Category Archives: NCDD News

Participate in NCDD’s Field-Wide Inventory!

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What if we knew how many dialogue and deliberation events took place in a typical year? (Or at least had SOME way to guess!) What if we had a sense of which approaches people in the D&D community specialized in and had training in? What if we had a sense of when practitioners and organizations in our field were more likely to collaborate with their peers?

NCDD2012-wFranKorten-borderNCDD’s Inventory Survey was designed to get answers to these questions and more, and we invite you to participate! The results will be shared with our partner in this project, the Kettering Foundation, and will be summarized and distributed widely in the field.

It is our hope to also use some of this data to create a broad-based map of facilitators and organizations, searchable by location, approach used, and issues you specialize in. This map is part of our strategy to connect more people to the facilitation expertise they need, much more quickly than is possible today. We believe that now, more than ever, the skills of dialogue and deliberation are needed to address pressing issues in communities across the country, often in a very quick time frame.

If you or your organization does any kind of dialogue or deliberation work, we ask that you take the time to complete this survey as soon as possible. It should only take you 15 minutes or less to complete and is NOT limited to members of the NCDD community or those based only in the U.S.

Let’s see what we can learn about this vital field!

Become a Sponsor of NCDD 2016 Today!

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NCDD is working hard on putting together our 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation this October 14-16 in the Boston metro area. It’s shaping up to be our best conference yet, and like all of our conferences, NCDD 2016 will be a great opportunity to gain recognition while supporting the field by becoming a conference sponsor!

Looking to heighten the profile of your organization and work in the field? Being a sponsor is a great way to do it! NCDD conferences regularly bring together over 400 of the most active, thoughtful, and influential people in public engagement and group process work across the U.S. and Canada (plus practitioners from around the world), and being a sponsor can help your organization can reach them all.

Being an All-Star Sponsor ($3000), Co-Sponsor ($2000) or Partner ($1000) will earn you name recognition with potential clients, provide months of PR, and build respect and good will for your organization every time we proudly acknowledge your support as we promote the conference. Plus you’ll be providing the crucial support that NCDD relies on to make our national conferences so spectacular, including making it possible for us to offer more scholarships to the amazing young people and other deserving folks in our field. You can learn more about the details in our sponsorship document.

The earlier you commit to being an NCDD 2016 sponsor, the more exposure you earn as we begin to roll out our sponsor logos on our website. But the benefits go way beyond that – just look at all the perks you get for being a sponsor!

By supporting an NCDD conference, our sponsors are demonstrating leadership in D&D, showing commitment to public engagement and innovative community problem solving, and making a name for themselves among the established leaders and emerging leaders in our rapidly growing field. We expect to have between 400 and 450 attendees at NCDD 2016, and all of them will hear about our sponsors’ work!

When you sign on as a sponsor or partner of NCDD 2016, you’ll be joining an amazing group of peers you can be proud to associate with. To give you an idea, check out our sponsors and partners for our 2014 national conference in Reston:

SponsorLogosAsOf9-7-14

Interested in joining their ranks and sponsoring the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation? We encourage you to consider investing in yourself, in NCDD, and in the field by becoming a sponsor today! We would deeply appreciate your support – plus you get so many benefits.

Learn more about sponsor benefits and requirements here, or send an email to sandy@ncdd.org to let us know you are interested in supporting this important convening through sponsorship. And thank you for considering supporting the conference in this critical way!

Engaging D&D’s Young Leaders in NCDD 2016

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As many of you know, NCDD’s 2014 conference in Reston, VA had more students and young people in attendance than any conference before it, and it made a huge difference – the energy and fresh thinking that young people bring to our conferences and to our field was and is inspiring and indispensable. NCDD continues to be committed to cultivating the next generation of leaders in our field, and that’s why we are aiming to have even more youth and student attendees at NCDD 2016 this Oct. 14th-16th in Boston!yardsign_300px

As part of that commitment, we are pleased to announce that NCDD is offering a super-low student registration rate of $250 (that’s $200 off!), and we have opened up our application for NCDD 2016 scholarships. These scholarships are intended to help young people in D&D and other deserving applicants who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend by offsetting the costs of travel, housing, and registration as needed.

The scholarship application can be found at www.surveymonkey.com/r/NCDD2016-scholarship-app.

But we need our NCDD members’ help encouraging the promising and engaged young people and students in this field to attend the conference! Do you work with an outstanding young person who is passionate about the work of dialogue and deliberation? Are you connected to a student who is working to bridge divides in their community? Make sure to tell them about NCDD 2016 and encourage them to register today!

Also, please note that we are offering group discounts to incentivize teachers and other practitioners who are bringing groups of students or youth from their programs or organizations. The group rate will be worked out on a case-by-case basis, but the more Martins-Students-border-600pxpeople in your group, the bigger the discount! Contact our Conference Manager Courtney Breese at courtney@ncdd.org with questions about group rates.

We also encourage you to recommend young people you think NCDD should support to our Youth Engagement Coordinator Roshan Bliss at roshan@ncdd.org so we can reach out and invite them directly.

Lastly, don’t forget that NCDD offers a discounted Students & Young Professionals membership rate of just $30/year that is designed to make NCDD membership more affordable for students, recent graduates, and folks 35 and under still getting established in the field. We encourage you to learn more and sign up to become a member today at www.ncdd.org/join.

We are looking forward to another great intergenerational conference, and we’re counting on our members to help us make sure the best and brightest are there. We can’t wait to see you all in October!

NCDD2016 Early Bird Registration Extended to Monday!

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IMG_8080This post is just a friendly reminder for all of our members that we’ve decided to extend the Early Bird registration deadline for NCDD2016 until THIS Monday, July 18th!

This is the last time that you’ll be able to take advantage of the lower registration rate of $375 and lock in your spot with 400+ leaders, innovators, and practitioners in dialogue and deliberation as we work, vision, and learn together about Bridging Our Divides this October 14th-16th in the Boston metro area. After Monday, it will be the regular registration rate of $450, and the late registration rate will kick in on October 1st.

Don’t miss your chance to save $75 on registering for one of the premier learning and networking events for our field! You can learn much more about this year’s national conference at www.ncdd.org/ncdd2016, and register today at www.ncdd2016.eventbrite.com to take advantage of the Early Bird rate.

Want to get a better sense of what our conferences are like? Check out the Storify page the features great pictures and comments about our 2014 conference by clicking here.

NCDD2016 Session Proposal Deadline Extended!

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As we hope you’ve heard, we announced that we were opening the call for NCDD2016 conference session proposals earlier last month. We’ve had lots of great proposals come in so far, and we thank everyone who has submitted session ideas so far!

bumper_sticker_600pxWe’ve also received quite a few requests this week for extensions as folks firm up ideas and finalize plans with collaborators, so in honor of all the hard work our members are doing to make the conference an amazing experience, we are extending the deadline for session proposals! We are now accepting submissions until the end of the day on Wednesday, July 13th! 

If you’re rushing to finish up a proposal, you’ve got a few more days now, but don’t delay! There is going to be some stiff competition for session spots this year.

If you’re still looking for collaborators on your sessions, you can review the calls for session partners that some of our members have put out on our NCDD discussion listserv checking out the discussion topics from the last few weeks in our listserv archives – you could also join the listserv and ask for collaborators yourself!

We recommend that you read over the initial call for proposals one more time before submitting, but once you’re ready, visit the Application Form and submit your proposal!

We look forward to seeing all of your great ideas!

NCDD Resources for Responding to the Orlando Shooting

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In the wake of the awful attacks in Orlando, it can be hard to know what to say or even how and when to begin a conversation. But as people who work in dialogue, many of us have been and will be called upon or feel compelled to help grieving, angry, and fearful communities talk with each other about what happened, about our differences, and about where we can go from here.

To try to help those wanting and needing to start these conversations, we wanted to share a few helpful links to items from our NCDD Resource Center that are relevant places to start. There is no resource we can link you to that tailored to a tragedy so visceral and complex, but we hope that reviewing this list will at least give you some direction.

Places to look

There are many layers to unpacking the Orlando shooting: sexual orientation, race, guns, religion, and more. So we suggest that you start by looking at the tags in our resource center that have to do with those topics. You can look at:

We also recommend you use the search feature in the resource center to query specific topics you want to find resources on. Especially since the Orlando shooter’s religion is a key point of friction for many, we recommend running a search for “Islam” and “Muslim” for those looking to discuss the role of religion and how to support the Muslim community in this trying time.

Specific Resources

We also want to highlight a few specific resources that may be helpful for talking about key dynamics present in the aftermath of the Orlando shooting. We recommend that you take a look at:

We know it’s not much, but we hope that these resources can help those NCDD members who are seeking to help their communities process and heal from this tragedy. Whatever you do, please take good care of yourselves and your loved ones in the coming weeks.

NCDD is collecting blurbs describing your great work!

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NCDD is made up of extraordinary organizations and individuals who, in my opinion, are doing some of the most important work on the planet.  For fundraising and outreach purposes, we want to do a better job explaining the work our members do.

IMG_8202For starters, we want to collect short, concise sentences (blurbs) describing your work.  Here are a few examples of some blurbs I wrote a few years ago to illustrate our members’ work…

  • King County’s (Seattle Area) innovative Countywide Community Forums, a project of the King County auditor’s office, engages hundreds of volunteer “citizen councilors” in regular dialogues held across the county on issues local government is tackling.
  • One of our members led the creation of the nation’s first official “Democracy Zone” in Napa, California, where hundreds of white and Latino residents have come together across class and ethnic divides to redefine their community’s concept of “citizen” by focusing on democratic processes and a commitment to common values.
  • Vets4Vets trains Iraq-era veterans to facilitate dialogue among fellow new veterans to help with the reintegration process. Working closely with the VA, Vets4Vets is building a peer support community among the growing number of vets who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Will you take a few minutes to turn one or two of your recent projects/programs into brief one- or two-sentence blurbs like the ones above?  Be as specific as possible in your blurbs, in terms of program location, number of people engaged/effected, outcomes achieved (focusing on one is best), and how your effort exemplifies a DIFFERENT kind of conversation than what we ordinarily see.

Add your blurbs to the comments on this post, and include a link so people can learn more about you.

Thank you in advance for helping equip NCDD to better describe your amazing work!!

Who’s Working on Issues of Income Inequality & Health Care?

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A few months ago, I asked the NCDD network who was, is or will soon be working on engaging people around the issues of health care or income inequality. The Kettering Foundation was interested in learning about who is working on these topics (and still is!), as they are topics that the National Issues Forums Institute is currently addressing.

Later this month, Kettering will be holding its annual “A Public Voice” event at the National Press Club in DC, and NCDD has been honored to have played a role for the past several years in representing the broader dialogue and deliberation community in various ways — including in helping to create maps that represent the D&D community, like the one posted here.

This year, in addition to helping with a map and inviting some great people to attend the event, we are helping create a list of deliberative programs that have addressed (or will soon address) these issues. This list will be shown side-by-side with the list of National Issues Forums that have been held on these issues.

These lists will be featured in the publication that is given to the people who attend this year’s A Public Voice event (which includes some big names in DC and in our field!), and distributed online. We think this will be a great way to both highlight members of the DD community and NIF and give DC leadership a good sense of how robust and dynamic deliberative democracy is across the land.

Below is the list I’m starting off with, based on those of you who shared information about your programs with me several months ago. I want to grow both of these lists significantly, so please add your programs – or programs you know about – to the comments.  I need locations, organization names, and program names or topics covered. Please include your contact info in case Kettering wants to learn more.

Income Inequality / Economic Security

Alabama
Montevallo, AL
David Mathews Center for Civic Life – Making Ends Meet and Economic Vitality

California
State-wide
California Air Resources Board and Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (Institute for Local Government facilitating) — Income Inequality, Climate, Wellness

Sonoma County, CA
Ag Innovations – Economic Wellness

Florida
Lake Worth, FL -The Guatemalan-Maya Center – Family Financial Planning

Illinois
Chicago, IL
The CivicLab in Chicago – Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Illumination Project

Iowa
Johnson County, IA
Iowa Program for Public Life – Affordable Housing

Dubuque, IA
Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque – Community Equity Profile

The Obermann Center Place-Based Inclusion Working Group – Are U A Good Neighbor? (affordable housing)

Massachusetts
Boston, MA
MA Office of Public Collaboration – Economic Security

Missouri
Kansas City, MO
Consensus KC – Forum on the Living Wage

New Hampshire
New Hampshire Listens – The Opportunity Gap

New Mexico
New Mexico First – Statewide Town Hall on Economic Security and Vitality

North Carolina
Winston-Salem, NC
Wake Forest Baptist Church – Making Ends Meet (this may already be covered in NIF listing)

Oregon
State-wide
Kitchen Table Democracy / Oregon Solutions / Oregon’s Kitchen Table and Oregon Business Council – Poverty Reduction Initiative

Texas
City of Austin, TX
Fair Chance Hiring for the Formerly Incarcerated

Virginia
Fairfax, VA
Unitarian Universalist congregation – Escalating Inequality
(also happening across the country!)

West Virginia
West Virginia Center for Civic Life – What’s Next, WV?

Washington
King County Executive’s Office – Income Inequality

Seattle, WA
University of Washington Dept of Communication and Center for Communication and Civic Engagement – Making Ends Meet (this may already be covered in NIF listing)

Washington, DC
Interactivity Foundation – Forums on Future of Employment, Rewarding Work, Retirement

Wisconsin
Eau Claire County
Clear Vision Eau Claire – Poverty Empowerment Summit (2016-2018)

Nationwide
National Dialogue Network – Nationwide Conversation on Poverty and Wealth in America

Health Care

Nation-wide
National Institute for Civil Discourse – Creating Community Solutions on mental health

Alabama
State-wide
David Mathews Center for Civic Life and Alabama Issues Forums – Minding Our Future: Investing in Healthy Infants and Toddlers

Mobile, AL
David Mathews Center for Civic Life and Bayou Clinic – Health, Education, and Financial Literacy

California
State-wide
Institute for Local Government and California Summer Meals Coalition – Income Inequality, Health and Wellness

San Diego, CA
The San Diego Deliberation Network – Forums on Health Care

Merced, CA
Institute for Local Government and Merced Healthy Communities Network – Health in the Built Environment

Florida
Miami, FL
University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, Dept Public Health Sciences and Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy – Patient Engagement and Income Disparities in the Hospital System in the wake of ACA

Panama City, FL
Gulf Coast State College – Health Care Costs, Making Ends Meet, and How can we Stop Mass Shootings in our Communities? (this may already be covered in NIF listing)

Maryland
Statewide
Carnegie Mellon Program for Deliberative Democracy – Community Deliberative Forum on Allocation of Scarce Resources

Massachusetts
Cape Code, MA
Special Legislative Commission on LGBT Aging – Dialogue and formation of Coalition on Cape Cod re: LGBT Aging issues

Orleans, MA
Orleans Council on Aging – One Book/One Community Discussion of Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Michigan
Global (NGO based in Michigan)
Common Bond Institute – Response to Disaster Health Care Services and Resettlement for Refugees in the Middle East and Europe

Missouri
State-wide
Missouri Foundation for Health – Cover Missouri

Minnesota
St. Paul, MN
Jefferson Center – Health Policy Development & Quality Improvement

New York
Syracuse, NY
Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration and the Jefferson Center – Using Public Deliberation to Define Patient Roles in Reducing Diagnostic Quality

Texas
Austin, TX
Health and Human Services Department – Provision of Affordable Health Care

Virginia
Alexandria, VA
S&G Endeavors – Community-Driven Strategies to Improve Health

Washington
State-wide
Community Forums Network / National Dialogue Network – Healthcare Reform

Washington, DC
Interactivity Foundation – Forums on Depression, Mental Health and Community, Human Genetic Technology

West Virginia
West Virginia Center for Civic Life
What’s Next, WV

What You Missed from the NCDD Confab Call with PBP

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Our NCDD Confab Call this week featuring the Participatory Budgeting Project was one of our best so far! Over 75 people participated in the call and learned tons about the work that PBP is doing to grow participatory budgeting across the country – you missed out if you weren’t on the call!

PBP-Logo-Stacked-Rectangle-web1NCDD member and PBP’s Communications Director David Beasley told us about exciting developments coming down the line for PBP, including working closely with the City of New York to use PB inside their housing authority agency, the PB Squared initiative (PB^2) that employs PB to decide how PBP uses its money, and the upcoming Participatory Budgeting Conference.

We also heard from Allison Rizzolo of Public Agenda about some of the great evaluation work being coordinated by the North American PB Research Board, the ongoing research into PB processes, and the PB research and evaluation toolkit that Public Agenda made available here.

If you missed out on the call, don’t worry, we recorded the presentation and discussion, which you can see and hear by clicking here. We also had a lively discussion in the text-based chat that informed the call, so we’ve also made the transcript of that conversation available as a PDF here.

Confab bubble imageThanks again to David, Allison, and the PBP and Public Agenda teams for collaborating with us to make this Confab Call a great success!

To learn more about NCDD’s Confab Calls and hear recordings of others, visit www.ncdd.org/events/confabs.

NCDD’s 2015 Year in Review

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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.

Keiva-profile-borderThe 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-borderNCDD 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.

RoshanPic2014At 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.

Confab bubble imageOur 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).

Tech_Tuesday_BadgeAnd 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 Mccourtney Institute Logoplacements 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-outlinedhistoric 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.