CommunityMatters Conference Call on Funding, Jan. 9

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Roshan Bliss

We are excited to invite NCDD members to join our partners at CommunityMatters for the latest installment of their conference call series called Making It Happen. The next call will focus on a topic that most of us think about frequently: funding.

The call, titled Funding Community Design and Development Projects, will feature guest speakers Cynthia M. Adams, CEO of GrantStation, Erin Barnes, Executive Director and Co-Founder of ioby, and Jen Hughes, Design Specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts. The CM team describes it this way:

You’ve got the great ideas and a plan for moving forward, but let’s face it: Your community lacks the cash it needs to make it real. This call will focus on key sources of funding (including federal funding, grants, and crowdsourcing) and resources to help make design and development projects in small towns, rural areas, and neighborhoods happen. We’ll also cover strategies for creating successful funding pitches and positioning your project for funding applications.

This call is scheduled for this Thursday, Jan. 9th from 3 – 4:15pm Eastern Time, so make sure to register ASAP. We also recommend that you check out the accompanying blog post, which you can read below or find the original post by clicking here.

We look forward to seeing you all on the call!

Show Me the Money

If you live in a small town you are used to doing a lot with a little. You figure out how to fix most things with a little elbow grease and duct tape. You bring neighbors together to help each other get through tough times. You’ve even taken on some lighter, quicker, cheaper actions to build community and make visible improvements around town. Sometimes though, you need to raise cold, hard cash to make larger community design and development projects happen.

Where do you start looking for the money? Here’s just the tip of the iceberg:

Government Programs: Several federal agencies have grant programs aimed at helping you take action to improve your community. Some programs, like USDA’s Rural Business Enterprise Grants, are targeted at growing the economy by supporting emerging local businesses. Others target physical improvements like cleaning up brownfield sites or fixing up local roads to make them more pedestrian friendly. And, the Challenge America Fast Track program looks at how to incorporate design and the arts in community work.

The grants.gov online portal is a searchable database of all federal grants. It’s also helpful to talk with your federal and state agency representatives to find out what opportunities may apply to your community effort. Often state agencies have targeted funds to achieve state priorities around community design and development, too.

Private and Community Foundations: You may also find private foundations with missions that are a fit with what you are trying to achieve in your town. National funding search engines, like the Foundation Center, can be helpful in finding a match. Usually, you’ll have the best luck by starting with your local community foundation, which are a portal into state, local or regional level funders. Some provide free access to national grant search engines and other fund matching services as well.

Local Funding: Beyond tapping into foundations, there are ways to find money close to home. Often local institutions, like banks, have an annual giving program they use to support local efforts. Or, if they aren’t giving money away they may have competitive financing options. Many state and national businesses, from grocery chains to utility companies, have local giving programs that can provide modest support for community efforts. Often it just takes a call to these companies – or a visit to their websites – to find out what they fund and how to apply.

Emerging Opportunities: More recently we’ve seen a rise in various crowd funding platforms, like Kickstarter and Kiva, where people can contribute directly to efforts they want to support. Also, local investor groups are taking root in places like Maine and Washington where a smaller group of investors can match up with local businesses and initiatives. We’re also seeing new funding for local artists through community supported arts initiatives like CSArt Colorado. Ever heard of the show Shark Tank? Well, there are even community funding events, like Possoupbilility in Lousville, KY, where people get to make their pitch to interested supporters at community dinner. Possoupbility calls this a “meal-based micro-grant producing community activity”.

Of course, it’s not enough to just find the opportunities. You’ve got to know how to make a great pitch. Many local libraries and community foundations offer resources including educational classes on grant writing. And don’t forget the old adage, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Make sure to think about any relationships you may have with local foundation board members, government program officers or local institution staff. Conversations with key people can be a gateway into a funding opportunity or lead you to resources you may not have known about before.

Whether you’re an old grant writing pro or completely new to the funding game, our January call is for you. Funding Community Design and Development Projects will feature three fabulous and knowledgeable speakers.

Cynthia Adams, Executive Director of GrantStation, will provide an overview of the funding landscape and strategies and tips for creating successful funding applications. Cindy brings more than 38 years of experience in fundraising and a wealth of knowledge about funding opportunities through foundations and federal sources. (As a heads up Cindy will also be offering a full webinar on Funding Rural America on Thursday, January 30th.)

We’ll also hear from Jen Hughes, Design Specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Jen brings years of experience working with federal programs like the NEA’s Our Town and now the Citizens’ Institute for Rural Design. Jen will highlight a variety of federal funding opportunities and tips for successfully leveraging and applying for federal funds.

We’ll round out the call with Erin Barnes, Co-Founder and Executive Director of ioby (in our back yards). Ioby is an innovative non-profit offering a crowd funding platform. Erin will explain crowd funding and provide some tips for successfully building grassroots campaigns.

Join us January 9 for an informative and lively call where our speakers will quite literally show you where the money is.

Free Online Youth Engagement Seminar from CIRCLE

Posted on January 2, 2014 by Roshan Bliss

We invite NCDD members to start the New Year off by taking the opportunity to contribute to the conversation on youth engagement. The good people at the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) are hosting a free 5-week online seminar that will invite young people, youth workers, the broader civic engagement community, and more to help build on their recent report on youth engagement beginning the week of Jan. 13th.

CIRCLE’s announcement describing the seminar says:

Since the release of “All Together Now: Collaboration and Innovation for Youth Engagement,” the report of our Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge, CIRCLE has spoken with a wide range of stakeholders interested in improving the civic and political engagement opportunities and outcomes for all youth in the United States. To enhance and broaden those discussions, we have developed a FREE, five-week, open online seminar that will extend research and recommendations from the report.

The seminar will start the week of January 13 and is open to individuals and groups interested in strengthening youth engagement. We welcome and encourage young people, parents, educators, policymakers, youth advocates, researchers, and others to join this five-week learning community.

The seminar is designed to allow for multiple levels of participation and will have synchronous and asynchronous elements to accommodate those who need flexibility in their schedule.

Join us in pursuing this important work, and please share with those in your network whom you think would find this learning community of value and interest. The seminar will only be as strong as its participants.

If you are interested in participating in the seminar, you can go ahead and register here or learn more by visiting the community page for the seminar at www.civicyouth.org/tools-for-practice/learning-community. Contact circle@tufts.edu with questions.

We hope to see some of our NCDDers join up!

Opportunity to Contribute to IIAS Study Group

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Roshan Bliss

We hope that you will consider taking advantage of a significant opportunity that NCDD Sustaining Member Dr. Tina Nabatchi shared with us recently from the International Institute of Administrative Sciences. Her study group is seeking paper submissions, and it could be a great way for some of you NCDDers to contribute to the field while also getting your work out there. For more information, read the full announcement below or find the original here.

Call for papers for the IIAS study group on ‘Co-production of public services’

The IIAS Study Group on ‘Coproduction of Public Services’ is organizing its second open meeting. Our aim is to create and nurture an intellectual platform for the theoretical discussion and empirical analysis of coproduction and its implications for the organization and management of public services.

Topic
Coproduction refers to the involvement of both citizens and public sector professionals in the delivery of public services. Although countries differ in the extent to which citizens play a role in the provision of public services, the idea of coproduction is gaining ground around the world. Financial crises, austerity in public finances, and growing doubts about the legitimacy of both the public sector and the market, have led numerous governments to involve and cooperate with citizens and civil society in the production of public services. Unfortunately, practice is leading both theory and research, and there is a need to bring together theoretical insights and empirical data to enable a better understanding of public service coproduction. Specifically, this study group is interested in:

Coproduction in different national and policy contexts. What ideological and normative stances about the role of government shape the debate on coproduction? What variations are seen across the policy fields in which coproduction takes place? What variations are seen in national (western and non-western) structures of service provision, and what factors explain this variation?
The organization and structure of public service organizations. Do existing structures enhance or work against coproduction? How can public service organizations be better structured to utilize coproduction processes and approaches?
Challenges of coproduction for the work of public sector professionals. How can professionals find ways to meaningfully interact with people using and coproducing services? What are the (dis)incentives for professionals in promoting and using coproduction?
The role, capacity, and willingness of citizens to engage in coproduction. What characteristics distinguish citizen-coproducers from passive service recipients? What motivates citizens to engage in coproduction?
The potential benefits and pitfalls of directly involving citizens in the production of public services. What is the impact of coproduction on efficiency, democratization, responsiveness, accountability of public service delivery?
The way in which coproduction is accommodated in public law and/or constitutional law. How do various legal frameworks support (or not) coproduction? How can law be enhanced to further and sustain coproduction activities?
The relationship between public spending and coproduction. What financial models can be used to nurture coproduction? Can coproduction compensate for the withdrawal of public spending in times of financial crisis, or does collaboration with citizen-users demand additional resources?
What are the implications of a service-recipient/coproducer dominant approach to public services for the further study of public administration? What insights can be brought in from other disciplines, such as political science, law, economics, psychology, sociology and history? What insights can be gathered from complementing research on coproduction with research on active citizenship, service management and customer engagement, or citizen self-organization?

Meeting Format
The meeting will open with keynotes by Prof. Elio Borgonovi, Professor of Economics and Management of Public Administration at the Bocconi University and Prof. Tony Bovaird, Professor of Public Management and Policy at the University of Birmingham.

The meeting will consist of individual paper presentations and conclude with a round table discussion about the study group’s plan for future intercontinental collaboration in coproduction research.

The goal of the study group is to shed light on the current theory, research, and practice of coproduction. Therefore, we welcome both theoretical and empirical papers on all topics addressed above. We also invite scholars to use a variety of disciplinary analyses: public administration, political science, law, economics, psychology, sociology, and history among others. Interdisciplinary papers are also welcomed.

As a study group of IIAS, we seek to establish an intercontinental discussion, and therefore invite scholars from both western and non-western settings to submit paper abstracts. Submissions are particularly encouraged from doctoral students working on the topic of coproduction.

Output
The study group co-chairs aim at providing outlet for papers presented at the meeting, most likely through a special issue in an international public administration journal. A special issue of IRAS (International Review of Administrative Sciences) is in process, as a result of the successful first meeting of the study group, which was held in The Hague last May.

Moreover, the study group aims at setting up close intercontinental collaboration among coproduction scholars beyond the scope of this meeting, including the development and sharing a database of international cases on coproduction and strategies to enable effective interaction between professionals and citizen-users in the production of public services. In addition to special issues of international journals, the study group is exploring the possibility of a book project at the closing of its three-year (2013-2015) collaboration.

Date and Location
The meeting of the Study Group on Coproduction of Public Services will take place in Bergamo, Italy from May 20 to 21, 2014.

Cost
The registration fee is 100 Euro. Participants are responsible for their own travel and accommodations.

Submissions
Please submit abstracts (maximum 600 words) by March 15th, 2014 to mariafrancesca.sicilia@unibg.it and t.p.s.steen@cdh.leidenuniv.nl.

Participants will be notified of acceptance by March 31st. Full papers should be submitted by May 10th.

Organization
The IIAS study group on ‘Coproduction of Public Services’ is co-chaired by Trui Steen (Leiden University, the Netherlands and KU Leuven, Belgium), Tina Nabatchi (Syracuse University, US) and Dirk Brand (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa). The second meeting of the study group is organized by Mariafransesca Sicilia (University of Bergamo, Italy).

New CommunityMatters Conference Call Series Starts Thursday

Posted on December 10, 2013 by Roshan Bliss

We are excited to share that our partners at CommunityMatters, in collaboration with the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design, are launching a new conference call series on moving community projects from planning through completion called “Making it Happen”. Their first call, “Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper”, will take place this Thursday, December 12th from 4-5pm Eastern Time. We highly encourage you to register now! You can read more about the call below, find the original post on the CM blog, or find more info on the series here.

Start with Petunias: A Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper Approach to Community Action

Raise your hand if this sounds familiar:

You’ve just finished a great community design or planning process. Hundreds of people participated, you came up with dozens of brilliant ideas for fixing your Main Street or revitalizing a run-down park, you drew up spiffy designs, and everyone is jazzed.

There’s just one problem: you don’t have the money to do much of anything. And your volunteers are tired. Oh, and you don’t even really know what to do first. (Make that three problems.)

We get it. You’re not alone. So where do you start? With the petunias.

Welcome to the school of Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper community action (“LQC”). When you’re just starting to implement designs and projects you need to build momentum, earn some quick wins, and make the most of every single dollar and volunteer hour. That means picking some ridiculously easy, cheap, and non-controversial projects that you can get done immediately and that will help build support for something bigger.

“Many great plans get bogged down because they are too big, too expensive, and simply take too long to happen,” writes the Project for Public Spaces (PPS). “Meanwhile the high cost of missed opportunities for economic development – and public life – continue to add up.”

Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper thinking and action can change all of that.

Here’s how it works: Forget trying to raise five-, six-, or seven-figure sums to implement all of your streetscape improvements right away. Instead, go spend $15 at a garden center, grab a helper, and transform one weedy corner with some new planter boxes. Once people see what a difference that can make, it won’t be hard to get $100 bucks and enough volunteers to create a sidewalk café for a day, showcasing the potential of the space. And when people see how cool that is, it won’t be long until you have $1,000 and to buy some tables and chairs and create a pop-up pedestrian plaza. And if that works? Then you think about shelling out more money and making it permanent.

Fun, right? But more than just fun, LQC is actually cutting-edge strategy. By choosing the right actions first, and testing things in an experimental and incremental way, you can have a surprisingly large impact while saving resources and building support for longer-term actions. LQC lets you hone in on the actions that will actually work the best for a place and the people who use it. And it lets you actually make places livelier, prettier and more functional fast – long before you could accomplish traditional big-budget projects.

On the December CommunityMatters conference call, in partnership with the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design, you’ll learn about the LQC model and how to apply it in your town.

PPS recommends a three-phase process:

Start with amenities (like seating or gardens) and public art, which can quickly transform a space and encourage people to return.
Then add events and “interventions” (such as temporary bike lanes or street closures) that can help test design solutions before fully implementing them.
Finally, use “light development” (adaptive reuse, temporary structures, and building facelifts) to make changes quickly and relatively inexpensively.

But, there are somewhat messier stories from real communities that have moved from ideas to action.

Take Elkhorn City, Kentucky. Tim Belcher, a local attorney and President of the Elkhorn City Area Heritage Trust, has helped bring two Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design workshops to this town of just over 1,000 people. Elkhorn City wanted to find ways to increase tourism and economic development, and they focused on two of their biggest assets: whitewater paddling (they are located on the Russell Fork of the Big Sandy River) and theater (they are home to the renowned Artists Collaborative Theater). The community honed in on key action steps, experimented with small programs and events to build momentum, and leveraged that early work to attract more funding and complete more projects than many cities 50 times their size.

Still not sure how your community’s long-term plans can be transformed into a quick-and-dirty to-do list? Hundreds of other communities have paved the way, and their ideas are there for the taking. Start with “Spontaneous Interventions”, an exhibit at the recent Venice Biennale. Brendan Crain, Communications Manager at the Project for Public Spaces, was a member of the curatorial team for that project and will join us on the line to share LQC lessons and ideas from around the world. You can also get great ideas and advice from the Tactical Urbanism guides (Volumes 1 and 2).

So go ahead. Put that plan back on the shelf (for the time being) and just go buy some petunias. Read up on Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper community action at the Project for Public Spaces. Join us on December 12 to learn how to make your community stronger in a flash.

Think you have this LQC approach in the bag? This call is for you budding experts, too! Tell us about your Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper success when you register for the call. We’ll ask a few people to share their story on the line!

This call is the first in a three-part series co-hosted by CommunityMatters and the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design (CIRD). The series is designed to help any community move from a design or planning process into taking action.

Save the Date! NCDD 2014 is set for Oct 17-19 in DC Area

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Sandy Heierbacher

It’s time to save the date for the 2014 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation! We’re excited to announce that our next national conference will take place in the DC area October 17-19, 2014.

Check out the little “save the date” video I created this morning…

Thank you to all 92 of you who provided input on our final venue contenders. You helped us decide on the Hyatt Regency in Reston, Virginia for next year’s conference location. Though Reston is a little ways from DC (20 miles), people are excited about the warm and spacious venue, the incredible room rates ($124/night plus tax!), the free shuttle from Dulles airport, the cool location, and the metro stop that’s opening soon in Reston.

We think the pluses far outweigh the minuses, and appreciate all of you helping us think through this important decision. Photos of the Reston Hyatt are up on the Facebook page here if you’d like to check them out.

We’ve also just created a Facebook “event” for the conference, which will be a great place for you to stay updated on the latest details on the conference as things develop. Visit www.tinyurl.com/ks4dr8g to indicate that you’re “going” or “maybe” going in order to stay updated.

2013 Year-in-Review Confab Call – What would you want to hear about?

Posted on December 5, 2013 by Sandy Heierbacher

I’ve been thinking that the next NCDD confab call could be a “year-in-review” type call, with several different people from the network providing updates and insights on their work throughout the past year. We’d do this in January since we all have enough going on this month!

Confab bubble image This has been an incredible year for the dialogue and deliberation community, with groundbreaking projects and initiatives popping up all over the place. I have my own ideas for who we might ask to weigh in about their projects and progress during a Year-In-Review call, but I’m curious to hear what NCDD members would be interested in hearing about.

Please take a second and share your thoughts via the comments here. What projects, initiatives, or organizations might you want to hear from? What would you like to see included on a call focused on 2013 goings-on in the dialogue and deliberation community?

(By the way, we do have a Tech Tuesday event this month on the 17th, and over 100 people are already signed up to hear from Dave Biggs of MetroQuest about his organization’s view on and approach to tech-enabled public participation. Don’t forget to register if you’re interested!)

Bring D&D to Israel/Palestine This May

Posted on December 4, 2013 by NCDD Community

We are pleased to highlight the post below, which came from Rabbi Andrea Cohen Kiener of the Compassionate Listening Project via our great Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have news you want to share with the NCDD network? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

Compassionate Listening delegations to Israel and the West Bank allow us to engage with this heart-wrenching situation in a life-affirming way. Each delegation meets with Israelis and Palestinians representing multiple “sides” to the conflict. We meet people and hear perspectives that deepen our understanding and help build the relationships necessary to establish trust.

This is a most heart-opening way to approach the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Compassionate Listening is based on a simple yet profound formula for the resolution of conflict: that to help reconcile conflicting parties, we must have the ability to understand the suffering of all sides.

On this basis, TCLP founder Leah Green began leading annual delegations to Israel and Palestine in 1991. Today, after 29 delegations in 22 years, and countless conflict transformation workshops for Israelis and Palestinians, TCLP is one of the oldest organizations engaged in people-to-people peacemaking.

My co-leader Munteha Shukrallah is a Muslim American. We have been to the Middle East on Compassionate Listening trips a dozen times. We look forward to expanding YOUR horizons in May of 2014.

For more information, a sample itinerary, and application details, please visit us at www.compassionatelistening.org/journeys/is-pal.

Register for December’s Tech Tuesday event on MetroQuest

Posted on December 3, 2013 by Sandy Heierbacher

I’m excited to tell you about this month’s Tech Tuesday event, which will be hosted by Dave Biggs, Co-Founder of MetroQuest, on Tuesday, December 17th, from 1-2pm Eastern (10-11am Pacific).

MetroQuest is a new organizational member of NCDD, so some of you may not yet be aware of their work. Dave was a keynote speaker at the recent IAP2-USA conference in Salt Lake, and MetroQuest public involvement software is recommended as a best practice by the APA, TRB, FWHA and other agencies.

Dave will be talking to us about what he has learned about best practices for online engagement, and will give us a demonstration of the MetroQuest software by walking us through several recent case studies. Register today to reserve your spot on this FREE Tech Tuesday webinar!

MetroQuest software enables the public to learn about your project and provide meaningful feedback using a variety of fun and visual screens. It’s easy to mix and match screens to accomplish the engagement goals for each phase of the project from identifying and ranking priorities, to rating scenarios or strategies, to adding comments on maps and much more. To ensure the broadest participation, MetroQuest can be accessed on the web or mobile devises, at touchscreen kiosks and in engaging town-hall style workshops.

MetroQuest is:

the most mature community outreach software available with over 16 years of award-winning projects and continuous refinement;
used successfully by leading consulting and public involvement firms including HNTB, Jacobs, URS, ICF, AECOM, Kimley-Horn, Kittelson, Michael Baker, Golder, CH2M Hill, WRT, Nelson Nygaard, Design Workshop, Consensus Inc, MIG, and many more;
used by hundreds of agencies in the largest urban areas (Atlanta, Chicago, LA, San Fran, Denver, DC) to the smallest towns and villages.

Theresa Gunn, Past President of IAP2-USA has said “MetroQuest is the first online tool I’ve seen that incorporates all of the different elements of a public engagement process into one program and does it well.”

If you’d like to join us on the 17th, sign up today at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6501680890695446017.

Tech Tuesday is a new initiative from NCDD focused on online technology. Many in our field are curious about how they can use online tools to support their engagement work, and many tool creators are excited to talk to this community about their innovations. These one-hour events, designed and run by the tool creators themselves, are meant to help practitioners get a better sense of the online engagement landscape and how they can take advantage of the myriad opportunities available to them.

15% Discount for NCDD Members on Harwood Lab

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Sandy Heierbacher

Mike Wood of the Harwood Institute shared on the listserv today that they still have a few spaces left in their national Public Innovators Lab, happening December 10-12 in Alexandria, VA (at United Way Worldwide’s Mary Gates Learning Center). Every NCDD member gets a 15% rebate on the price. You can register here and when you input your organization’s name, just add “-NCDD” after the name and you’ll get the 15% percent rebate on whatever credit card you use to pay the fee.

This is a 3-day learning session where we take you through all of the essential Harwood tools and frameworks that are designed to help you develop a deep understanding of your community through conversations and then use that public knowledge to shape your strategies and change the way you operate inside and out. We cover topics such as:

Understanding your community’s “stage of community life” and the implications for how you structure your community change agenda.
Assessing your “public capital” – there are nine factors of public capital – the essential ingredients of community. Learn how you develop strategies that actually create public capital at the same time (what we call finding the sweet spot).
The 3 A’s of Public Life – Authority, Authenticity and Accountability – assess yourself and your organization against the 3 A’s and learn about how to cultivate these characteristics
Turning Outward and “The Turn Quiz” – what it means to be turned outward in your work and how you can easily engage with your staff and teams on whether you have a outward or inwardly focused culture.

Learn more at http://conferences.unitedway.org/harwood.

Lessons Learned from a Statewide Gathering of NCDD Members in VA

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Lucas Cioffi

On November 19th, Nancy Gansneder at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia and I teamed up to host a 3-hour gathering and knowledge exchange for Virginians working in the fields of dialogue and deliberation. The event was held at UVA in Charlottesville, VA.

We’re posting the lessons we learned here for others who might be interested in hosting their own in-person gatherings in their state.

Outcomes

The results were good: 19 in-person attendees, 26 others who registered and indicated their availability for alternate days, sufficient interest to continue hosting statewide gatherings like this every six months, and one of the participants stepped up as the next organizer (success!!). There was consensus within the group that we should request a state-based email discussion list, hosted by NCDD; Sandy is setting this up for us.

Breakout Sessions Proposed during our Meeting

How to bring in reluctant stakeholders?
What is a good “hook” to interest participants in dialogues?
What has failed miserably?
How to go from dialogue & deliberation to advocacy and long term maintenance of solutions?
Collaborative learning in dialogue and deliberation
What affect do modern communications platforms have on D&D?
Engaging the under-engaged
How to work with 2 or more communities with different identities when resources are limited and a the problem/solution involves both of them
Getting diversity at the table
Creative diversity in the community
Hosting dialogues with open topics
Who does and who should pay for D&D?
What does success look like?
General logistics and planning tips
Forums on mental health
Making the case for investment in process from within a government organization

Here’s What’s Needed to Make this Happen in Your State

One self-starter to get the ball rolling
A co-organizer to bounce ideas off (you can find this person with the initial invitation email)
A venue that can hold the participants (20-30 people is a great turnout); universities are a great place to start looking.
The NCDD Member Map and Member Directory will help you know who is in your area.
Office supplies (name tags, sharpies, pens, scrap paper, large notepads to brainstorm breakout sessions topics, and anything else you might find useful)
Funds for lunch or snacks/coffee for an afternoon meeting (we coordinated with Sandy Heierbacher prior to the event to secure $250 from NCDD for lunch; alternatively, you could charge $10 or $20 or ask a local organization to sponsor)
Basic familiarity with Google Docs, Excel, and Eventbrite.

Pointers for Setting Up a Statewide Gathering, Step by Step

Two months prior to the event: Create the invitation (2 hours)
- Copy & paste email addresses from NCDD members in your state from the member map or directory into an email, or request a member chart from your state from Joy.
- Draft the body of the initial invitation email (use this previous example as a starting point). The purpose is to gauge interest, to find a co-organizer that has a venue, and to receive suggestions.
- Let NCDD know what you’re planning, and have Joy send you some NCDD postcards to hand out and perhaps other materials that are available.
Collect feedback from invitees when they respond via email. Decide whether or not to go forward. Choose 3-4 dates that work for both organizers (1 hour)
The organizer with the venue reserves the space (0.5 hours)
One month prior to the event:
- Set up the document for the meeting notes (see this template for meeting notes that you can copy) prior to sending out the invitation. (1 hour)
- Create the Eventbrite invitation; see this previous example (there are probably several online tools that you can use for invitations, but Eventbrite seems to be one of the best invitation tools for free events). Be sure to create a custom multiple-choice question for invitees to indicate which of the 3-4 possible dates you are offering is best for them (in Eventbrite after you create the event, this is under “Manage” and then “Order Form” and scroll down to “Add Question”. Example text for the question: “Which days can you attend from 11am-2pm? Please choose all that apply.”). (2 hours)
- Announce the event on the NCDD main discussion list and/or this blog (1 hour)
- Ask Sandy Heierbacher to forward the invitation by email to all NCDD contacts (members and others) in your state with a note of support. (0.5 hours)
One week prior to the event: Pre-order lunch (0.5 hours).
Day of the event:
- Print out the list of attendees so you can take attendance (from Eventbrite you can download attendees in an Excel file by going to “Manage” and then “Event Reports”).
- Show up 1-2 hours early to verify that the furniture is arranged how you want it (1.5 hours). It was important that the tables and chairs were mobile. During the opening plenary discussion, chairs were oriented toward the center of the room. We moved to small-group circles when the breakout sessions began.
After the Event: Write up a blog post detailing what went well and what could be improved (1.5 hours). Clean up the Excel file of attendee contact information and distribute it to the attendees (if they requested it) and send it to NCDD to help them get a sense of the energy for these regional events (1.5 hours).

General Suggestions and Lessons Learned

Greet each individual at the door to create a welcoming environment.
Set ground rules for the event when it begins. For example, “If you don’t want something in the notes, please state that it is off the record.”
11am-2pm was convenient for people who had to drive a long distance. Some drove 2.5 hours each way.
With a group size of 20, we had breakout groups ranging from 2-8 people in size. We had 4 separate small-group discussions during the breakouts on 3 different topics + 1 “open topic”.
During the plenary session we dove right into proposing breakout session topics. Often the group picked up the topic for a moment and people built on each other’s ideas and the framing of the problem. We didn’t interrupt when there was energy around any particular topic.
Keeping everything on time was important so that people could get back on the road for their long drives. Rather than coming up with a perfect solution for grouping the breakout topics or allowing for a full-blown open space process for selecting the breakouts (there were more than we had time to discuss), instead we told participants, “Given that you see all these topics on the board and that we want to do this as efficiently as possible, we’re going to choose topics in the following manner. If you are moved to host a topic, stand up, announce it and move to a corner of the room. You will be the facilitator; it’s a group discussion rather than a presentation. We’ll choose 4 breakout sessions in this manner right now and we’ll choose a few of the ones which will take place after lunch. If you want to propose combining two topics in a session, please make the suggestion to the person who stepped forward to facilitate that topic.” After all, the group only needs to choose 6-8 topics, so this doesn’t need to be much more complicated than this. In a three-hour workshop, time goes quickly, and if sessions are 30 or 45 minutes each, then it’s important to minimize this “process overhead” as much as possible without causing the participants to feel rushed. Have fun with it!!
Give “5 min” notice with a piece of paper so that you don’t have to verbally interrupt the groups.
Rather than herding everyone towards lunch at the same time, let people flow through the lunch area organically after their breakout session comes to a natural conclusion; if they keep talking and they see everyone else with lunch, they’ll get the idea that lunch is served and they’ll be able to make the call as to whether they should continue speaking or finish the conversation and eat. Some breakout sessions might reconvene informally through lunch.
Folks at our event took the stairs to get lunch and brought it back downstairs to continue the meeting; this enabled the participants to mingle. The second breakout session began while some folks were still eating/drinking; they brought their food with them, and there was no problem.
If the breakout sessions run longer than expected (we blocked off 30 minutes per breakout, but there was energy for 40 minutes), then be prepare to have a shorter closing plenary discussion. We chose to have a 20 minute closing and that worked for us. The group came to consensus quickly about the need for requesting that NCDD set up an email discussion so that we can continue to stay in touch, and everyone was happy to have the organizers release their contact information to the other participants.
During sessions, recommend but do not require folks to take notes during their session. If they don’t want to write them on the doc themselves, offer to transcribe the notes for them onto the meeting notes (in our template for meeting notes, we used a Google doc that anyone can edit).
Be sure to thank the host and any sponsors of the event at the closing plenary. It can’t happen without them!

Of course, these are just methods that worked for us in Virginia, and we welcome your suggestions for improvement in the comments below.

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