Yesterday, we shared with you our most recent NCDD champions and if you are looking to join ranks with these incredible people… well, great news! You still can support NCDD as we launch our end-of-the-year fundraiser!
This year marks the sweet 16th birthday of NCDD, which provides us a great time to reflect and be intentional in our vision for the future. The 2018 National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation was a phenomenal experience that gave us inspiration, connection, and a drive to continue to build this Coalition. While this was our largest and most diverse conference yet, there is still so much room to grow and do better – and we are excited to rise to that challenge.
We believe in the power of the collective. Since 2002, NCDD has served as a hub, resource clearinghouse, and facilitative leader for the dialogue and deliberation community. Together, we have achieved extraordinary connection and progress across our field and beyond.
Our whole purpose is to support the work you all are doing and create space for the D&D field to flourish. Which is why we encourage our members’ active participation in this co-created organization, that is NCDD. So if you haven’t already, we invite you to join NCDD as a member! There are a lot of fantastic benefits to being a member, like heightened visibility in a robust network, better access to jobs & internships, discounts on our conferences and with some member organizations (the membership often pays for itself with the discounts alone), and more!
As we move into the new year, we are turning to our community to help ensure that NCDD remains strong to continue to serve in these valuable roles and to help keep this network connected. An honest fact is it’s really tough for organizations like NCDD to fundraise and be sustainable because it is a network of organizations, practitioners, and volunteers. Most of the members understandably have to focus on their own organizations and efforts. But networks like NCDD are critical to build a community of practice and grow the field.
In this light, we are asking you to contribute to the organization’s end of year fund drive. It begins today and will run through the first few days of 2019. Our goal is $15,000 and will greatly help NCDD start 2019 off on the right foot.
We hope you’ll consider NCDD’s accomplishments and potential and then follow this link, www.ncdd.org/donate/2018-funddrive to support the work we’re all committed to…
- NCDD supports and connects the growing dialogue and deliberation community — our conferences, listservs, blogs, forums, and resources offer a unique and valuable way to expand and enhance the work of practitioners as they engage and mobilize people across partisan, ethnic, and other divides.
- We have created cross-sector partnerships with journalists, librarians, museums, and more, in order to expand D&D beyond the traditional field and make it more accessible.
- Our Blog, where we keep you updated on some of the most important happenings and opportunities in our field, and our Resource Center, which boasts over 3,100 discussion guides, videos, evaluation tools, reports, books, and other tools.
- The NCDD site improves the wider public access to D&D through our Beginner’s Guide, our Engagement Streams Framework, the 2010 Resource Guide on Public Engagement, and other essential resources.
- Building the Emerging Leaders Program to help cultivate the next generation of leaders in dialogue & deliberation.
- And more!
Our Vision
With this end-of-the-year fundraising drive, we have many exciting goals in mind that we’d like to share with you. Please let us know in the comments section below what are your visions for NCDD in the coming year…
- “More-time” staff – right now, the reality is that Courtney, Sandy, Joy, and I run this organization part-time while also working other jobs to financially support ourselves (ah, the nonprofit reality!). We’d like to be able to focus more of our energies on NCDD and continue to build this organization to be the robust network that we envision it to be.
- More staff – we hope to be able to bring on more staff to NCDD and have folks dedicated to various parts of our programming that we wish we had more energy to focus on. A big part of this is recognizing that we need to expand the diversity of NCDD staff, which is something we are working to be intentional about changing.
- New website – there is SO MUCH excellent content on the NCDD site and we are hoping to raise funds to revamp the website completely. With all the great resources and happenings on the blog, the site can be a bit clunky to get through, so we hope to hire someone to create a beautiful and more streamlined website in the effort to continue to make D&D accessible and be of better service to you!
- Emerging Leaders Initiative Program – if our field is to continue to survive, we need to invest in those who will be leading the field in the future. The ELI program seeks to foster the next gen in D&D and increase the on-ramps into this field. We would love to bring on someone dedicated to driving this program!
- NCDD podcast – a wonderful project that we’d love to have more capacity to do. We envision monthly podcasts on the hottest D&D subjects and illuminating the work of leaders and innovators in the field.
- Building the Coalition – just like in organizing, NCDD would love the ability to do some deep base building, particularly in the areas of the country we need to build our network. We know there are a lot more practitioners to connect with, and the more folks doing this work that we can bring in, the better and stronger our Coalition will be!
If you believe in NCDD’s mission and find value in the resources, connections, and opportunities we provide, we urge you to show your support by making a donation during our fund drive. All contributions are welcome, whether they are $15 or $1,000. And your contributions are tax deductible! Please share the fund drive with your networks and consider asking your favorite angel donor to contribute as well. Help us reach our $15,000 goal, and thank you so much, in advance, for supporting NCDD!
NCDD envisions a future in which all people–regardless of income, position, background or education–are able to engage regularly in lively, thoughtful, and challenging discussions about what really matters to them, in ways that have a positive impact on their lives and their world. We envision a society in which systems and structures support and advance inclusive, constructive, dialogue and deliberation.
For sixteen years, NCDD has worked hard to gather visionaries and practitioners dedicated to raising the quality of discourse across many key issues and questions. Many of you have been a part of that – and we’re grateful for you!
Lots of gratitude is in store for those who helped make #NCDD2018 the dynamic event that it was! An immense THANK YOU to our conference sponsors (and D&D champions) for your generous support – you truly help drive this work and this field forward, and we couldn’t do this without you!
While the conference planning team worked hard to design a great event… it’s thanks to our fantastic attendees who really brought #NCDD2018 to life! It was wonderful to see so many familiar faces and also meet lots of new folks who have been doing this work (many of whom were first-timers to NCDD conferences!). It’s exciting to say that with over 450 attendees – #NCDD2018 was our largest event yet!
We hope these examples evoke excitement for the D&D community (and for the upcoming conference)! In true NCDD form, we want to engage this community of innovators in discussing how we build capacity for D&D in more communities and design action steps to make this happen moving forward. How have you succeeded in building capacity for engagement in the communities you serve? What do you think the next innovations might look like for dialogue, deliberation, and engagement? What do we need to discuss and think about together as a field, in order to succeed in broadening the use of D&D?
Over 90 participants tuned in to learn more about Konveio and how we plan to use the platform to bring the conference guidebook to life for #NCDD2018. Because NCDD conferences are highly engaging experiences, and we are always seeking new ways to bring in new tools and processes, that’s why we teamed up with Konveio to enrich the experience of conference attendees with this interactive option of the guidebook (in addition to the hardcopy one we will provide in each participants’ tote bag when you arrive).
Here’s what you need to know: 
Do not miss the plenaries! Our opening plenary will feature “lightning talks” by civic innovators to spark inspiration and will include a networking activity to assist every attendee with identifying goals for the conference and beyond. On Saturday and Sunday, we will be focusing the plenaries almost exclusively on connecting, by using Open Space and Pro Action Cafe, respectively, for folks to propose the topics and ideas they most want to connect with others about!