I myself am a Summer Institute alumni and have attended multiple Frontiers conferences, and they are both great opportunities to learn and work with many of the nation’s leaders of civic innovation. Find out more below about both in the announcement below or by clicking here.
The 7th Annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies
The seventh annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies will be an intensive, two-week, interdisciplinary seminar bringing together faculty, advanced graduate students, and practitioners from many countries and diverse fields of study.
Organized by Peter Levine of Tufts University’s Tisch College and Karol Sołtan of the University of Maryland, the Summer Institute will engage participants in challenging discussions of such topics as:
What kinds of citizens (if any) do good regimes need?
What should such citizens know, believe, and do?
What practices and institutional structures promote the right kinds of citizenship?
What ought to be the relationships among empirical evidence, ethics, and strategy?
The syllabus for the sixth annual seminar (in 2014) is here: Continue reading →
We could hardly be more excited to share that yet another city has adopted participatory budgeting and will be partnering with our friends at the Participatory Budgeting Project, an NCDD organizational member. We learned about this great new development from the Challenges to Democracy blog, which is run by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance & Innovation, another NCDD organizational member, and we encourage you to read more about the news below or to find the original article here.
In June, Mayor of Boston Marty Walsh announced the successful allocation of $1 million dollars from Boston’s budget to fund seven capital projects, formulated and proposed by the city’s youth. Boston is one of several cities across the United States to have not only enthusiastically embraced participatory budgeting (PB), but have adapted the concept – for example by extending the opportunity to youth.
Boston has begun to facilitate greater civic engagement and empowerment among its young residents. Its experiment in civic activism is also generating momentum behind PB in another city in the Greater Boston area. The City of Cambridge recently announced that it would initiate its own PB process, in partnership with the nonprofit Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP).
Cambridge City Council member Leland Cheung first introduced PB to Cambridge over two years ago when he learned about its implementation in other cities, but its implementation has been fully embraced by Cambridge Mayor David Maher, City Council, and the City Manager. With the process formally underway, the City Budget Office will continue to handle all matters related to PB.
The city has made available half a million dollars in the FY16 capital budget for city projects.
Whereas Boston’s PB initiative targets residents age 12-25, Cambridge will open its PB process to all residents of Cambridge who are 12 years and older. Jeana Franconi, director of the city’s Budget Office, and her team has scoured the city’s library’s, senior centers, non-profits, schools and youth centers to solicit ideas for proposals. This ideas collection phase – which closed officially on December 31 – will help narrow down city priorities as reflected by resident concerns.
After residents submit ideas, “Budget Delegates” – volunteers at least 14 years old and whom are either a resident or affiliated with Cambridge in some way – will be tasked with transforming the project ideas into concrete proposals to be voted on in March.
Like the Boston PB process, the City of Cambridge envisions PB to be a tool for fostering civic engagement and community spirit. To that end, it has four goals it hopes to achieve through experimenting with PB.
Make Democracy Inclusive. As the Boston case demonstrated, PB brought together stakeholders (e.g., youth) who are not normally invited to participate in the decision making process and emphasized their role in strengthening civil society and enhancing civic engagement. Through expanding and diversifying participation in the decision-making process, the City’s budget is able to better reflect the priorities of stakeholders and preserve their engagement with the city over the long-term.
Have Meaningful Social and Community Impact. Residents are encouraged to submit ideas to the ideas map and other residents are able to “support this project” by clicking on the appropriate link. The city and budget delegates (see above) are able to then collect some data on which projects would generate “meaningful social and community impact.”
Promote Sustainable Public Good. Cambridge has outlined that all project considerations benefit the public, are implemented on public property, and can be completed with funds from one year’s PB process.
Create Easy and Seamless Civic Engagement. The city dedicated several meetings to establishing a steering committee that will lead the PB process (there are 22 current members), articulated themes of inclusion, and sustainable, meaningful impact, and launched its first PB Assembly to encourage community members to brainstorm ideas.
Like Boston’s Youth Lead the Change initiative, Cambridge’s PB project will complement other city programs that seek to encourage civic participation and engagement on the part of all city residents and those who are affiliated with the city. Franconi noted,
PB really ties in to many of the civic engagement efforts the city is involved in. [For example], the Community Development Department recently hosted Community Conversations in several neighborhoods to receive recommendations for the upcoming Citywide Plan.
With regards to young people in particular, Franconi spoke of the city’s Kids’ Council, through which participants travel to the annual National League of Cities conference to represent Cambridge and support youth participation on a national level. Youth involvement in the PB initiative, however, will provide opportunities for direct impact on the city’s most relevant needs.
Cambridge will begin its evaluation phase in April, but has already reflected on a few lessons as outlined by Richa Mishra’s piece on the promises and pitfalls of PB. In particular, Mishra’s emphasis on “process backed by results” should resonate with any local government attempting PB. The temptation to seek quick results over preserving the fidelity to process has, as she asserts, a deleterious effect on participation and ownership. Likewise, if process is emphasized at the expense of meaningful moves towards achieving results, participants could become disillusioned that their voices will not make a difference.
Franconi recognizes this inherent tension in the decision making process, and believes the city has still a lot to learn about the nature of PB. For one, Cambridge will initiate the next year’s PB process in the summer rather than the fall to fully capture citizen participation in every stage—from ideas collection to voting on the proposals—and to give residents more time to digest their responsibilities and sense of civic duty.
As the city designs its evaluation strategy, Hollie Russon Gilman, PhD, an expert on U.S.-based PB initiatives, further recommends that “civic experiments and civic innovations like PB need room to grow, evolve, and engage people. At times privileging initial indicators, over social impact, has the potential to stifle early process creativity.”
In the meantime, the city has achieved some incremental wins. It has opened up multiple avenues for participation (i.e., steering committees, online map tool, volunteering as a budget delegate or facilitator). Additionally, “a strong online and social media presence has helped tremendously,” Franconi asserts. “It has allowed us to do more outreach and canvassing to our underserved populations.”
As of this writing, Cambridge is on target with its proposed timeline. Over 380 ideas have been submitted to the online ideas map. To move forward with the formulation of concrete proposals, Cambridge hosted a Budget Delegate training on January 6 and will host a Volunteer Facilitator Training on January 10. For more information on how to get involved, please click here.
In case you missed it, the Participatory Budgeting Project and Public Agenda – two key NCDD organizational members – announced last fall that they have formed the first North American research board to study the participatory budgeting process. Not only is this an important and exciting development for the field, but we are proud to count two NCDD members – Matt Leighninger and Paolo Spada – among the new board. Read the announcement below or find the original version here.
PBP and Public Agenda are facilitating the launch of the North American Participatory Budgeting Research Board with various participatory budgeting (PB) evaluators, academics, and researchers. Shortly after the 3rd International Conference on PB in North America, we came together in Oakland for our first meeting.
The goal of the board is to support the evaluation of PB processes across the US and Canada and guide a broader research agenda for PB. Over the years of PB in North America, many board members have already been informally collaborating and supporting one another’s work. With the rapid growth of PB in North America we see the importance of establishing the formal infrastructure to further strengthen and promote the research and evaluation.
The First Meeting and Historical Context
On a Sunday morning in Oakland in September, a group of leading researchers and evaluators converged at the PBP office for the first meeting of the North American PB Research Board. It was a rare and exciting moment: two hours of deep discussion amongst passionate individuals who have committed countless hours, and sometimes entire careers, to researching and evaluating PB processes in North America and overseas. This had the feeling of something that could make a vital contribution to the spread and improvement of PB in North America.
Research and evaluation have long been central features of North American PB processes. Academic researchers from diverse backgrounds have been fascinated with measuring the contribution of PB to social justice and the reform of democratic institutions. Local evaluation teams, particularly in NYC and Chicago, have conducted huge data collection efforts on an annual basis to ensure that fundamental questions such as “who participates?” and “what are the impacts of PB?” can be accurately answered.
Often the agendas of these researchers and evaluators have overlapped and presented opportunities for collaboration. PBP has played a key role in supporting both research and evaluation but, with the rapid expansion of PB in North America, we recognized the need for a more formal research and evaluation infrastructure in order to measure and communicate the impacts of PB across cities.
Partnering to Build Expertise and Capacity
Having identified this need, we saw the opportunity to partner with Public Agenda, a non-profit organization based in NYC with vast experience in research and public engagement. With leadership from Public Agenda, support from PBP, and contributions from leading researchers, the North American PB Research Board generates new capacity to expand and deepen PB.
Over 2014-2015 the board will have 17 members, including experienced PB evaluators and researchers based at universities and non-profit organizations.
2014-2015 North American PB Research Board
Gianpaolo Baiocchi, New York University
Thea Crum,Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois-Chicago
Benjamin Goldfrank, Seton Hall University
Ron Hayduk, Queens College, CUNY
Gabe Hetland , University of California-Berkeley
Alexa Kasdan, Community Development Project, Urban Justice Center
Matt Leighninger, Deliberative Democracy Consortium
Erin Markman, Community Development Project, Urban Justice Center
Stephanie McNulty, Franklin and Marshall College
Ana Paula Pimental Walker, University of Michigan
Sonya Reynolds, New York Civic Engagement Table
Daniel Schugurensky, Arizona State University
Paolo Spada, Participedia
Celina Su, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Rachel Swaner, New York University
Brian Wampler, Boise State University
Rachel Weber, Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois-Chicago
We are pleased to share that our partners with the Public Conversations Project – one of our great NCDD organizational members that helped sponsor NCDD 2014 – just announced the roll out of their brand new website this week.
PCP’s new website is dynamic, user-friendly, and home to a good deal of content that NCDD members will find useful, including free dialogue resources, stories of dialogue across the world, and information on their approach. They sent out an email announcing the change today, and here’s what PCP had to say:
Public Conversations Project is excited to celebrate the new year with a new website, at www.publicconversations.org. Our 25 years in the field of dialogue have taught us the value of a fresh perspective, and we are proud to share our new look with friends and supporters.
Check out our free dialogue resources, meet our staff, explore stories of dialogue across the world, and get information about our practitioners and upcoming workshops.
We invite you to join the conversation and let us know what you think of our new look. Reach out to us via email at marketing@publicconversations.org or find us on social media.
We encourage you to check out the new and improved PCP website soon and to stay tuned to theirsocialmedia for continued updates on the new features of their website. And congratulations to the PCP team on the accomplishment!
2014 was a great year for the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation! Designed by our co-founder Andy Fluke, this end-of-year infographic highlights NCDD’s growth and activity during the past twelve months.
Please share this post with all those you think should know there’s an amazing community of innovators in public engagement and group process work they can tap into or join in with.
Also be sure to look over the great Year-in-Review post at www.ncdd.org/17033, where we summarize 2014’s activities, accomplishments and highlights. It has been quite the year!
In addition to sharing this post and/or just the image above, feel free to download the print-quality PDF.
2014 was a pretty darn good year for NCDD. As I reflect on our work over the past twelve months, a few themes really stand out to me:
1. We made huge strides toward our goal of distributing leadership and responsibility for NCDD’s success more broadly.
The members of our amazing Board of Directors really stepped up this year, to launch new committees on membership, outreach and fundraising, to help plan a great national conference, and to strengthen the organization in numerous other ways. Special shout-outs to these Board members for especially huge lifts:
Marla Crockett for leading our local team for the 2014 conference
John Backman for moderating the NCDD Discussion list — a nuanced task I didn’t think I’d ever be able to let go of!
Roshan Bliss, our Blog Curator (pictured at right), began taking on more responsibility at NCDD by serving as our Student & Youth Outreach Coordinator for the 2014 conference. Thanks in large part to Roshan’s leadership and dedication, we inspired members of our community to donate over $15,000, enabling us to support the attendance of more than 60 young people and students at the 2014 NCDD conference.
And most importantly, we were able to bring on Courtney Breese as Program Director of NCDD! A young leader in the field, Courtney served on the NCDD Board of Directors for three years while working full-time at the Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration. She served as Conference Manager for NCDD’s last two national conferences. We have a wonderful working relationship, as is evidenced in the photo below — and the fact that we survived working on two conferences together!
In addition to all of this, we also distributed leadership to our members in new ways. Members are always involved in planning our conferences, creating content for the website, and so much more, but this year we started engaging some of our members in mini-contracts for critically important work that usually can’t be accomplished by volunteers. We contracted with talented members like Kathryn Thomson, Ben Roberts, Kim Crowley, Chris Berendes, and Kyle Bozentko for report-writing and interviewing tasks.
If you’d like to be on our list of potential contractors and didn’t fill out the “rolodex survey” we conducted earlier this year, it’s not too late. Complete the survey here so we can have a better sense of your skills and interests.
2. We really bumped up our level of professionalism in a lot of ways.
Though NCDD continues to serve everyone who work in dialogue, deliberation, and public engagement, and our website, online events, listservs, membership, and more are accessible and free to all who are interested, we allowed ourselves this year to find new ways to serve our field’s top leaders.
Due to our strong relationship with the Kettering Foundation, and my new role as part-time “Research Deputy” for Kettering, NCDD had the opportunity to convene top leaders in our field both in February at the Kettering Foundation, and in May in DC — in activities surrounding Kettering’s annual Public Voice event (group photo below). We also helped identify leaders in online engagement who were invited to Kettering in July to preview KF’s new deliberation platform Common Ground for Action.
We provided space at our conference for two groups to convene top leaders in transpartisan dialogue and civic infrastructure work. I was torn about using the limited space we had the day before the conference for invitation-only events, as NCDD’s style tends to be more open-to-all, but realized that all conference attendees would benefit if these meetings brought leaders to the conference who might otherwise not attend.
One of our most exciting initiatives in 2014, launched at the fall conference during Grande Lum’s speech, is NCDD’s work with the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service (CRS) to plan meetings between NCDD members and CRS staff at their regional offices across the country. CRS provides mediation, dialogue, and reconciliation services for communities in crisis, and is interested in finding ways to partner with NCDD members who can potentially increase their effectiveness and reach.
We continued offering regular Confab Calls and Tech Tuesday events for our community, with an average of more than 60 participants in each one! And we continued investing time and energy in collaborative projects we feel are important to the future of our field — including Creating Community Solutions (part of the National Dialogue on Mental Health) and its innovative Text Talk Act project, the CommunityMatters Partnership, Participedia, the Dialogue, Deliberation & Public Engagement Certificate Program at KSU, and numerous projects (many of which are still in progress) in partnership with the Kettering Foundation.
3. And of course, much of the year was devoted to putting on a great national conference.
Our 2014 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation was a major highlight of the year, for us and for our 415 attendees. Words cannot express how amazing it feels to not only be in proximity to hundreds of what I consider to be the most important people on the planet — but to have the honor of hosting them, welcoming them, and organizing a one-of-a-kind event for them. Those of you who attended know what I mean when I say that the raw energy and excitement at the conference was palpable.
We may not solve the world’s problems at NCDD conferences, but we replenish each other’s energy for this critically important work, learn about myriad innovations in the field, and develop tons of valuable relationships and partnerships that last for years.
Please take a minute to watch this wonderful video of highlights from the conference…
NCDD’s Creative Director, Andy Fluke, outdid himself this year, designing gorgeous stage banners and signs, and what I think is our best conference guidebook yet.
And if you haven’t yet checked out our report on how the NCDD community thinks we should tackle our field’s biggest barriers to success (a conversation we began at the conference and continued on the listserv and Codigital.com after the event), please do take the time to look it over. The results of this engagement project give us valuable insight into the ideas and actions that resonate most with the dialogue and deliberation community.
You can also learn all about the exciting visual field mapping project we ran leading up to the conference, and see all ten of the gorgeous maps created by the graphic recorders we worked with. And be sure to peek into the conference here on Storify, where you’ll clearly get a sense of the energy, excitement, and absolutely wonderful people who came to the 2014 conference.
In addition to all of this, NCDD continues to grow steadily. Early in the year, we reached the milestone of 2,000 members (I was so excited!), and we’ve since grown to over 2,200 members. Our subscriber list for the monthly NCDD Updates grew to over 34,000 this year.
Does this make you want to support NCDD with an end-of-year gift? We need your support to keep this work going strong — so please think of us as you consider end-of-year donations. It’s super-easy to donate to NCDD using the short form at www.ncdd.org/donate. NCDD is a tax exempt 501(c)(3) organization, so your donations are fully tax deductible.
As always, our NCDD team is working constantly to create even more ways to support our members, and we are pleased to announce a couple new things we’ve recently changed so that we can support you even more!
First, we have officially changed the former “Student” membership category to “Student/Young Professional.” The new membership type will extend the benefits of discounted annual NCDD membership dues to rising members of the D&D community who are no longer students, but who didn’t exactly start rolling in the dough right after finishing school — as well as new professionals who are just starting to make their way in the field.
We recognize that people of many ages consider themselves “young professionals” and that the word “young” is a pretty fluid term, so for the sake of clarity, people who are 30 years old or younger should feel free to join or renew as “Student/Young Professional” members. The fee for this membership type is only $30/year.
This change was informed by the great small-group conversations we had with the student & youth participants during our recent National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, and it is only the first change we intend to make to help the D&D field become more accessible to young people. Keep an eye out for announcements about new ways NCDD will be supporting young people in our field early next year!
Got an idea for what NCDD can do for new or young professionals in our field? Please leave us a suggestion or idea in the comments section! Also, if you notice your membership or some part of our site still uses the “Student” label rather than “Student/Young Professional,” please send a note about it to joy@ncdd.org.
Second, we’ve created a Newest Members Page on our website where you can learn about & connect with folks who’ve recently joined NCDD. We encourage you to check it out at www.ncdd.org/newest-members, and join us in extending a warm welcome to all our new members! And as always, be sure to visit www.ncdd.org/map to see a geographic map of all 2,200+ NCDD members, and use the directory at www.ncdd.org/directory to search the member roll. (And if you’re not yet a member, please join today!)
We have had such an exciting year here at NCDD, and as 2014 closes out, we are looking forward to making 2015 the best year yet for our field! We wish you all a happy and safe holiday season, and a happy new year!
We are excited to congratulate our friends at Penn State University’s McCourtney Institute for Democracy on the recent creation of the Nevins Democracy Leaders program – an innovative program that will expose more young people to “transpartisan” leadership and to the field of dialogue and deliberation. We couldn’t be more pleased to see this happening because the new program has NCDD written all over it.
The McCourtney Institute is a key NCDD organizational member and partner – it was one of the generous All-Star Sponsors of this year’s National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, and it is headed by long-time NCDD member and D&D thought leader John Gastil, who has emceed not one, but two NCDD national conferences. In addition, the gift that made the Nevins Democracy Leaders program possible came from NCDD Sustaining Member David L. Nevins, who is the National Grassroots Coordinator of No Labels, one of the nation’s leading “transpartisan” organizations.
Most exciting for us is the fact that NCDD will be playing a role in the project’s pilot (and likely after that), to solicit applications from D&D organizations that are interested in being matched with top-notch interns from Penn State, and make recommendations to our colleagues at Penn State.
The new program is an exemplar of how our field’s leaders can collaborate to continue bringing “Democracy for the Next Generation” into reality. Take a look at how the program is described in a recent Penn State article:
The Nevins Democracy Leaders program, a signature initiative within The McCourtney Institute for Democracy, based in the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State. The Nevins Leaders program will provide education and training in transpartisan leadership skills by exposing participants to a variety of philosophies, viewpoints and strategies; teaching the tools of critical thinking, deliberation and dialogue; and placing students in unique internship opportunities in democratic and civic renewal.
…Penn State students who serve as Nevins Democracy Leaders will participate in collaborative dialogues, meet with guest lecturers, and complete coursework to learn the skills of civil political discourse and critical thinking necessary for a problem-solving approach to governance and citizenship. Additionally, every Leader will gain practical experience, working as an intern with organizations and individuals, inside and outside government, that share a commitment to improving American politics such as the Aspen Institute, No Labels, or the Jefferson Center for New Democratic Processes. Each year, Leaders who have returned from their internships will share their experiences with the new group of students joining the program.
Certainly the new program will take time to start up, but we encourage our members looking for innovative solutions to our nation’s “wicked problems” and partisan gridlock to keep it mind because creating partnerships with leaders tackling these issues in the coming years will be of particular interest for the Nevins program:
John Gastil, director of The McCourtney Institute for Democracy, said, ”…The program will connect Penn State with leaders across the country who want to tackle the most vexing problems we face in society by working across party lines and bringing together people of diverse backgrounds to work together to find common ground and realistic solutions.”
With a program headed by such wonderful D&D leaders advancing key concepts and ideas from our field, we can’t wait to see how the Nevins Democracy Leaders program develops.
Congratulations to John, David, and the McCourtney Institute for Democracy on this wonderful step forward for yourselves and our field! We at NCDD are excited to continue working with you and the new young leaders you will surely be cultivating.
NCDD has completed a report on the October 2014 engagement project focused on addressing barriers in our field. This project was launched on the second day of the 2014 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, where during a plenary session our 415 attendees launched discussions about four barriers to the dialogue and deliberation community’s success:
How might we overcome the lack of trust in our Democracy, our leaders, and in one another?
How might we make our D&D work more equitable, inclusive and empowering?
How might we more clearly delineate our field of practice for ourselves and those we seek to serve?
How might we eliminate structural barriers in our democratic systems?
The results of this engagement project give us valuable insight into the ideas and actions that resonate most with the dialogue and deliberation community. This data can help NCDD and others devise clearer paths forward in our attempts to overcome our field’s greatest challenges.
The four barrier “areas” were identified by looking through the results of an earlier engagement project we ran on Codigital.com that was focused on the question “What do you want to see happen when our field comes together at NCDD 2014?”
Conference attendees were encouraged to discuss these barriers to effective dialogue and deliberation work, and to identify new and existing strategies for overcoming them. We asked a note taker from each table to enter the top three “leading edge solutions” from their group under the relevant barriers on new pages we created on Codigital.
The day after the conference concluded, an email invitation was sent to all conference attendees as well as all members of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation — whether they attended the conference or not — inviting them to Codigital to identify existing strategies and co-create new strategies for overcoming persistent barriers to effective dialogue and deliberation work. Users were invited to add new ideas, vote on ideas to prioritize them, suggest edits to the ideas, and vote to resolve edits as a group.
Thank you to James Carr for donating his time and software to NCDD once again. Codigital is a dream to work in, and we really appreciate James’ generous support. James can be reached at james@codigital.com.
For the third year now, our partners with the National Issues Forums Institute are accepting applications for grants from the Taylor L. Willingham Legacy Fund. The $500-$1,000 grants are intended to honor the legacy of Taylor Willingham and her contributions to the field of deliberative democracy by supporting projects in the field, and we highly encourage NCDD members to apply for a grant or to donate to the fund.
You can download a PDF of the application form by clicking here, and you can learn more about Taylor and make a donation to her legacy fund by clicking here. Applications are due on December 31st, 2014 so make sure you apply before getting swept up in the holiday season!
John Backman for moderating the NCDD Discussion list — a nuanced task I didn’t think I’d ever be able to let go of!
One of our most exciting initiatives in 2014, launched at the fall conference during Grande Lum’s speech, is NCDD’s 
First, we have officially changed the former “Student” membership category to “Student/Young Professional.” The new membership type will extend the benefits of discounted annual NCDD membership dues to rising members of the D&D community who are no longer students, but who didn’t exactly start rolling in the dough right after finishing school — as well as new professionals who are just starting to make their way in the field.
Got an idea for what NCDD can do for new or young professionals in our field? Please leave us a suggestion or idea in the comments section! Also, if you notice your membership or some part of our site still uses the “Student” label rather than “Student/Young Professional,” please send a note about it to 
How might we overcome the lack of trust in our Democracy, our leaders, and in one another?
Conference attendees were encouraged to discuss these barriers to effective dialogue and deliberation work, and to identify new and existing strategies for overcoming them. We asked a note taker from each table to enter the top three “leading edge solutions” from their group under the relevant barriers on new pages we created on Codigital.