Category Archives: exploration

“Civility in Action” Dialogue Series Launches in AZ

Posted on by
Reply

Our friends with the Institute for Civil Dialogue, an NCDD organizational member, will be hosting a series of public dialogues across Arizona on hot button issues this Fall that are aimed at fostering more civility. We are excited to see how the series goes, and we encourage you to learn more in ICD’s press release below or at www.civil-dialogue.com.

“Civility in Action” events start September 9

CAREFREE, Ariz., (July 30, 2014) – Valley citizens will have a new opportunity to discuss hot topics with cool heads this fall. The Institute for Civil Dialogue, in association with the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University, will present a five-part series of free public dialogues focused on provocative issues that emerge during election season. The five-part series, called Civility in Action, will be presented at various venues throughout the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, September-November, 2014.

“As political campaigns heat up, candidates will give us their opinions on the most important issues of our times, and media pundits will give their opinions on the candidates. Civility in Action events will give citizens a chance to voice their own opinions through our unique Civil Dialogue format,” said John Genette, president of the Institute. “The Civility in Action series is not a political rally, it’s for the whole community. It’s designed to foster civility, which is sorely lacking in today’s public conversations. All points of view will be welcome and respected.”

The events are free and open to the public. Reservations are not required. Each event will cover two topics, determined from election coverage and announced in advance. Events will be held in various venues throughout the Valley:

  • Sept. 9, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m., The Empty Space, Arizona State Univ., 970 E. University, Tempe
  • Oct. 1, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m., Grace Lutheran Church, 1124 N. 3rd St., Phoenix 85004
  • Oct. 29, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m., Willo Room, Phoenix College, 1202 W Thomas Rd., Phoenix
  • Nov. 4, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m., Room FSH102, Scottsdale Community College, 9000 E. Chaparral Rd., Scottsdale
  • Nov. 11, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m., Dayspring United Methodist Church, 1365 E Elliot Rd., Tempe

Civility in Action events will employ a unique facilitated format, Civil Dialogue®, which was created by Genette and two members of the Hugh Downs School faculty, Jennifer Linde and Clark Olson. The trio serve as founding directors of the new Institute. “In a Civil Dialogue, we draw a distinction between ‘disagreement,’ which is healthy for democracy, and ‘demonizing,’ which alienates us from one another,” said Linde. “Civil Dialogue is the alternative to the traditional win-lose debate format,” adds Olson. “There is no attempt to change minds or reach consensus, the purpose is to help people of different political stripes, including those who may be neutral or undecided, to interact on hot topics with cool heads. It’s an eye-opening experience.”

For directions to Civility in Action events and more information about Civil Dialogue, visit the Institute’s website at www.civil-dialogue.com.

Public Agenda Convenes Scientists, Evangelical Pastors for Dialogue

Posted on by
Reply

Public Agenda, an NCDD organization member, recently shared the piece below on their blog that we wanted to share with you. It is part of a series of pieces from the PA team reflecting on the experience of facilitating dialogue sessions between scientists and evangelical Christian pastors, and it’s fascinating. You can read the piece below or find the original here.

PublicAgenda-logoWhen I told people that I was headed to LA to facilitate a conversation between evangelical pastors and scientists, most reactions fell somewhere between surprise and cynicism. “Why bother,” asked a friend, “when they’re never going to agree on anything anyway?”

But a strange thing happens when you get a small group of people together in a room for a facilitated dialogue: they listen to one another. And instead of trying to persuade the group to support their worldviews, the pastors and scientists each respectfully introduced themselves and explained why they do what they do for a living. Similarities emerged right off the bat: curiosity, compassion and an unyielding search for truth.

It wasn’t long before the conversation took on a lighter tone. One participant, a reproductive biologist, acknowledged the tension in the room as he explained his research: “We already covered religion and politics,” he said, “so I figured I’d throw sex in there too.”

And there were profound moments as well, like when a scientist explained that he wasn’t 100 percent certain of anything, and that all scientific theories exist only until proven false. “What you just said makes me feel safe,” a pastor replied, “because many of the scientists I know seem so definite in their beliefs, so I don’t feel comfortable expressing my faith.”

Three hours later the group had hammered out areas of common ground and ideas for next steps to foster collaboration between the two communities. But more importantly, the conversations continued well past the end of the formal discussion. Most participants lingered in the room and talked, exchanging contact information and discussing how to keep the conversation going.

As a facilitator, it was humbling to witness a group of people overcome significant differences to explore how to work together to improve their community. Let’s hope that they can continue to defy expectations and set an example for the rest of us.

The original version of this piece is available at www.publicagenda.org/blogs/defying-expectations.

Interview on Games & Engagement

Posted on by
Reply

As children run through sprinklers and enjoy fireworks (safely, we hope) over the holiday weekend, we thought it would be appropriate to share a post from the Davenport Institute’s Gov 2.0 Watch blog on games and engagement. As we know, civic participation can be fun, too! You can find it below or read the original here. Happy Independence Day, everyone!

DavenportInst-logoLast month, Project Information Literacy at the University of Washington Information School published an interview with Eric Gordon, a professor at Emerson College and Executive Director of Engagement Lab:

In his role as the Executive Director of the Engagement Lab, Eric leads play-based projects, spanning everything from community engagement in Detroit to disaster preparedness in Zambia. As he explains, the projects are “designed not just to facilitate official processes, education, and real-world action, but to natively be real-world actions themselves.

Through participatory action research in the United States, Europe, and Africa, Eric and his team are partnering with communities and organizations to understand how and where technology, play, and civic life intersect.

You can read the interview here.

The Village Square’s Creative Civic Conversations

Posted on by
Reply

We recently read a great piece in the Christian Science Monitor that featured one of NCDD’s organizational members, The Village Square, and we hope you’ll take a few moments to read it. Much like the Albany Roundtable that we just recently featured on the blog, The Village Square is creating a civic infrastructure that brings people together for regular conversations on local politics.

The CSM article, titled “Civil Discourse That Doesn’t Taste Like Broccoli”, was penned by NCDD member Liz Joyner, who works for Village Square, and details the history and approach of this innovative organization. In it, Liz details how The Village Square has taken its inspiration from our nation’s early days of politics:

In the early 1800s, things weren’t looking particularly good for the American experiment in self-governance. Coming to Washington with differences of opinion natural to a vast new land, early legislators lived and ate in boarding houses that became entrenched voting blocs. Thomas Jefferson wrote that these men came to work “in a spirit of avowed misunderstanding, without the smallest wish to agree.”

Apparently neither human nature nor legislatures have changed much since.

Jefferson’s solution was to bring lawmakers to the White House in diverse groups for good dinner and conversation. Two hundred years later, The Village Square takes a page from his book when we invite politically diverse citizens to break bread at our “Dinner at the Square” series or “Take-out Tuesday” town meetings.

As Liz notes, the concept of a coming together in a village square is not in any way a new idea. Yet in a time when we have grown disconnected from our communities and polarized into echo chambers of like-minded people, creating a common space to come together with those we disagree with is increasingly a radical idea.

The Village Square project exists to help create and hold that space:

…The Village Square engages people socially around civic issues – bringing neighbors back in relationship with each other across ideological difference. People aren’t built to reexamine the basics of their positions unless they feel some sense of friendship and common purpose with those suggesting they do so.

But as Liz notes, getting folks from our polarized, siloed communities to sit down and talk is some times like pulling teeth. That is why Village Square takes a fun and playful approach to its serious civic work.

To address this challenge, our irreverently named programs are part civic forum, part entertainment. Each event is casual (the stage is set up to feel like the facilitator’s living room) and involves sharing food. As we begin, we give out two “civility bells,” ask that the audience avoid tribal “team clapping,” and share a quote to inspire our better angels. We welcome fluid audience participation and always try to laugh.

From here our formats vary widely – ranging from huge community dinners with a panel and social time, to 20 elected officials moving from table to table in “Speed Date your Local Leader,” to a barbecue competition between a Republican and Democratic commissioner.

It’s creative ideas for bringing people together that The Village Square is bringing to cities in Florida, California, and Missouri – and hopefully more. We encourage you to read Liz’s full article in the Christian Science Monitor, which you can find at www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Common-Ground/2014/0611/Civil-discourse-that-doesn-t-taste-like-broccoli, and learn more about The Village Square at http://tothevillagesquare.org.

Learning from the Albany Roundtable

Posted on by
Reply

We read a fascinating article that NCDD member John Backman wrote for our partners at CommunityMatters that we think you should read. John writes about an innovative civic experiment that has become an institution called the Albany Roundtable, and we hope you’ll read more about it below or find the original piece here.

CM_logo-200pxAppropriately, the idea for a bastion of civic infrastructure in Albany, New York—a luncheon series—arose from a luncheon organization.

“I had been attending Kiwanis luncheons downtown since high school,” said Paul Bray. “At one point in 1979, I got to thinking that an open-to-all civic lunch forum might be helpful in Albany. It was my idea that it be monthly, open to the public by reservation, and have a civic or business leader speak at the luncheons.”

Thirty-five years later, the Albany Roundtable  has become an institution in New York’s Capital Region. Speakers at the monthly luncheons, which typically draw 100 participants, include local leaders from healthcare, higher education, the arts, business, and other elements of the community. Just as essential, the Roundtable serves as a gathering place for civic leaders and other citizens to build their networks across sectors and industries and beyond. It helped create the basis for establishing the Albany Heritage Area which is now one of 20 state designated heritage areas. Heritage areas is a new concept of park that utilizes whole cities and/or regions as a park. Lowell, Massachusetts is the first national city as a park and there are now 49 national heritage areas including 4 in New York State that are all regions.

The Albany Roundtable’s network infrastructure barely existed when Bray first conceived the Roundtable idea. The mayor of Albany, Erastus Corning 2d, had completed 37 years in office and headed a machine with complete control over all things political. And many people believed at the time that all things were political in Albany.

“Local officials were generally deferred to on most matters,” Bray recalled. “Albany had a fair number of neighborhood associations, a historic preservation organization, numerous social service organizations, etc., etc., but they didn’t get involved in governance. There was little sense of the community at large.”

The initial meetings reflected that assessment. Speakers drew crowds largely from their own industry or venture, and attendance hovered around 35. At one point, Bray mentioned the Roundtable to Corning, a conversation that eventually led to the Roundtable’s hosting the mayor’s annual State of the City message. “Only when the mayor spoke was there a greater diversity of attendees, and attendance went up,” Bray said.

Today attendees comprise a broad cross-section of Albany, and the monthly speakers reflect that diversity. The chancellor of the State University of New York has addressed the Roundtable; so have the CEO of the largest local healthcare system, a business leader in the region’s burgeoning nanotechnology sector, directors of the best-known museums, the head of the local transit authority, and many others.

In recent years, the Roundtable has spread its activities beyond the lunch hour. Each year, it invites a visiting speaker to an evening gathering, and the roster of past speakers looks like a who’s who of livable cities. Last year’s gathering featured Jeff Speck, the author of Walkable City and an international advocate for smart growth and sustainable design; this year the speaker is Kaid Benfield, a senior leader at the National Resources Defense Council and one of the world’s “top urban thinkers” according to the city planning website Planetizen.

The Roundtable also gives out awards. The Good Patroon Award goes annually to a person or organization that makes the community a better place to live. (Bray himself won in 2004 for his work with the Roundtable.) Just last year, the organization founded the Albany Roundtable Scholarship, a $1,000 award given to a high school senior recommended by a Roundtable member.

Over the years, the Roundtable has catalyzed a number of civic projects. For example, one Roundtable attendee urged Bray to invite Fred Salvucci, the former Transportation Commissioner in Massachusetts who led the $15 billion “Big Dig” project bury a highway in downtown Boston. When he came to Albany, Salvucci met the Mayors of Albany and Schenectady, met with transportation planners about a transit connection that became the existing Bus Rapid Transit between downtown Schenectady and Albany and he saw a lot of potential for expanding Albany’s downtown and accomplishing other infrastructure projects. Salvucci organized a proposal for a diversity of projects in the Capital Region that was entitled Revest. Although many of the projects were not realized initially, it sparked the awareness the collaborative efforts are possible.

Though Bray no longer serves as Roundtable president (“It took me over 30 years to find someone who would take over”), he remains active as a board member and founder.

And he has the satisfaction of knowing that his brainchild has made a difference. “For me,” Bray noted, “the Roundtable experience has confirmed an important truth: that there is great value in community-wide opportunities for citizens to gather, break bread, and hear from the civic leaders whose decisions affect their lives.”

You can find the original version of this article at www.communitymatters.org/blog/building-civic-infrastructure-your-lunch-hour.

New EvDem Documentary on Youth Mental Health Dialogue

Posted on by
Reply

We hope you will take a moment to read about a great project that our organizational partners at Everyday Democracy are working on with a New Mexico youth organization called Generation Justice. Their new documentary is helping young people have the difficult but needed conversations about mental health in connection with the NCDD-supported Creating Community Solutions initiative. We hope you’ll take a moment to read about their work or find the original post from EvDem here.

EvDem LogoWhen the Mask Comes Off, produced by the youth media organization Generation Justice, is a video documentary featuring young people from New Mexico discussing their experiences of living with mental illness. We hear stories of struggle on their journey from misperception and alienation toward self-acceptance and healing. The documentary comes with adaptable discussion guides for use in communities and schools.

Generation Justice Executive Director Roberta Rael said, “We want to make sure that young people have a voice in the discussions about mental health and that young people contribute to the change that is needed.” View the video trailer here:

When the Mask Comes Off is a partnership between Generation Justice and Everyday Democracy, a national organization working with communities to create positive change by providing tools, advice and strategies that help make democracy real for everyone.

Everyday Democracy answered the call of President Barack Obama for a National Dialogue on Mental Health and helped establish Creating Community Solutions to help local communities enter the national conversation. In July 2013, Albuquerque became one of the first cities to launch a multi-year initiative to bring people into dialogue as part of the National Dialogue on Mental Health.

At the launch event on July 20, hundreds of residents across the community participated in dialogue and identified a priority to expand mental health resources for young people and to create opportunities for youth to talk about mental health. Subsequent neighborhood dialogues throughout the region have also identified that priority. The release of When the Mask Comes Off is a step in fulfilling that need.

Martha McCoy, executive director of Everyday Democracy, said, “Bringing young people’s voices into this critical conversation has surfaced as a priority in community dialogues across the United States. When the Mask Comes Off will open the door for that difficult conversation.”

See the full version of the film.

View and download the discussion guide for schools.

View and download the discussion guide for communities.

The original version of this post from Everyday Democracy can be found at http://everyday-democracy.org/news/young-people-talk-about-living-mental-illness-new-documentary-when-mask-comes#.U6HZaPldUlp.

New EvDem Documentary on Youth Mental Health Dialogue

Posted on by
Reply

We hope you will take a moment to read about a great project that our organizational partners at Everyday Democracy are working on with a New Mexico youth organization called Generation Justice. Their new documentary is helping young people have the difficult but needed conversations about mental health in connection with the NCDD-supported Creating Community Solutions initiative. We hope you’ll take a moment to read about their work or find the original post from EvDem here.

EvDem LogoWhen the Mask Comes Off, produced by the youth media organization Generation Justice, is a video documentary featuring young people from New Mexico discussing their experiences of living with mental illness. We hear stories of struggle on their journey from misperception and alienation toward self-acceptance and healing. The documentary comes with adaptable discussion guides for use in communities and schools.

Generation Justice Executive Director Roberta Rael said, “We want to make sure that young people have a voice in the discussions about mental health and that young people contribute to the change that is needed.” View the video trailer here:

When the Mask Comes Off is a partnership between Generation Justice and Everyday Democracy, a national organization working with communities to create positive change by providing tools, advice and strategies that help make democracy real for everyone.

Everyday Democracy answered the call of President Barack Obama for a National Dialogue on Mental Health and helped establish Creating Community Solutions to help local communities enter the national conversation. In July 2013, Albuquerque became one of the first cities to launch a multi-year initiative to bring people into dialogue as part of the National Dialogue on Mental Health.

At the launch event on July 20, hundreds of residents across the community participated in dialogue and identified a priority to expand mental health resources for young people and to create opportunities for youth to talk about mental health. Subsequent neighborhood dialogues throughout the region have also identified that priority. The release of When the Mask Comes Off is a step in fulfilling that need.

Martha McCoy, executive director of Everyday Democracy, said, “Bringing young people’s voices into this critical conversation has surfaced as a priority in community dialogues across the United States. When the Mask Comes Off will open the door for that difficult conversation.”

See the full version of the film.

View and download the discussion guide for schools.

View and download the discussion guide for communities.

The original version of this post from Everyday Democracy can be found at http://everyday-democracy.org/news/young-people-talk-about-living-mental-illness-new-documentary-when-mask-comes#.U6HZaPldUlp.

Featured D&D Story: Class Discussion on Gun Violence

Posted on by
Reply

Today we’d like to feature a great example of dialogue and deliberation in action, a class discussion on gun violence from University of Missouri. This mini case study was submitted by NCDD supporting member Sarah Read of the Communications Center, Inc. via NCDD’s new Dialogue Storytelling Tool. Do you have a dialogue story that our network could learn from? Add YOUR dialogue story today! 

ShareYourStory-sidebarimageTitle of Project: Class Discussions on Gun Violence

Description

Last summer I was asked to redesign and teach the Public Policy Dispute Resolution class at the University of Missouri School of Law which I then taught in the fall semester. At the outset of the semester, the students were asked to write an essay about why they had enrolled and what they hoped to learn.

The majority of those essays reflected the students’ deep concerns, as citizens, with the partisan nature of our political discourse and their frustration at how quickly discussions on difficult issues, even with friends and family, turned into name-calling and debate. The students expressed a desire to better understand and address such things as “media-fueled divisiveness”, lack of “nuance in everyday politics”, and “polarization”. They also asked to learn about how points of view form, how policies are made, how to help opposing groups communicate, and how to “explore the area between two extreme views.”

These questions were discussed in the first part of the semester when we focused on skills such as conflict mapping, question framing, and use of non-adversarial dialogue patterns, and the use of different processes to navigate conflict. The last third of the semester focused on actually applying this learning to a difficult dialogue, and the topic chosen by the class was issues relating to gun control or violence.

The classes that followed were designed to allow the students to directly experience how the choice and sequencing of dialogue structures (here informal dialogue, through a World Cafe type forum, to a more deliberative issue forum), paired with dialogue-based phrasing, can change the usual scripts used in discussion of a politicized, highly charged issue like gun violence.

To focus the discussion students were given a real-world hypothetical of adopting a policy on who could carry guns in public schools. This hypothetical used the demographics of an identified nearby school district and a law that had been recently adopted in Kansas. Class members came into the discussions with a wide range of viewpoints (which had been reflected in their prior essays) and were loosely assigned roles as community members.

The two students who agreed to serve as (i) a school board member highly supportive of both the law and of allowing more guns in the schools, and (ii) the superintendent responsible for managing budgets, safety, personnel, and overall administration, received more detailed supporting information for their roles. They were instructed to raise or share thoughts and information as seemed natural or appropriate in the discussions.

Although starting from very different places, the students were (to their surprise), over three sessions, able to reach unanimous agreement on an interim policy that could be placed into effect immediately. Much of this progress had to do with how the dialogues were sequenced.

Which dialogue and deliberation approaches did you use or borrow heavily from?

  • National Issues Forums
  • World Cafe
  • Conversation Cafe

What was your role in the project?

Professor / Convener

What issues did the project primarily address?

  • Crime and safety
  • Education
  • Partisan divide

Lessons Learned

The sequencing of different dialogue processes, with time off between sessions, when done thoughtfully, can substantially lessen the overall in-person time needed for groups to come to agreement. Sequencing also allows for better option development, and promotes more productive deliberations at the time deliberative thinking is required. This is because successful resolution of complex issues requires integrative thinking about several different factors – information, interests, values, and rules or standards.

Integrative thinking takes time. Sequencing discussions can provide the necessary time for new ideas and options to emerge. Effective integrative thinking within a group also takes trust in the others that you are making decisions with. Without trust, information is discounted and risk to one’s personal interests is likely to take precedence over the effects on others in the community.

Simply put, building trust requires an effort to build relationships. Building relationships also takes time, and multiple contacts. By sequencing conversations so that deliberation does not occur too soon allows for better relationship development.

Where to learn more about the project:

Read full series of posts here: http://buildingdialogue.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/teaching-the-navigation-of-difficult-dialogues-intro.

Featured D&D Story: Class Discussion on Gun Violence

Posted on by
Reply

Today we’d like to feature a great example of dialogue and deliberation in action, a class discussion on gun violence from University of Missouri. This mini case study was submitted by NCDD supporting member Sarah Read of the Communications Center, Inc. via NCDD’s new Dialogue Storytelling Tool. Do you have a dialogue story that our network could learn from? Add YOUR dialogue story today! 

ShareYourStory-sidebarimageTitle of Project: Class Discussions on Gun Violence

Description

Last summer I was asked to redesign and teach the Public Policy Dispute Resolution class at the University of Missouri School of Law which I then taught in the fall semester. At the outset of the semester, the students were asked to write an essay about why they had enrolled and what they hoped to learn.

The majority of those essays reflected the students’ deep concerns, as citizens, with the partisan nature of our political discourse and their frustration at how quickly discussions on difficult issues, even with friends and family, turned into name-calling and debate. The students expressed a desire to better understand and address such things as “media-fueled divisiveness”, lack of “nuance in everyday politics”, and “polarization”. They also asked to learn about how points of view form, how policies are made, how to help opposing groups communicate, and how to “explore the area between two extreme views.”

These questions were discussed in the first part of the semester when we focused on skills such as conflict mapping, question framing, and use of non-adversarial dialogue patterns, and the use of different processes to navigate conflict. The last third of the semester focused on actually applying this learning to a difficult dialogue, and the topic chosen by the class was issues relating to gun control or violence.

The classes that followed were designed to allow the students to directly experience how the choice and sequencing of dialogue structures (here informal dialogue, through a World Cafe type forum, to a more deliberative issue forum), paired with dialogue-based phrasing, can change the usual scripts used in discussion of a politicized, highly charged issue like gun violence.

To focus the discussion students were given a real-world hypothetical of adopting a policy on who could carry guns in public schools. This hypothetical used the demographics of an identified nearby school district and a law that had been recently adopted in Kansas. Class members came into the discussions with a wide range of viewpoints (which had been reflected in their prior essays) and were loosely assigned roles as community members.

The two students who agreed to serve as (i) a school board member highly supportive of both the law and of allowing more guns in the schools, and (ii) the superintendent responsible for managing budgets, safety, personnel, and overall administration, received more detailed supporting information for their roles. They were instructed to raise or share thoughts and information as seemed natural or appropriate in the discussions.

Although starting from very different places, the students were (to their surprise), over three sessions, able to reach unanimous agreement on an interim policy that could be placed into effect immediately. Much of this progress had to do with how the dialogues were sequenced.

Which dialogue and deliberation approaches did you use or borrow heavily from?

  • National Issues Forums
  • World Cafe
  • Conversation Cafe

What was your role in the project?

Professor / Convener

What issues did the project primarily address?

  • Crime and safety
  • Education
  • Partisan divide

Lessons Learned

The sequencing of different dialogue processes, with time off between sessions, when done thoughtfully, can substantially lessen the overall in-person time needed for groups to come to agreement. Sequencing also allows for better option development, and promotes more productive deliberations at the time deliberative thinking is required. This is because successful resolution of complex issues requires integrative thinking about several different factors – information, interests, values, and rules or standards.

Integrative thinking takes time. Sequencing discussions can provide the necessary time for new ideas and options to emerge. Effective integrative thinking within a group also takes trust in the others that you are making decisions with. Without trust, information is discounted and risk to one’s personal interests is likely to take precedence over the effects on others in the community.

Simply put, building trust requires an effort to build relationships. Building relationships also takes time, and multiple contacts. By sequencing conversations so that deliberation does not occur too soon allows for better relationship development.

Where to learn more about the project:

Read full series of posts here: http://buildingdialogue.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/teaching-the-navigation-of-difficult-dialogues-intro.

Grassroots Grantmakers Seeks New ED

Posted on by
Reply

We recently saw theannouncment that NCDD member Janis Foster Richardson will be stepping down as executive director of a great organization, Grassroots Grantmakers, and that the search is on for a new ED. We wish Janis the best of luck in her transition, but we also hope that other NCDD members will be interested in the ED position, so we encourage you to read the announcement below or find out more at www.grassrootsgrantmakers.org.

Greetings to all in the Grassroots Grantmakers network.

As you may know, we will be bidding a fond farewell to our long-time Executive Director, the incomparable Janis Foster Richardson, in the near future. The Grassroots Grantmakers’ board is working on our executive transition, and Janis has very helpfully agreed to postpone her departure until we have her successor on board.

We would like to ask your assistance in identifying that special person to take over the leadership of our network. You can find a description of the position by clicking here. We would be so grateful if you would circulate this in your networks, and perhaps even think of that special person, maybe someone you know would be great but who isn’t even looking for a job, and reach out to him or her on our behalf. We strongly believe that our next director is already known within our network of friends and colleagues.

If you or anyone with whom you are in contact would like to discuss this position or get more details, please do not hesitate to contact Patrick Horvath at phorvath@denverfoundation.org, or to reach out to Janis directly at janis@grassrootsgrantmakers.org.