Category Archives: research

Participatory Budgeting Project Launches Global PB Hub

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We want to make sure folks in our network heard that NCDD member organization the Participatory Budgeting Project recently launched a new global PB hub! We’re excited for this effort which will connect PB practitioners and provide space to share resources, and further expand participatory budgeting across the world. You can read the announcement in the post below and find the original on the Participatory Budgeting Project’s blog here.

PBP is launching a new Global PB Hub!

We’re thrilled to announce that PBP is launching a new global hub for PB practitioners and advocates, thanks to a $560,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The Global PB Hub will coordinate knowledge sharing, research, learning, and resource development for PB practitioners and advocates around the globe.

The PB Hub will build on the knowledge and expertise of implementers and supporters around the world. We will work with the PB community to map existing knowledge and to identify priorities for new PB research and resources. To start, we’re inviting PB implementers, advocates, and researchers to apply for the Hub’s Governance Board and Research Board.

Why do we need a Global PB Hub?

Over the past 30 years, PB has expanded to more than 7,000 cities across the globe, becoming the most widespread model of participatory democracy. PB leaders have generated a wealth of knowledge and expertise, but these resources are often inaccessible to local implementers and advocates. And despite PB’s global growth, local PB processes still face common challenges: limited guidance for implementers, labor-intensive coordination, empty top-down mandates, and slow implementation of winning projects.

These were the main findings of the PB Exchange, a  co-design workshop held in November 2018 that gathered experts and implementers from 21 countries to assess the challenges and opportunities of PB implementation. Based on the recommendations of the PB Exchange participants, the Hewlett Foundation dedicated a two year grant to pilot a global hub to coordinate PB knowledge and peer exchange around the world.

What will the Global PB Hub do?

PBP is honored to receive this grant and to host the PB Hub. This global effort aims to improve and expand PB around the world by addressing the common challenges and opportunities identified by PB implementers and advocates. Over the next two years, the PB Hub will:

  • Establish new communications and governance systems for the global PB community, including a global PB governance board.
  • Create an online library of PB research and resources, to consolidate, organize, and disseminate the most useful PB research, data, tools, and resources in an accessible format.
  • Convene a global PB research board to identify PB research priorities and kickoff new research addressing these priorities.
  • Identify PB implementers’ priorities for new resources and tools, and develop and disseminate new tools and resources that address these priorities.

Call for Applications

The PB Hub is calling PB implementers, advocates, and researchers around the globe to apply for its new Governance Board and Research Board. We’re looking for candidates eager to improve the quality and impacts of PB, by addressing key challenges and opportunities faced by PB implementers and supporters around the world.

The Governance Board is the high-level governance and decision-making body for the PB Hub. It is responsible for setting PB Hub strategy and policy, planning for its financial sustainability, and ensuring that it is carrying out its goals effectively. The board is also responsible for identifying priorities for new PB research and resources, with the broader PB community and the research board.

The Research Board coordinates global research on PB and its impacts. It is responsible for developing a global PB research agenda and supporting researchers in launching new studies that address research priorities.

The boards will meet up to six times a year, with most meetings via video but at least one multi-day in-person meeting. Board service is a volunteer position, but we will pay for travel costs for in-person meetings.

Please help grow PB around the world by applying to serve on a board or sharing with others who might be interested in serving on a board. Deadline: August 9, 2019.

We’re also hiring a paid intern to work on the PB Hub – apply here and indicate Hub interest in your letter.

We look forward to working with you to build stronger and more equitable democracy around the world!

You can read the original version of this announcement on the PBP site at www.participatorybudgeting.org/global_pb_hub_launch/.

NCDD Sponsor Shares Housing Engagement Best Practices

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The issue of housing is complex and personal, and during community engagement efforts it’s vital to be able to inform participants about key points of an issue in order to best people to make decisions and engage fully. Knowing what information to share can be a daunting challenge, which is why we encourage folks to check out this piece from NCDD sponsor organization, Common Knowledge, with some best practices on developing housing issue guides. You can read the article below and find the original on CK’s site here.

What do community members want to know about housing?

When it comes to providing information on complex issues, such as housing, it can be hard to know where to begin. Some people seem to know a lot, some not very much and confusion feels prevalent.

For the past four years, Common Knowledge has been engaged in ongoing research about how people from different life stages and life experiences learn about the issue of housing. We support communities in developing some baseline reference points that are then accompanied by constructive dialogue about options for moving forward. An initial pilot in Marin County supported by the Kettering Foundation led to an extensive project with seven cities, so far, in San Mateo County, sponsored by Home for All.

Our approach is anchored in interactive outreach to a broad cross section of each community, including those who have not been involved in past discussions about housing, as well as those who have been highly engaged. Throughout, we use open-ended questions and are attentive to people’s starting points on the issue. We also listen closely for the prevailing narratives and the stories people tell about the issue. What types of information or perspectives might be missing from their working model of the situation?

We have conducted trainings on this topic for Home for All and other organizations.  You can see some of the training materials on this topic at our sample presentations page. The following are some highlights of our findings.

Community Information Needs

Before engaging people around any of the policy aspects of the housing issue, we’ve found that first it helps to assess what members of a given neighborhood or community need to know about  housing at the personal, community and system levels. Attending to information across these levels is an important way to address diverse community needs and to meet people where they are.

For example, the Redwood City housing department provides lots of information about housing resources, several of which were funded by the city. Yet, during interactive outreach and dialogues last spring, they heard that many in the community were not aware of these resources. In response, they developed a bilingual, community-friendly Resource Guide, which is also available in print.

Housing Policies or Projects

Once people’s personal and neighborhood information needs are satisfied, they are better prepared to focus on what is happening in the civic arena. Based on our research in two Bay Area counties, we’ve found that information about housing policies or projects should address four central objectives:

  • Where are we now?
  • How did we get here?
  • What can we do together?
  • How can I learn more?

This type of introductory background information helps community members deepen their understanding of the current housing context and enables them to talk more freely from a common set of facts. Background information can include basic demographic data, information about who lives and works in the community and current housing costs.

To see an example of the range of information presented, see the presentation and background handout from Half Moon Bay’s first community conversation. Meeting materials from each of the seven participating cities in San Mateo County can be viewed on the Home for All website.

In addition to facts about the current housing situation, sharing qualitative information gathered through prior outreach, such as commonly held hopes for the future and shared concerns, also helps to reinforce that past input was considered and valued. Acknowledging broadly values and interests in the language used by community members helps develop a cumulative sense of shared understanding, while also creating space for concerns that residents may bring into the room during a community meeting.

This type of background information is purposefully not exhaustive, but instead a pen and ink sketch that community members then color in through dialogue with one another. We have learned how most adults make sense of complex issues like housing by talking with each other, rather than through statistics or opinion pieces. In fact, it is the intentional combination of baseline facts and dialogue, guided by thoughtful questions, that draws out people’s lived experiences and helps people grow into a richer understanding of the multidimensional issue of housing. We’ve observed repeatedly that the most progress in learning happens when people sit and talk side by side with those they do not know well – e.g., longtime residents next to new arrivals, renters next to landlords, people from different occupations and income levels. Together, they make sense of what is happening, making them more likely to trust the broader, shared narrative that they help shape.

Community Curiosity & Energy

Over the past few years, we have designed, helped facilitate and analyzed informal outreach, surveys and over twenty large dialogues about housing. In these contacts with about 3,000 diverse community members, some patterns have emerged. People most frequently express interest in learning more about:

  • Current Actions on Housing: What are local governments, nonprofits, businesses and other community members already doing right now to address the community’s housing needs?
  • Innovative Solutions: How are cities thinking creatively about housing? What new approaches are being considered?
  • Community Partnerships: How are public agencies, employers, organizations and local groups working together to address the community’s housing needs? How have other cities formed creative partnerships to address land use or funding needs?
  • Related & Overlapping Issues: How is housing being addressed alongside related complex challenges, such as traffic, transportation or climate resilience? What is being done to ensure new developments address the community’s shared challenges?
  • Ways to Get Involved: In addition to staying involved with the civic process, people appreciate knowing about concrete actions they can take to enhance housing options, such as home sharing, helping to refurbish housing stock and other volunteer opportunities. People want to be able to share information about resources with others.

Accessible & Responsive Information Design

In addition to addressing the topics listed above, we’re also helping cities to be more inclusive, engaging new community members, particularly those who may have been less likely to participate in formal “civic process.” At Common Knowledge, one of our guiding principles is that information should be accessible and responsive, meaning we design for the broadest audience possible and iterate based on community member feedback.

Through interviews, surveys and feedback forms, we continually assess how well information is meeting community member needs. We ask people to identify the things they want to know more about and to reflect on what the broader community needs to know. We ask them to think about what might be missing or what can be simplified. This process of testing information with community members and refining content based on their feedback are essential parts of the community-based design process.

Ultimately, each interaction with the public is an opportunity to learn more about their information needs. By listening first, designing information with community input and iterating based on community feedback, we’re able to more effectively build shared understanding and encourage healthy, productive dialogue – even when it comes to a multidimensional issue, such as housing.

You can find the original version of this on Common Knowledge’s blog at www.ckgroup.org/what-do-community-members-want-to-know-about-housing/.

New Paper: Participatory Budgeting Improves Civic Voices and Tax Revenues

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NCDD member organization The Participatory Budgeting Project recently shared a new research paper on how participatory budgeting (PB) has been linked to improved civic engagement and increased tax revenue. PB is a process where community members vote on how to spend a portion of public dollars and is increasingly being attributed to bolstering peoples’ faith and practice in local governance. The article written by Loren Peabody shares the research of Michael Touchton, Brian Wampler, and Tiago Peixoto, who found that when people have the opportunity to give input on government spending, they are also more willing to pay their taxes. You can read the article below and find the original on the PBP’s blog here.

New Studies: PB Increases Tax Revenue as it Grows the Number of Voices in Government

New ideas often get a skeptical response, and participatory budgeting (PB) is no exception. One common doubt: while PB may be admirable, unfortunately governments just can’t afford it.

A new World Bank working paper by Michael Touchton, Brian Wampler, and Tiago Peixoto concludes just the opposite — PB and participatory institutions actually improve government balance sheets by boosting residents’ willingness to pay taxes. While most strategies for improving tax compliance rely on tougher enforcement or easier filing processes, these researchers provide evidence that people more readily pay their share of taxes when they feel they have a voice in the policy-making process and when they believe that governments are more transparent and deliver better services.

The study investigates a database of 5,570 Brazilian municipalities over a 13-year period, an ideal setting to see if participatory institutions have an impact on tax collection for several reasons. First, Brazilian cities have more legal autonomy and greater responsibility for delivering public services than municipal governments in the United States. One outcome of this autonomy was participatory budgeting itself–first developed in Porto Alegre in 1989 before spreading across the country. What’s less well known is that Brazil has also been a leader in developing public policy councils, which are co-governance institutions made up of officials and members of the public that formulate policy and oversee government performance.

Finally, Brazilian cities vary widely in the quality of their governance and their ability to collect tax revenue. Some municipalities have received considerable acclaim for their public administration. Curitiba, for example, has won awards for its sustainability and transportation planning. Others display a dynamic that is all-too-common in developing countries: poorly functioning governments lose public legitimacy, making individuals reluctant to pay their taxes and leading to a downward spiral as the government can’t obtain the revenue needed to improve performance.

Touchton, Wampler, and Peixoto find that both forms of participatory institutions — policy councils and participatory budgeting — have a positive and statistically-significant association with collecting more tax revenue. Municipalities with higher-than-average use of policy councils collect 27% more tax revenue than cities without the councils (averaged across different measures of tax collection). The relationship is even stronger with participatory budgeting: “On average, municipalities with PB have tax outcomes that are 34% greater than those without PB… [and] municipalities with PB for over 8 years have tax outcomes that are 39% greater than those without PB.”

Causation? Or Coincidence?

A skeptical reader would wonder exactly how the causation works here. It could be that some unobserved factor improves tax collection practices and simultaneously prompts governments to adopt PB and policy councils — rather than the participatory institutions being the cause of the improvement. To minimize this possibility, the researchers used a statistical technique called matching that pairs up cities that are similar in terms of their local economic and political conditions and in terms of proxy measures for their administrative capacity, but that differ with respect to whether or not they implemented participatory institutions.

In contrast to surveys or lab experiments, a strength of this research design is the ability to show that a link between public participation, good governance, and tax compliance can be observed in the real world. On the other hand, the study’s real-world setting could also mean that the findings only apply to the Brazilian context. To investigate the generalizability of these relationships, Tiago Peixoto teamed up with Fredrik M. Sjoberg, Jonathan Mellon, Johannes Hemker, and Lily L. Tsai for an additional study that performed an online survey experiment involving 65,000 respondents from 50 different countries. It found that across widely disparate contexts, individuals were more likely to report a stronger commitment to tax compliance when they are given an opportunity to voice their preferences about government spending (a simple simulation of taking part in PB).

Of all PB’s positive impacts that researchers have been documenting–including increased public investment in low-income communities, more active civil society, higher voter turnout, improved public health and well-being — improved tax collection may have the most impact of all, by increasing the total revenue available to address public needs. It can also help buttress the argument that deep, equitable democratic participation is valuable in itself by showing it is also a practical solution to some key problems cities face. As Touchton, Wampler, and Peixoto put it, “Governments that adopt participatory institutions make investments in democratic accountability and legitimacy that pay dividends in tax revenue. In turn, more revenue can increase the capacity to deliver better services, which begets still more legitimacy.”

You can find the original version of this article on the Participatory Budgeting Project’s blog at www.participatorybudgeting.org/pb-and-tax-revenue/.

Understanding Our Perceptions of Civic Language

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Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement released their new report last month, The Civic Language Perceptions Project, which explores the different perceptions of how “civic work” language is used. The initial sentence in the summary states the importance of this work succinctly, “when your work is as grand and complex as democracy—and as dependent on shared understanding and participation—language and effective communication are critical”. We encourage folks to read about the project below and find the original version of this information on the PACE site here.

Language Perceptions Project

In late 2018, PACE undertook a research effort to better understand the perceptions of language our field uses to describe civic engagement and democracy work. In other words, when we say “civic engagement” or “democracy” or “patriotism,” “activism,” or “justice” to most Americans, what do they hear?  And what does it mean to them?

The exploration took shape in both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Our research team included Topos Partnership, communications experts who led a series of focus groups to delve into these words and phrases, and Dr. Parissa Ballard, a researcher at Wake Forest School of Medicine, who developed and distributed a detailed online survey. Both approaches elicited feedback from a diverse and nationally representative sample of participants. It was limited in size and scope, but we hope may illuminate possibilities for additional exploration. (To learn more about the inspiration for our exploration, view a high-level summary.)

The research illuminated a great deal about Americans’ relationship to civic language. Click here for the summary report from PACE, highlighting what we heard.

This summary was drawn from comprehensive memos from our research teams, detailing results from both focus group conversations and survey data:

A central goal of this effort was to spark conversation—both about what we heard, and how the findings might inform the work of practitioners.  Below are two resources that can serve to guide discussions:

This project was made possible with collaboration and/or support from the Foundation for Harmony and Prosperity, Kettering Foundation, Fetzer Institute, Ford Foundation, the National Conference on Citizenship, and the Pritzker Innovation Fund. We also acknowledge the contributions of the working group that provided insight and guidance that was invaluable to the conceptualization and execution of this project.

You can find the original version of this announcement on the PACE site at www.pacefunders.org/language/.

RFP Open Until 7/25 for Participatory Grantmaking Research

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We just heard about a new RFP announcement from the Ford Foundation to explore participatory grantmaking research that we want to encourage folks in our network to apply for! The Ford Foundation is looking to award individuals and organizations that are generating evidence on the benefits and challenges of participatory grantmaking, with the goal to increase these participatory practices, specifically with large legacy foundations and high-net-worth donors. They will award $300K between 5-15 grantees who show the value of participatory grantmaking and offer evidence to back it up. Deadline to have proposals in is Thursday, July 25th, and the final decision will be announced in October. Learn more about the RFP below and find the original on the Philanthropy News Digest site here.

Ford Foundation Issues RFP for Participatory Grantmaking Research

The Ford Foundation has issued a Request for Proposals from individuals and organizations that are generating evidence on the benefits and challenges of participatory grantmaking. The foundation’s goal is to increase overall willingness to test and implement participatory approaches across philanthropy, but especially in areas with lower rates of adoption such as legacy foundations and high-net-worth donors.

As documented in a recent monograph, Participatory Grantmaking: Has Its Time Come?, and GrantCraft guide, Deciding Together: Shifting Power and Resources Through Participatory Grantmaking, a growing number of grantmakers and donors are using participatory approaches. These include involving non-grantmakers/donors in designating funding priorities and strategies, reviewing and assessing proposals, establishing decision-making criteria, making funding decisions, and conducting evaluations. While more grantmakers and donors are embracing participatory approaches, two constituencies have been relatively slow to do so — large legacy foundations (private foundations set up to conduct grantmaking) and high-net-worth-donors (generally defined as those with more than $50 million in bankable assets).

Encouraging wider consideration of the merits of participatory approaches among these audiences will require more information that “makes the case” for participatory grantmaking, including compelling arguments about and empirical evidence of its value, benefits, outcomes, and impacts.

As part of its philanthropy portfolio, the foundation has allocated $300,000 to support research that can help make the case and build a body of evidence for participatory approaches.

Participatory grantmaking is defined as the involvement of non-grantmakers/donors in developing funding strategies; designating funding priorities; reviewing and assessing proposals; establishing decision-making criteria; making funding decisions; and conducting evaluation.

Some examples of key questions and potential areas for more exploration include but are not limited to: What value does participation add to philanthropy? How should value be measured? What are the benefits and challenges of participatory grantmaking? What are the long-term benefit and costs of doing/not doing participatory philanthropy/grantmaking? Is foundation transparency, accountability, and feedback the same as participation? What is the role of donors/experts in participatory grantmaking and what value does it have? What would a cultural ethos of participation in foundations look like?

The foundation expects to award approximately five to fifteen grants in support of proposals that provide clear and persuasive arguments and/or empirical evidence that demonstrates the value and impact of participatory grantmaking. Our overarching and driving questions are: Does participatory grantmaking lead to better/stronger philanthropic outcomes/impacts? Why, and how do we know?

What would it take? How do we know if participatory grantmaking has been successful? How do we measure success in terms of process and results on the ground? What are the effects of participatory grantmaking on the people who are participating? Does this approach strengthen the efforts of larger movements? If so, how? If not, what needs to be leveraged to make such contributions? Does participatory grantmaking promote/advance diversity, equity, and inclusion? If so, how and how do we know? If not, why? What are the practical considerations funders need to consider when implementing participatory grantmaking? Where and how does participatory grantmaking “fit” with other kinds of participatory approaches/fields? What are the similarities and differences? Are there ways in which these approaches enhance each other and, if so, how? Where does participation fit into decisions about allocating non-grant resources?

Proposals will be evaluated by the steering committee based on criteria that includes: a strong alignment between the project and the goal of the initiative; the project’s potential for advancing participatory grantmaking across philanthropy, especially among legacy foundations and high-net-worth donors. (Will it “move the needle?”); demonstrated commitment to diversity and inclusion; potential for or involvement of new voices; capacity to carry out the project; a plan and capacity for disseminating findings; and adequacy of the budget and timeline for the project.

Projects should be completed by April 1, 2021.

To be eligible, applicants must be an individual or organization based in the United States and focus primarily on work taking place in the United States.

The deadline for proposals is July 25, 2019, with final grant decisions to be announced in October.

For more information, a copy of the full RFP, or to submit a proposal, email FFparticipatorygrantmaking@gmail.com. In the email, please include “Participatory Grantmaking RFP” in the subject line. If submitting a proposal, be sure to include in the body of the email the project name, a one- or two-sentence description of the project, and the name, organization, address, phone number, and email address for the primary contact.

Democratic-Renewal News Site Launches – TheFulcrum.US

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It’s a big week of website launches for the dialogue, deliberation, and engagement community! In case you missed it, Participedia launched their new Wikipedia-like website for resources related to civic engagement and democratic innovation earlier this week. A new site launched yesterday called The Fulcrum, a digital publication that will serve as a news source for national efforts going on that strengthen American democracy. Our field knows there is great work going on across the country to improve the quality and state of our democratic republic, and this site is a great amplifier to spread awareness for this work! Check out the press release below shared with us via the team at The Fulcrum and we encourage you to contribute to this premier news source.

News Release: TheFulcrum.US Launches

Today we are launching the only news site dedicated exclusively to covering the community of people and organizations seeking to improve American democracy.

The Fulcrum is a hub of original reporting, coverage from around the country, opinion and more for readers seeking to learn about efforts to strengthen American democracy.

The Fulcrum is staffed by award-winning journalists who report on the efforts to make our democratic republic less tribal, our elections more competitive, our politicians less beholden to moneyed interests, and our officials more attentive to real evidence in policy-making so Congress may become more effective, ethical and civil.

The Fulcrum follows these issues exclusively, like no other news site. We track efforts to help government be more responsive to the Americans who want these changes. Our team decodes behaviors threatening (or protecting) the principles of the Constitution. Most importantly, we explain how you can get involved and why our democracy depends on it.

“We’re thrilled to launch The Fulcrum during this time of intense interest in fixing our country’s political system,” says Publisher and Executive Editor David Meyers, who previously held a number of senior roles at CQ Roll Call. “The data clearly shows that people care about these issues and through The Fulcrum we will help them better understand what is happening, who is doing the work and how to better connect.”

The Fulcrum’s nonpartisan political reform coverage began in December 2018 with the email newsletter known as The Firewall. Its popularity has grown, and it is now available under The Fulcrum brand, as well as our robust website filled with the latest reform-related news and opinion pieces from leaders of the reform movement. The readership includes reformers, philanthropists, reporters, editors and the general public.

While rooting for the political system to strengthen, The Fulcrum’s journalistic role is to bring a clear and unbiased eye to the debates. Doing so requires freedom from partisanship and journalistic independence from those supporting our mission. So while we are incubated by Issue One, which describes itself as “the leading cross-partisan political reform group in Washington,” we are editorially independent of Issue One and its funders.

“American democracy has become fundamentally challenged since I started covering D.C. 30 years ago, decoding policy and politics for voters,” says Editor in Chief David Hawkings, most recently senior editor at CQ Roll Call. “I’m passionate about the need for more clear-eyed, unbiased reporting that boosts understanding of the dysfunction that is threatening our collective future. We’re working together to illuminate the efforts to help our government serve the people.”

The Fulcrum was conceptualized by Issue One Founder and CEO Nick Penniman who says, “Across the country, Americans are more eager than ever to fix our broken political system. The Fulcrum will highlight the people, organizations, and efforts that are doing this work. Renewing our republic for the next generation requires all hands on deck, and the Fulcrum will be the destination site for change-makers working to strengthen our democracy. Issue One has been proud to conceive and sponsor this project. We look forward to seeing it flourish under the leadership of veteran political journalists David Meyers and David Hawkings.”

The Fulcrum is funded by the Hewlett Foundation, the Bridge Alliance Education Fund, Arnold Ventures and the Lizzie and Jonathan M. Tisch Foundation.

You’re invited to visit our new website, and subscribe to our newsletter, on TheFulcrum.US.

Please connect with us:

Twitter – https://twitter.com/fulcrum_us

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TheFulcrum.US

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/14036411

David Hawkings has been a reporter, editor and columnist focused on the policies, politics and people of Congress for three decades. Most recently he was the senior editor of CQ Roll Call, wrote the “Hawkings Here” column, and hosted a series of videos and podcasts dubbed “Roll Call Decoder.” He is a regular guest on Fox News, Federal News Radio and Newsy and has appeared as an analyst on CNN, MSNBC and NPR. Follow David Hawkings on Twitter.

David Meyers has spent the past two decades immersed in political media. He was most recently vice president of business operations for CQ Roll Call, and prior to that was the organization’s vice president of research and content development. Meyers served as director of StateTrack, managing editor for Roll Call, and ran the day-to-day newsroom operations and led development of RollCall.com. He served as president of the Washington Press Club Foundation from July 2013 through June 2015. Follow David Meyers on Twitter.

Nick Penniman is the founder and CEO of Issue One, the leading cross-partisan political reform group in Washington that unites Republicans, Democrats, and independents in the movement to fix our broken political system. He co-authored “Nation on the Take” in 2016 and was previously the founder and executive director of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, Washington director of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy and publisher of Washington Monthly.

You can check out The Fulcrum site at www.thefulcrum.us/.

Participedia.net Launches New Website – Contribute Now!

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The good folks at Participedia shared with us an exciting announcement – the launch of their newly revamped open collaboration website! The new Participedia.net site operates in a similar way as Wikipedia and is open for anyone to add resources related to civic engagement and democratic innovation. We encourage you to peruse the fresh site and contribute to it! You can read the announcement below and find the original version on Participedia’s Medium site here. And since we’re on the subject of collaborative efforts, we want to offer a final reminder to join for today’s free Confab call on using Slack for connecting and building a democratic movement – register here!

Crowdsourcing Participatory Democracy

Starting today, the @ParticipediaProject will use Medium as our primary news channel. We will share relevant content about participatory democracy around the world, generated by and for our community of academics, practitioners, and engaged citizens, and we invite you join us.

As our premiere Medium post we’re excited to announce the launch of our newly redesigned, open source, open edit website: Participedia.net! We’ll give you a sense of what the Participedia Project is all about and what makes it relevant in today’s global context, and how our open source and participatory approach to website design created new opportunities for collaboration and impact.

Known as ‘the Wikipedia of public participation’, Participedia content is created, edited, and accessed by anyone on the internet as part of the Creative Commons. Our new website is designed to inform and inspire policymakers, community organizers, and citizens. We are a resource for anyone interested in the new forms of civic engagement and democratic innovation being developed around the world.

The content published by our community of users reflects important global issues. The Citizens Assembly on Brexit case entry highlights the use of deliberative public engagement on a complex and polarizing issue, and Girls at Dhabas highlights a grassroots initiative that leverages social media to empower women and non-binary individuals in Pakistan. You too can help to collaboratively document the global phenomenon of public participation by joining the community at Participedia.net, where nearly 2000 entries have already been published and edited by close to 3000 users.

Our new website is being developed using open source, transparent, and participatory methods, and has created new opportunities for collaboration and experimentation that span political and geographic boundaries. For example, the Privy Council Office of Canada discovered and engaged with Participedia on Github, a platform for open source development where our new code and ongoing design process is available publicly. The resulting collaboration will use Participedia to document case studies of public engagement conducted by the Canadian Government. As well, student computer scientists in the UK connected with our developers while prototyping new tools for the platform using our open source API. In addition to other new features for the website that will soon be released, a tech-driven engagement plan for localization is in place that will connect and empower our community to translate site content into multiple languages, and share knowledge and resources in a more accessible and inclusive way.

Participedia is made possible by a Partnership Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The project was founded by principal investigator Dr Mark Warren of the University of British Columbia and co-investigator Dr Archon Fung of Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. The new Participedia website was designed by the project’s Design & Technology Team, led by Amber Frid-Jimenez, Canada Research Chair in art and design technology and director of the Studio for Extensive Aesthetics at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Join Us!

Website: Participedia.net

Facebook: Facebook.com/Participedia

Twitter: @Participedia

Linkedin: Linkedin.com/company/Participedia

Github: Github.com/participedia

Medium: medium.com/@participediaproject

You can find the original version of this announcement on the Participedia Medium site at https://medium.com/@participediaproject/crowdsourcing-participatory-democracy-4ffe11116e84.

PACE Announces Funding for Faith & Democracy Initiative

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ICYMI – There is a great funding opportunity that was just announced yesterday by the Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE) to fund an initiative exploring the intersection of faith and democracy. PACE is offering $300k to support 5-7 projects that investigate the question, How can faith be a means to bridge divides and foster respect and cooperation in our democracy? Those accepted will join a year-long peer Learning Community to serve as a testing lab on key questions and share learnings. RFPs are now open and applications are being accepted until July 1st. We encourage you to share this with your networks! You can read the announcement below and find the original version on the PACE site here.

Faith In/And Democracy: A Funding and Learning Initiative from PACE

Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE) has launched a pilot funding and learning initiative to invest in and promote engagement at the intersection of faith and democracy. The Faith In/And Democracy initiative will provide about $300,000 in grant support to 5-7 projects that explore this driving question: How can faith be a means to bridge divides and foster respect and cooperation in our democracy?  The Request for Proposals opens today; applications are open until July 1, 2019.

PACE is a community of funders that invest in the sustaining elements of democracy and civic life in the U.S.  “This exploration is a natural extension of PACE’s mission to deepen and enrich philanthropy’s support of democracy and civic life in the U.S.” said Kristen Cambell, Executive Director of PACE. “Faith communities have been a vibrant part of our civic fabric throughout the history of our nation.  With this project, we hope to uncover ways in which faith can serve to ease the divisions that plague our political, civic, and social processes.”

At this important moment in our democracy, many civic engagement funders and practitioners have redoubled efforts to bridge social and political divides.  This new initiative focuses on a largely unexplored connection point for bridge building: the power and potential of faith as a catalyst. In order to thrive, our democracy requires understanding, tolerance, and empathy across difference; this initiative seeks to uplift efforts to shift divisive perceptions of faith communities and build narratives about the power and potential of faith to bolster engagement in democracy and civic life.

While many institutions seek to engage people of faith in bridge-building and pluralism efforts, few organizations are funding specific interventions to engage people of faith in using their faith to support the well-being of democracy. Fewer still are considering the ways in which faith can serve to ease divisions that plague our political processes.  This pilot initiative led by PACE represents a meaningful step toward filling this gap. “We see this as a new mechanism of support to our members, as well as a vehicle for PACE to contribute learning and leadership to our field,” added Cambell. The initiative is inspired by PACE members and catalyzed in partnership with the Fetzer Institute and the Democracy Fund, as well as additional members of an Advisory Committee.

Embracing the exploratory nature of the initiative, a central aim of the effort is learning: in addition to funding 5-7 projects, PACE will launch a cohort-based, year-long peer Learning Community for those engaged with the initiative. This community will serve as a “laboratory” to test key questions about learning and impact, and enable us to reflect those learnings to funders, nonprofits, and our fields more broadly.

To learn more about the initiative, please visit PACEfunders.org/faith.  To access the full RFP and to apply, click here.

You can find the original version of this announcement on the PACE site at www.pacefunders.org/faith-in-and-democracy/.

Exploring Podcasts as Emerging Medium for Civic Learning

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For folks in the New York City area, there is a cool event coming up next week that we wanted to make sure our network knew about on exploring how podcasts are being used to deepen civic knowledge and practices. The Metropolitan New York Library Council is hosting the in-person event, “Podcasts To The Rescue! An Emerging Medium for Learning About Civics, Government, and the Social Contract” on Thursday, May 30th from 7-8:30 pm Eastern. There is a fantastic line-up of speakers planned for the night, including Jenna Spinelle from NCDD member organization, the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State. The event is free, but space is limited, so make sure you save your seat by registering. Learn more about the event in the post below and find the original version here.

Podcasts To The Rescue! An Emerging Medium for Learning About Civics, Government, and the Social Contract

Millions of Americans cast ballots in the 2018 Midterm Elections, but participation in our democracy was already on an upswing since Donald Trump won the Presidential Election in 2016. While 7 in 10 Americans report feeling generally negative about what is going on in the country today, Americans are also more hopeful about solving problems. This hopefulness may account for the increased interest in how our government works and what role individuals and communities can play in that process. And as ever, podcasters are responding to this interest by producing shows that tackle policy and civic engagement in a variety of formats.

Podcasts To The Rescue! An Emerging Medium for Learning About Civics, Government, and the Social Contract will feature a diverse group of podcast hosts and producers, looking at the ways each podcast engages and informs listeners on how to stay invested in the social contract.

Moderator: Matisse Bustos-Hawkes, Founder at Otro Lado Communications and former Associate Director, Communications & Engagement at WITNESS

Panelists:

  • Arden Walentowski, producer and co-host of Let’s Get Civical, a comedic and irreverent take on how our government works
  • Harry Siegel, co-host of FAQ NYC, a weekly dive into the big questions about New York City produced by Alex Brook Lynn
  • Jenna Spinelle, producer and host of Democracy Works an initiative of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State
  • Mila Atmos, executive producer and host of Future Hindsight, where civic engagement meets civil discourse
  • Allison Daskal Hausman, producer and host of The Pledge Podcast, inspiring portraits of ordinary Americans stepping up to strengthen our democracy.

Panel discussions will take place 599 11th Avenue, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10003. The event is free but space is limited.

Other panels in this series include:

You can find the original version of this announcement on the Eventbrite site at www.eventbrite.com/e/podcasts-to-the-rescue-an-emerging-medium-for-learning-about-civics-government-and-the-social-tickets-59456853048.

Ethics and Benefits of Digital Tech in Engagement

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As technology rapidly continues to grow, organizations are working to understand the many impacts of tech on the shape and future of our democracy. NCDD member organization Public Agenda explores these impacts in their new report, Rewiring Democracy: Subconscious Technologies, Conscious Engagement and the Future of Politics. In the article below, they share some of their findings on the complicated nature of tech, ethical use of geo-location, and the capacity for deeper community engagement. You can read the article below and find the original version on the Public Agenda blog here.

Geo-locating Protest: The Changing Role of Tech in Social Movements – Part 1

New from Public Agenda, Rewiring Democracy: Subconscious Technologies, Conscious Engagement and the Future of Politics, explores how the latest technological trends may reshape our democracy, our politics, and our daily lives. In a series of blog posts, we are sharing some of the stories from the paper to illustrate some of the impacts on journalism, political advocacy, city planning, and other fields.

In this latest installment of the Rewiring Democracy blog series, we explore technology’s role in mobilizing movements, while highlighting an example of how micro-targeting and messaging is being used in troubling ways.

GEO-LOCATING PROTEST: THE REVOLUTION COMES TO YOUR DOORSTEP

In 2016, women in several cities began receiving pop-up ads on their smartphones whenever they went near or inside a clinic providing abortions. The ads, which had been sent by anti-choice/ pro-life organizers, offered advice to women who were contemplating abortion. These particular women had been targeted because they had previously looked for Planned Parenthood information online. This practice was ruled an illegal infringement of personal health care data by the attorney general of Massachusetts, but it is one of a number of examples that signal a new phase in the use of technology by activists.

From the Arab Spring to the Tea Party to Black Lives Matter to #MeToo, protesters, organizers, and mobilizers of all political stripes and ideologies have been using the internet to connect and coordinate their movements. Their values and goals are obviously very different, but they all face new tactical opportunities for reaching supporters and achieving their political objectives. One major opportunity arises from the way in which the internet has become increasingly tied to geographic location. In addition to the geographic information system (GIS) capacity of smartphones, the number of people who have joined hyperlocal online spaces has risen exponentially. By connecting to people where they are and where they live, activists, officials and other leaders can advance their causes in ways that are more direct and “in your face” – and in ways that leverage political power because they fit the geography of political jurisdictions.

MOVEMENT CONSCIOUSNESS

There are multiple factors that affect whether people are willing to join a protest or movement, but across many different societies and situations, the psychological reasons often seem to be the most influential. The mere fact that people are oppressed or discriminated against doesn’t necessarily mean that they will mobilize, rebel, or just speak up. They are more likely to act when they begin to feel that they are not alone, that their voices will be heard, and that their cause can achieve critical mass.

Some existing, widely-used digital technologies have helped organizers build a broader movement consciousness:

  • Photo-sharing, which is a core component of almost every major social media platform, allows people to see their movement in action. For example, many of the students who participated in “Text, Talk, Act” during the National Dialogue on Mental Health tweeted photos of their groups. By uploading, sharing, and tagging pictures and videos, people can provide visual evidence that they are part of something larger than themselves.
  • Participatory mapping, one of the first uses of geo-locating capacities of our devices, enabled people to see themselves in relation to a physical space. Protesters during the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the anti-austerity demonstrations in Spain were able to map their locations, producing visual proof that they could peacefully dominate the streets and plazas of their cities.
  • Posting and commenting through social media, in itself, has allowed people to contribute to or even dominate the narrative on a particular issue or cause. Recognizing this new threat, many governments and corporations have created “troll farms” and other sophisticated operations to try to retake control of the narrative, amplify their own messages, and even to target, harass, and intimidate protesters.
  • Instant polling, which can be accomplished through a wide array of tools, apps, and platforms, can also be used to gauge support for particular actions and to show that large numbers of people stand behind a given cause or movement.

Organizers are using these and other tools to compel people to consciously step forward and join causes and movements. Protesters used social media posts to rapidly gather and heckle Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen about immigration policies as they dined in public restaurants. Increasingly, organizers have the capacity to use subconscious technologies, like the anti-abortion/pro-life protesters in Massachusetts, to target potential recruits and people they are trying to influence.

By bringing the revolution(s) to our doorstep, the capacity to make protest and mobilization hyperlocal and geo-locatable has the potential to make political conflict more extreme and more personal. It raises new questions about the rules of the game, the role of tech corporations in the public square, and whether these new conditions also present possibilities for bridge-building and compromise.

As notions of space and place change, can technology create new opportunities for people to connect and work together? We’ll explore this as well as who owns the public square in “Geo-locating Protest: Tech’s Role in Advancing Movements” Part 2 in the next installment of this blog series on Rewiring Democracy.

You can find the original version of this article on the Public Agenda blog at www.publicagenda.org/blogs/geolocating-protests-and-techs-role-in-advancing-movements-part-i.