizens-tomorrow.

EvDem Campaign Reaches Student Democracy Project in Bolivia

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As we work in our own local niches, it’s easy at times to forget that D&D is an international field. But as this recent post from NCDD member organization Everyday Democracy shows, our work continues to impacts and be impacted by a global movement for democracy. This EvDem article shows how ripples their recent social media campaign made it all the way to young people democratizing their student governments in Bolivia. Read more about it below or find the original piece here.

Putting ‘Everyday Democracy’ Into Practice: Making Visions a Reality

EvDem LogoWhen people think of “democracy,” what comes to mind most often is voting. This is certainly an important part of it, but democracy is something we as citizens should be connected to every day.

As an organization, we work to make sure people have opportunities to participate in decision-making at all levels. We believe people should have a voice in what happens in their schools, in their communities, and in their government on a regular basis – not just on Election Day.

This summer to celebrate our Independence Day, we launched a campaign to get people talking about what democracy means to them. People from all over the country contributed their ideas, which ranged from “transparency” to “participation” to “sharing responsibility for the outcomes of government,” and more.

Not only did this campaign draw responses from people all over the U.S., it also caught the attention of Adam Conkright, co-founder of Democracy In Practice, a nonprofit organization based in Cochabamba, Bolivia, dedicated to democratic innovation, experimentation, and capacity building.

“What stood out to us,” Adam explains, “is that several people in the campaign expressed the idea that democracy can be done better, and that improving democracy is like a journey that continues with no real endpoint.” He says this theme really connected with them because that is what Democracy In Practice is all about. “We are trying to help strengthen this growing global movement to improve democracy, and we think the most important thing is for people to start experimenting with different approaches, not only in governments but also in schools, community associations, unions, nonprofits, worker cooperatives, and the like. We’re trying to get people to think outside the box and get creative.”

They’re hoping to inspire others in this way by setting an innovative example themselves. For the past couple years, Democracy In Practice has been working in schools in Bolivia helping students reinvent student government. Adam sees schools as a really great place for this type of experimentation because “the stakes are so low that students can completely redesign their government – each semester if they want to – in ways that would be too risky elsewhere.” He also points out that this kind of experimentation has the added benefit of encouraging students to be engaged and to think critically and creatively about improving their school community.

It’s in this innovative atmosphere that students have replaced elections with random lotteries, rotated meeting roles, and tested out both mandatory and voluntary participation. These and other changes have had an effect: the student government at one school has started the school’s first library, issued its first ID cards to halve student transportation costs, and exposed one teacher’s abuse of power. All the while, the Democracy In Practice team provides suggestions, support, and capacity building to go along with support from school staff. It’s a continual process of trying to make student government more inclusive, representative, and effective in a variety of contexts. A journey with no endpoint.

Bolivians celebrate their independence on August 6th, and inspired by our campaign Democracy In Practice asked these student governments what democracy meant to them. As Adam explained, the students added their own twist. “Just like in the US, people here in Bolivia come from a variety of different backgrounds and have very different views, but each student government decided to deliberate and agree upon a collective answer to the question.” Not surprisingly, the responses of both groups stressed unity.

Group of young students holding a sign that says "Democracy is participation, working together, and the community united."

The 4th-8th grade student government members at the rural school where Democracy In Practice is working decided that “Democracy is participation, working together, and the community united.”

Group of high school students holding a sign that says, "Democracy means working as a team to defend the rights of everyone - unity is strength.”

The other school Democracy In Practice is working in is an urban night high school with much older students. The student government there agreed that “Democracy means working as a team to defend the rights of everyone – unity is strength.”

Adam feels that the next step for Democracy In Practice in this journey is to look beyond schools to find a union or community organization that is open to experimenting in this manner. “People in your campaign said that democracy means ‘participation’,  ‘equality’, ‘transparency’, etc.,” he noted. “If we want government to actually embody those beautiful ideals then we’ve all got to roll up our sleeves and develop better ways to govern ourselves. We liked that your campaign encouraged people to think critically, and we appreciate that Everyday Democracy’s work takes an innovative approach to bringing communities together. Hopefully together we can get more people thinking creatively about what democracy means and what it’s going to take to make those visions a reality.”

We have a lot we can learn from each other, whether it’s from our neighbor next door or our friends in a different hemisphere. In fact, the only way we can continue to build a democracy that works for everyone is to continuously examine and improve our current systems, learn from the experiences of others as well as our own, and make sure everyone has a chance to participate.

You can find the original version of this Everyday Democracy post at www.everyday-democracy.org/news/putting-everyday-democracy-practice-making-visions-reality.

Open Gov’t Action Plan Holds Promise for D&D, Civic Tech

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Just over a month ago, the White House released the third version of its Open Government National Action Plan that includes upwards of 40 initiatives to advance its commitment to “an open and citizen-centered government,” and we encourage NCDD members to take a look at it. While the plan covers a lot of ground, some of that ground is in our field, and that could mean opportunities to grow and deepen our work that we won’t want to miss.

The Open Government Action Plan is part of the White House’s involvement in the international Open Government Partnership (OGP), in which 66 countries participate as a way to “increase public integrity, enhance public access to information, improve management of public resources, and give the public a more active voice in government processes.” All of the goals of the OGP can be a boon to both the field of dialogue & deliberation as well as civic tech, so we encourage folks to take notice of the parts of the Open Government Action Plan that may pertain to your specific niche or even create new funding streams or partnerships that you can take advantage of.

For example, the White House’s plan includes a promise that it “will work with communities, non-profits, civic technologists, and foundation partners to develop new commitments that will expand the use of participatory budgeting in the United States,” so if you are thinking about trying PB as a part of your D&D work, now is the time!

For some more of an idea of what’s in the plan, read this snippet from the White House’s recent blog post on its release:

In the third Open Government National Action Plan, the Administration both broadens and deepens efforts to help government become more open and more citizen-centered. The plan includes new and impactful steps the Administration is taking to openly and collaboratively deliver government services and to support open government efforts across the country. These efforts prioritize a citizen-centric approach to government, including improved access to publicly available data to provide everyday Americans with the knowledge and tools necessary to make informed decisions.

We see this commitment to open and “citizen-centered” government as a direct result of the years of our field’s work and as a sign that now is the time to keep stepping up our contributions to better, more democratic governance at all levels. We encourage our members and others in the D&D and civic tech field to use this White House plan as a platform to continue moving forward in bigger and better ways!

You can find all the specifics of what’s in the report by downloading the PDF version of it at www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/final_us_open_government_national_action_plan_3_0.pdf.

We also encourage you to read the full version of the White House blog post on the report’s release at www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/10/27/advancing-open-and-citizen-centered-government.

Listen to Common Ground for Action Tech Tuesday Call & Join NIFI’s #CGAFriday Series on the Economy

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Earlier this week, NCDD hosted another installment of our Tech Tuesday call series, this time focused on the Common Ground for Action (CGA) online deliberative tool from Kettering Foundation and Conteneo. Over 50 participants joined us for the call, which featured NCDD members Amy Lee and Laura Richardson taking us on an in-depth tour of this awesome online tool.

NIFI-CGA_Branded_LogoThe call was a great chance to learn more about how to use CGA for our own purposes and hear about opportunities to get further training with the tool, and we had a very informative discussion after the initial presentation. If you missed out on the call, don’t worry, we recorded the presentation and discussion, which you can see and hear by clicking here. Thanks again to Amy, Laura, and everyone who participated!

Looking for a chance to try out Common Ground for Action yourself? Then we highly encourage you to participate in the #CGAFridays series this month when NIFI will be hosting three opportunities for you to try both their CGA tool and their new issue guide about economic security and inequality, Making Ends Meet: How Do We Spread Prosperity and Improve Opportunity? Insights from these deliberative forums will be used in the Kettering Foundation’s reporting to federal policymakers throughout 2016.

If you’d like to participate in any of these forums, all you need to do is click the link below to register. Then, the day before the forum you’ve signed up for, you’ll receive an email with a unique URL. To join the forum, simply click that link no more than 10 minutes before the forum start time. The dates of the CGA Friday series and links to register are here:

These forums are open to the public, so feel free to share and to spread the word on social media using the hashtags #CGAFridays and #MEM+CGA. If you have any questions, email cga@nifi.org.

To find out more about CGA, visit www.nifi.org/en/common-ground-action.

To sign up to get trained as a moderator, visit www.nifi.org/en/groups/new-moderator-form
or www.everyvoiceengaged.org.

To learn more about NCDD’s Tech Tuesday series and hear recordings of past calls, please visit www.ncdd.org/events/tech-tuesdays.

Join Tech Tuesday Call on Common Ground for Action, 12/1

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As we recently announced, we are inviting you to register to join us this Tuesday, December 1st from 2-3pm Eastern/11am-12pm Pacific for our next Tech Tuesday call. This time, the call will feature a demonstration of Common Ground for Action (CGA), Tech_Tuesday_Badgea new online platform designed to create deliberative public forums online that allow participants to examine options for dealing with the problem, weigh tradeoffs, and find common ground.

CGA was developed in collaboration by the Kettering Foundation and Conteneo, so we’re pleased to be joined by Kettering’s Amy Lee and Conteneo’s Luke Homann – both NCDD members – to tell us more about their tool. Amy and Luke will walk us through the CGA’s features and functions and tell us more about the partnership that developed it. And you won’t want to miss the chance to hear about upcoming chances to use the tool yourself and to learn how you or your organization can utilize this FREE tool!

Don’t let the turkey haze or Black Friday rush make you forget – register today and make sure you don’t miss this great Tech Tuesday call! We can’t wait to have you all join us!