BUILDING COHERENCE AMONG U.S. ORGANIZATIONS ADVANCING ASSEMBLIES
SPONSORING PARTNERS
ADVISORY PARTNERS
Carolyn Lukensmeyer
Prev President America Speaks, Previous ED NICD, Member Our Common Purpose Commission
Matt Leighninger
Director Center for Democracy Innovation, National Civic League; Author Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy, The Next Form of Democracy; Director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (2006-2015); Prev Vice President at Public Agenda
Valerie Lemmie
Senior Advisor for State and Local Government Kettering Foundation, OH Civil Rights Commission Chair, Prev-City Manager Dayton, OH and Cincinatti, OH
Sterling Speirn
Prev. CEO Kellogg Foundation, Peninsula Community Foundation; Prev. Interim CEO CFLeads, Member Our Common Purpose Commission; Prev CEO NCoC
Alice Siu
Associate Director, Deliberative Democracy Lab; Senior Research Fellow, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of the Law
PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS
We believe this is important to do for at least three reasons:
Collaboration Elevates Ambition
No one organization can realize the aims of the field alone. We will be more effective the more coherent and coordinated we are.
Making New Mistakes
This effort will help us build on the lessons of those who came before.
Aligning with Partners
Clear, well-endorsed plans can better link our efforts to the broader democracy and civic renewal ecosystem, and real-world community needs across the country.
Over the course of at least 4 sessions, we plan to develop outputs that include:
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Shared North Star
Establish a shared north star to guide collaborative efforts.
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2-4 Year Objectives
Near-term strategic goals to make the most progress toward our north star.
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Collaborative Initiatives
Determine collaborative initiatives that members of the field can advance in service of our 2-4 year objectives.
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Ecosystem Map
A map of the organizations in this space and the roles that each is playing.
We envision that the outputs we create will be shared out to our stakeholder audiences, including funders, civil society organizations, and adjacent civic improvement fields (media, participation, dialogue).
Recently, a small group got together to talk about the current moment and observed that the US field could benefit from greater alignment. This group included Kacey Bull and Alex Renirie from Healthy Democracy, Phil Lindsay from the Hannah Arendt Center, Jesse Warren from Assemble/Democracy Creative, Marjan Ehsassi and Nick from FIDE NA, Rahmin Sarabi from American Public Trust, and Wayne Leibman and Leonora Camner from Public Access Democracy.
We sensed that many, including those not in the conversation, were working on shared aims and from shared values, but that these hadn’t been made explicit — and that doing so would have many benefits.
We believe that this is a national conversation and should include the voices of all the practitioners and advocates in the space dedicated to lottery-based deliberation as a means to strengthen our democracy.
This process emerged from that inspiration.
For more information please contact rahmin@americanpublictrust.org
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