From Civil Society to Civil Investing, and Beyond (Connections 2015)

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The four-page article, From Civil Society to Civil Investing, and Beyond, by John Dedrick was published Fall 2015 in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter, “Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research”. Dedrick reviews the chronology of civil philanthropy, broken down throughout five distinct time periods between 1989 through present day. He discusses how major events during these time periods shaped how organized philanthropy responded and in-turn shaped the theory and practice of citizen-centered politics. Below is an excerpt from the article. Connections 2015 is available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

In 2003, Kettering and the Pew Partnership agreed to convene a series of dialogues that would include both veterans of the civil investing seminars and members of the communities that had worked with the partnership.

These conversations underscored themes from the work of Kettering and the Pew Partnership with communities and helped to clarify and consolidate what had been learned about community resiliency from the civil investing work. Importantly, the dialogues with the Pew Partnership illustrated that strong democratic practice is a central and explicit theme in community problem solving. While the conversations did not transform practices of the philanthropic sector at the time, new approaches to grantmaking that focus on building community as well as rebuilding communities, particularly among public sector and local funders, have emerged. Scott London’s Investing in Public Life provides an insightful analysis of dialogues.

After Hurricane Katrina and the Great Recession (2005-2015)
In late summer 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. And once again, many in philanthropy asked: “What are our priorities?” Three years later, in 2008, the bottom fell out of the US economy. In the period between these two events, resilience and community capacity became increasingly central themes for grantmakers. The Great Recession has had another effect as well, which was to resurface a set of questions about what philanthropy should be accountable for.

Kettering’s response to these developments has been multi-pronged. On questions of philanthropy’s role in community capacity, KF program officers Debi Witte and Derek Barker began convening meetings with community-based foundations, which led to a series of research collaborations with CFLeads, Philanthropy Northwest, and Grassroots Grantmakers. An occasional paper by Humboldt Area Foundation executive director Peter Pennekamp, Philanthropy and the Regeneration of Community Democracy, was one product from these exchanges. Kettering also worked with Public Agenda on research into accountability, reported in Don’t Count Us Out. Work with Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE) resulted in Philanthropy and the Limits of Accountability as well as an article by PACE executive director Chris Gates and KF program officer Brad Rourke in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. And continuing the longstanding practice of working with foundation associations, KF program officer Carolyn Farrow-Garland joined the board of Grassroots Grantmakers, while I was invited to join the PACE board.

Finally, former Kettering board member Daniel Kemmis, who was then serving on the board of Philanthropy Northwest, began organizing exchanges on a range of topics from philanthropy’s role in strengthening community-focused nonprofits to enduring questions about the role of philanthropy in American democracy and its accountability to the public. One product of this work is Kemmis’ working paper, Philanthropy and the Renewal of Democracy: Is It Time to Step Up Our Game?

Summary Findings
What have we learned from this work? Five top-line findings head the list:

-Civil investing is actually investing. It’s philanthropic work that’s aimed at building and strengthening democracy.
-Building a nonprofit infrastructure is not the same as creating civic capacity. These may be related, but they are not the same.
-Investing in the capacities of community to do public work is labor and time intensive. It’s deeply relational and requires a long-term commitment.
-Communications and language are critical, and we don’t have a common language or effective communication strategy for this work.
-Accountability matters, but it’s about much more than metrics.

About Kettering Foundation and Connections
The Kettering Foundation is a nonprofit operating foundation rooted in the American tradition of cooperative research. Kettering’s primary research question is, what does it take to make democracy work as it should? Kettering’s research is distinctive because it is conducted from the perspective of citizens and focuses on what people can do collectively to address problems affecting their lives, their communities, and their nation.

Each issue of this annual newsletter focuses on a particular area of Kettering’s research. The 2015 issue, edited by Kettering program officer Melinda Gilmore and director of communications David Holwerk, focuses on our yearlong review of Kettering’s research over time.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Dedrick_2015.pdf

From Civil Society to Civil Investing, and Beyond (Connections 2015)

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

From the article…

Summary Findings
What have we learned from this work? Five top-line findings head the list:

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Dedrick_2015.pdf

Listening for, and Finding, a Public Voice (Connections 2015)

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The four-page article, Listening for, and Finding, a Public Voice by Bob Daley was published Fall 2015 in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter, “Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research”.

The article describes how the design of deliberative democracy by David Mathews, president of Kettering Foundation, and Daniel Yankelovich, president of Public Agenda; sought to address what it meant to have “a public voice”. From this inquiry came a series of deliberative forums around some of the more important current issues, and the results were then shared with policymakers. Kettering Foundation created, A Public Voice, a nation-wide broadcast that would act as the annual report of these deliberative forums, which first aired April 1991 and continues to today. Below is an excerpt from the article. Connections 2015 is available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

The question was: If the public doesn’t offer infallible wisdom for policymakers, what does it offer? The exchange between Henry and Cheney marked the beginning of the foundation’s inquiry into a public voice—not, mind you, the public voice, but a public voice—that continues today.

In his 2012 book, Voice and Judgment: The Practice of Public Politics, Kettering Foundation senior associate Bob Kingston said researchers wanted “to learn more clearly how the public might find and exert its will in shaping its communities and directing its nation (which sometimes seems, paradoxically, more oligarchy than democracy).”

The research plan included a series of deliberative forums held throughout the country on urgent national issues followed by reporting outcomes to policymakers…

…

In 1990, it was suggested, Kettering could build NIF’s influence in Washington, and its underlying vision of politics, through a widely distributed, annual report of the forums not much different from the National Town Meetings.

To envision the celebration’s annual national town meeting as a program televised from coast to coast was an incremental step forward. Kettering’s goal was to reach political and media leadership with a message about deliberative democracy and the public voice. To attract congressional attention, the reasoning went, NIF had to be of interest to a significant public audience in congressional districts.

The best way to ensure congressional attention to a public voice, it was felt, was to have congressional participation in the video. The second best way, it was further felt, was to ensure that the discussion was widely seen by elected officials’ constituents.

After reviewing several options, public television—considered to command a reasonable, national audience—was targeted. The foundation’s senior associate Bob Kingston was executive producer; Milton Hoffman, experienced in public affairs, public television programs, was the producer; and senior associate Diane Eisenberg handled distribution.

A Public Voice ’91, a one-hour public affairs television program was taped on April 15, 1991, at the National Press Club. It was the first time A Public Voice was used formally to describe forum outcomes. Bob Kingston was the moderator. Four members of Congress, four members of the press, and four members of the public joined him.

By September 5, 1991, 123 public television stations and 49 cable systems had broadcast the program and it was being distributed by community colleges to their local public access channels. The program continued to be produced in much the same format as the first one from 1991 through 2007. At its peak, A Public Voice was broadcast by nearly 300 public television stations across the country every year.

The program was seen as the central thrust in the foundation’s campaign to bring a new sense of politics to the consideration of the nation’s political and media leadership. The video had a single purpose: to show that there is something we can call “a public voice” on complex and troubling policy matters. And this public voice is significantly different from the debate on these issues as it is recorded in the media and significantly different from the debate “as we hear it through the mouths of political leaders.”

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Daley_2015.pdf

Public Education as Community Work (Connections 2015)

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The four-page article, Public Education as Community Work, by Connie Crockett, Phillip D. Lurie, and Randall Nielsen was published Fall 2015 in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter,“Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research”. The three authors describe the history of how Kettering has studied the politics of education and reveal some of the challenges faced in education today.

In the article, the authors discuss how the Foundation’s founder, Charles F. Kettering had been aware from the beginning how the education of youth and the way in which public education is shaped by its community, was vital for true democracy. The challenges that Kettering identified in the 20’s, that the community must actively take part in shaping education in order for democracy to continue, are still present today. Below is an excerpt from the article. You can find Connections 2015 available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

Phil Lurie: Today, it is widely recognized that people are frustrated by the lack of influence they have on the public schools. However, there seems to be little recognition of the potential that exists in the resources outside of schools that could reinforce the work of schooling.

Randall Nielsen: That is what makes the study of the politics of education such a vital part of the foundation’s overarching study of how to make democracy work as it should. The challenges that people face in bringing their collective resources to complementary work in the education of youth are fundamental problems of democracy.

PL: In public policy, and in studies of education, the challenge remains quite narrowly defined. Generally the problem is seen as understanding how people can be more influential in the administration of schools.

Connie Crockett: And how to get people to support the schools, somewhat without question. It is interesting to recall that the foundation’s alternative emphasis on the whole picture of an educating ecology emerged pretty early on at Kettering.

…

CC: Again, the challenge begins with seeing it as a problem of democracy, not a problem of administration of schooling. The public in Mathews’ 1996 book referred not simply to people living in a particular place, but rather to a diverse body of people willing and able to recognize and act on shared concerns. In so doing, they become a responsible public, in which people hold one another accountable to a covenant that has been legitimately decided upon. Our focus on democracy suggests that citizens need to engage one another in the fundamental challenge of choosing “how do we want to educate our youth?” This is where we remain, and we are still looking for innovators and experimenters.

The Current Focus
RN: The foundation’s studies remain focused on the implications of a simple premise. Young people are educated through experiences that occur inside and outside of schools. The educational capacity of a community is defined by the ability to put the mélange of educational resources to work in complementary ways. We explore the governance of educational resources as a fundamental challenge of democratic citizenship.

PL: The problem is that education remains widely seen as the singular responsibility of schools and professionals. Critical roles citizens play and need to play go unrecognized by professionals and nonprofessionals. As education has become schooling, the non-school educational assets in communities have largely disappeared from the naming and framing of public choices about issues that affect the education of youth. Thus professional educators have detached the governance of schools from the governance of the myriad non-school activities that critically affect educational outcomes. Non-school activities remain as an educational force, but they are not often the subject of citizento-citizen judgment and innovation.

RN: The resulting atrophy of educational citizenship—the shared sense that communities of people have the responsibility and power to shape the education of their youth—weakens educational outcomes and reduces public confidence in school institutions. It also weakens the popular sense of the democratic capacity to shape the futures of children. That is a fundamental threat to democracy itself.

PL: The research is now organized into two complementary areas, both studying innovations in practice. One focuses on showing the potential for the education that occurs outside of schools. The other explores way that people can bring the governance of public schooling into the larger context of the governance of all educational resources.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Crockett-Lurie-Nielsen_2015.pdf

NCDD’s 2015 Year in Review

Posted on January 29, 2016 by Sandy Heierbacher

When a new year begins, we naturally tend to reflect back on the previous year. As we look back on 2015, it’s clear that it was quite a year for NCDD, and it’s inspiring to look back and see all that’s happened.

The year of 2015 was one of many transitions. NCDD had some personnel changes as we said a fond farewell to our former Creative Director Andy Fluke and gave a warm welcome to our new Resource Curator and Social Media Coordinator Keiva Hummel (pictured at left). We also brought Ellie Boynton on board to help maintain NCDD’s website.

In the midst of these transitions, I also made a personal transition with a move from rural Pennsylvania to Boston, moving NCDD headquarters (my home office!) closer to hundreds of our members in the process.

GrandeLum-NextStepBubble-border NCDD also had a very dynamic year in 2015 in terms of programs and projects. 2015 saw the launch of our informal partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service, which came out of CRS Director Grande Lum’s involvement in our 2014 national conference. Meetings were held between Community Relations Service leaders and NCDD members in Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Kansas City, New York, Dallas, and Seattle, and a few more are still in the works. The meetings were designed to be informal networking and information-exchange events, and next steps have emerged organically from the events such as a great new collaboration in Chicago, with more on the way.

RoshanPic2014 At this time last year, we began a scoping project in which we had Roshan Bliss, NCDD’s Student & Youth Outreach Coordinator for the 2014 conference (and our fearless Blog Curator!; pictured at left), conduct an online youth survey, seek feedback from our network about the role of young people in the D&D field, and host a few “focus group” calls with younger NCDDers in an effort to frame a possible NCDD youth initiative. The results gave us some good insights into how NCDD can support young people and folks who are new to the field, and will form the basis of what a Youth Program we’ll be launching this year.

Our regular Tech Tuesday and Confab Calls continued to thrive in 2015 under the coordination of our wonderful Program Director Courtney Breese. As always, you can check out the archives of the confabs at www.ncdd.org/confabs and watch the Tech Tuesday videos at www.ncdd.org/tech-tuesdays.

Our Confab Calls covered such topics as how brain science supports constructive dialogue and deliberation, ethics for facilitators, and strategies for handling latecomers in public engagement programs and disruptors at public engagement events. We talked with NCDD members Pete Peterson (about his experience running for CA Secretary of State on a “civic engagement” platform), Matt Leighninger and Tina Nabatchi (about their great new book Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy), and John Gastil (about the opportunity for organizations to host a fellow as part of the new Nevins Democracy Leaders Program).

And our Tech Tuesday events, which are designed to help practitioners stay on top of new opportunities and developments in the online engagement realm, featured innovative tools like Consider.it, Bang the Table, QiqoChat, and Common Ground for Action. In all, we served 450 people through our online events in 2015.

2015 also saw the launch of a new partnership between NCDD and the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State to create infrastructure that will bring more young people into the D&D field. The Nevins Democracy Leaders program piloted its first two fellowship placements in 2015 with Everyday Democracy and No Labels, and we are thrilled that 2016 will see nearly two dozen bright D&D-trained students placed with leading organizations in our field in fully funded fellowship positions.

In 2015, I continued to work very closely with the Kettering Foundation, in my role as Research Deputy and otherwise. KF’s president David Mathews took the time to write a special message to the NCDD community about the Kettering-sign-outlined historic opportunity we have right now to “find the public voice that’s missing.” I worked particularly closely on Kettering’s annual A Public Voice event at the National Press Club. Also be on the lookout for a fascinating report on the strategies that public engagement practitioners use to develop productive relationships with public officials over time — a collaboration between NCDD, Kettering, and the Jefferson Center.

As we look forward to the coming year, we hope for more and more opportunities like our partnerships with the Kettering Foundation, the McCourtney Institute at Penn State, and the US DOJ Community Relations Service — opportunities that allow us to utilize the infrastructure we’ve built up to serve the broader field. We look forward to launching our youth program, distributing new materials, continuing to provide quality online programming for our community, and of course, hosting the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation this October in Boston, MA!!!

NCDD’s work is funded mostly by members’ dues and small donations. If you want to support all of the great work we do, please consider making a tax-deductible donation by visiting www.ncdd.org/donate or renewing or upgrading your membership at www.ncdd.org/renew.

We look forward to enjoying the coming year with all of you, no doubt feeling constantly inspired by the important, innovative work you all are doing.

Kettering’s Evolving Understanding- and my Own (Connections 2015)

Posted on January 28, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

This three-page article, Kettering’s Evolving Understanding- and my Own: Reflections on Three Decades of Involvement with Democracy and the Foundation that Studies What It Takes to Make It Work as It Should, by Ray Minor, was published Fall 2015 in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter,“Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research”. Minor shares his experience working with Kettering for the last thirty years and how KF’s research has helped to strengthen the democratic process.

He tells of the network of individuals who started the Birmingham National Issues Forums, which would later become the National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI). Then goes on to tell of the effort to develop civic capacity in Alabama, which would lead to a series of forums that would shape the David Mathews Center for Civic Life. Below is an excerpt from the article. Connections 2015 is available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

I learned over time that Kettering studies democracy from a citizen-centered perspective—the sense that ordinary citizens desire to control their daily lives and that this desire defines what the foundation means by “democracy.” The foundation’s primary research question—what does it take to make democracy work as it should?—derives from this idea and the underlying assumption that democracy is working as it should when citizens “self-rule.”

Democratizing Alabama
In the early 1980s, when I first became involved in this work, a broad network of individuals in Birmingham, Alabama, was convened by the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Center for Urban Affairs and supported by the UAB Office of Student Affairs. This group was on the ground floor of what later became the National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI). The core group of individuals leading this effort included Odessa Woolfolk, Rebecca Falkenberry, Wanda Madison Minor, Peggy Sparks, and myself. Wanda Minor organized this group after several conversations with David Mathews in 1982. This group operated under the name Birmingham National Issues Forums (BNIF) and annually convened a series of forums on national issues with hundreds of citizens and many organizations representing a cross-section of the community.

…

A Center Grows in Alabama
Still intrigued by the work of the Kettering Foundation, I worked with Bob McKenzie and Cathy Randall to found the Alabama Center for Civic Life, a 501(c) (3), nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, which was incorporated and received tax-exempt status in 2005. The center’s purpose is to conduct research and training on citizenship, democracy, governance, and democratic practices. Since Mathews was the inspiration for establishing the center, in 2008, it was renamed the David Mathews Center for Civic Life. The center was established on the premise that democracy works best when enlightened citizens engage in the affairs of their towns, cities, states, and nations. A small group of Alabamians decided to fill a void in the public sector by establishing an organization that would equip citizens with the skills and knowledge necessary for engaging in public life.

…

Looking back, I have come to realize that Kettering’s work is important for several reasons pertaining to strengthening democracy. Perhaps paramount among the others, Kettering’s focus on the six democratic practices provides a lens through which citizens from all parts of the world can come to see themselves as key actors on public problems and see connections between their work as citizens and the work of people from widely differing circumstances. This recognition of the work of citizens by citizens themselves may well be Kettering’s most important contribution to democratic life.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn.

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Minor_2015.pdf

From Public Policy Institutes to Centers for Public Life: Transforming People and Communities (Connections 2015)

Posted on January 25, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The six-page article, From Public Policy Institutes to Centers for Public Life: Transforming People and Communities by Alice Diebel, was published Fall 2015 in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter,“Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research”.

Diebel shares how Kettering’s research fueled the development of issues guides to be used in the National Issues Forums and ultimately, improve the ways that democracy works. She shares the beginning of the forums as Public Policy Institutes (PPIs) and how they transformed into a new approach, Centers for Public Life. Read more an excerpt from the article below or find it in full on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

In 2010, we called on four very experienced PPI directors to help us design a new approach to the PPI experience. We were going to work to understand deliberative politics, not just public policy. Martín Carcasson, Betty Knighton, Alberto Olivas, and David Procter joined me and my colleague, Kettering program officer Randy Nielsen, in creating a new design for a research-oriented exchange.

The idea of “research exchange” also reflected a shift for Kettering. Moving from the language of learning that occurs in workshops with a curriculum toward shared learning in exchange among mutually interested parties was a shift the foundation made that paralleled the change in our approach to PPIs. The research exchange creates the space to delve more deeply into the context of democratic, public deliberative politics and to learn along with new organizations beginning to use NIF to plan and design approaches to improve all of the politics and practices in the places in which they work. As a result, the design of the exchanges with new centers continues to change and develop along with the centers

How could we learn more about the challenges of building more democratic communities?

…

PPI commitments in the past focused primarily on holding forums. Commitments in the centers’ exchanges, however, focused on building relationships for democratic practice and change. Creating an identity as a center with a clear mission is part of the work. Structuring deliberative frameworks and forums involving key publics meant they had to look beyond civic education or individual change and instead work toward addressing difficult problems in real settings.

The first centers for public life cohort started in February 2011, so the experiment with the concept of centers is still quite new. Many of the organizations are young enough that their impacts aren’t as apparent as those with a 20-year history. However, we have a few insights from this short period of time. These insights speak more to the relationship with Kettering in a “learning exchange” than to the direct impacts they are having.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn.

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Diebel_2015.pdf

A Treasure Chest About to Open (Connection 2015)

Posted on January 20, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

This brief two-page article, A Treasure Chest About to Open by Nicholas A. Felts was published in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter,“Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research” in the fall of 2015. Felts shares some of the history of National Issues Forums, one of the most valuable assets to come from the forums, and reveals an exciting project soon to be released from Kettering.

NIF has been running for 30 years, making it one of the longest running citizen-to-citizen public engagement experiences. Over the last three decades, Kettering has stored all the data collected from the forums, including one of the most valuable aspects- all of the questionnaire responses. After years of laboring, Kettering will soon have a fully functional digital archive of all the data from the NIF forums! Below is an excerpt from the article. Connections 2015 is available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

One constant focus of the NIF questionnaires, though, is also one of their most uniquely valuable features. From the very beginning, each NIF questionnaire has always asked questions designed to capture which policy trade-offs citizens can and cannot accept. For example, a recent NIF questionnaire asked whether “Congress should raise the age of eligibility for Medicare to 67, EVEN IF that means seniors under 67 would have to get health insurance on their own or from an employer.”

Standard public opinion surveys do not usually ask questions that force citizens to reckon with the negative aspects of even their most preferred courses of action. NIF questionnaires have always done this and they are richer for it, because questions like this reveal what the public will do when push comes to shove. As someone who has both completed an NIF questionnaire and been in the room when others have done so, I know that participants usually note how difficult the questions are. In standard survey research, complaints about difficult questions are a glaring red flag and usually indicate that the wording of the question is unclear or confusing. However, in the NIF context, comments like this about the “even if” questions are a clear sign that participants are really thinking through an issue and grappling with all its complexities.

In a larger sense, the information that NIF questionnaires capture differs from that of standard surveys, even on the same topic. Standard surveys are generally administered to a randomly selected collection of individuals so the results will be representative of some larger population of interest. By contrast, those who complete NIF questionnaires are not randomly selected and, as a result, the opinions gathered from them are not necessarily representative of the larger population. For some, this lack of representativeness is a cause to dismiss information garnered from NIF questionnaires. However, NIF questionnaires are unrepresentative in the best possible sense. While they cannot tell us how the population as a whole feels about an issue, NIF questionnaires can tell us a great deal about how a concerned and informed subset of the population feels about an issue after deliberating with a group of their peers. NIF participants complete questionnaires after having the chance to think about, read about, and deliberate together about an issue. In this sense, NIF questionnaires provide a picture of public thinking that is truly public and truly thoughtful.

…

After several years of work and the help of an army of Ohio State University research assistants, we are now on the cusp of having a fully functional digital archive of all things NIF. This archive will contain data from the questionnaires described above, as well as copies of forum recordings, starter tapes, issue guides, and much more. ]

What questions can we ask of this information to help us better understand how issues have been named and framed for public deliberation? Moreover, what can the stories revealed by the NIF questionnaires tell us about the nature of public judgment on the shared problems we all face?

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn.

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Felts_2015.pdf

The Issue Guide and the Issue Forum: Political Inventions

Posted on January 14, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

This three-page article, The Issue Guide and the Issue Forum: Political Inventions, by Brad Rourke was published in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter, “Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research” in the fall of 2015. In the article, Rourke discusses the relationship between Kettering’s research and the National Issues Forums; how the Foundation’s research lead to the creation of NIFI’s issue guides, which were put into practice within the forums. What emerged was a better understanding of how individuals wrestled with their most wicked problems on the community level, and the realization that public deliberation is necessary for true democracy. Below is an excerpt from the article and you can download the full Connections newsletter for free on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

The way issues typically get presented on a policy level are manifestly different from how citizens see those same issues. Citizens name issues differently, and these re-namings give rise to different options for action—re-framings. For example, citizens may not think about an “achievement gap” that professional educators must address, but may instead worry about why different kids seem to get different results for reasons that don’t seem fair. The latter formulation of the problem is one in which citizens may see themselves having a role. The options for addressing the problem will be different and are likely to contain much more that can be done on the level of community as opposed to institutionally. And so a barber may think to provide haircuts free of charge to children, if they will read aloud while he cuts. A community-level institution thus can be seen as one of the many actors that can productively be involved in the shared enterprise of educating local young people.

Kettering research increasingly shows that citizens see issues in terms of things that are deeply valuable to them and that wicked problems involve tensions The Issue Guide and the Issue Forum: Political Inventions between these things. Evolution has wired humans to seek security, for instance, and has also wired them to seek freedom to act. The more of one that we pursue, the less we have of the other. An effective issue framework will make these tensions clear.

This way of framing issues is sometimes (often) at odds with the way these same issues are framed in policy discourse. It is disruptive. This can pose difficulties when it comes time to demonstrate the value of public deliberation to policymakers. Kettering is experimenting with various ways of doing this as a part of its A Public Voice initiatives, an experiment to see how we might productively involve policymakers in developing issue frameworks that are rooted in public research and conducive to public deliberation.

Another, newer experiment with issue guides is just beginning. NIF issue guides are national in scope and, even though they are intended for use in communities, there can be problems getting community-based traction to hold forums. The facts on the ground or the potential actors may be slightly different. Or there may be other differences between how an issue looks locally and how it might look on a more national basis. We are beginning to experiment with changes in how we present issue guides to make them more easily “customizable” to local communities while at the same time maintaining the aspects that make them useful as self-starters

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn.

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Rourke_2015.pdf

The Issue Guide and the Issue Forum: Political Inventions (Connections 2015)

Posted on January 14, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

From the article…

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn.

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Rourke_2015.pdf

Civic Studies

An intellectual community of researchers and practitioners dedicated to building the emerging field of civic studies

Category Archives: Kettering Foundation

From Civil Society to Civil Investing, and Beyond (Connections 2015)

From Civil Society to Civil Investing, and Beyond (Connections 2015)

Listening for, and Finding, a Public Voice (Connections 2015)

Public Education as Community Work (Connections 2015)

NCDD’s 2015 Year in Review

Kettering’s Evolving Understanding- and my Own (Connections 2015)

From Public Policy Institutes to Centers for Public Life: Transforming People and Communities (Connections 2015)

A Treasure Chest About to Open (Connection 2015)

The Issue Guide and the Issue Forum: Political Inventions

The Issue Guide and the Issue Forum: Political Inventions (Connections 2015)