All Are Welcome at NCDD

First of all, thank you to everyone in this community for sticking with the work in a tough year.

NCDD’s staff and board have been talking a lot over the last nine months of the pandemic about what this year has shown us about this network’s necessity in the world, and where we can most support you all. It’s been encouraging to see that much of what we’ve always offered – news and resources, and opportunities to connect and collaborate – are still highly valued and needed, especially when times are tough.

There are also some areas we can work on – expanding our network, for one, in an inclusive way to welcome everyone who is committed to helping their communities have better conversations. It doesn’t matter whether you are a professional doing this work as your career, or a volunteer doing this to better your own community – all are welcome at NCDD.

And, there are some real opportunities for NCDD’s community of practice to embrace. The opportunity to look at how privilege shows up in our work and to address it, and to increase community access to dialogue and deliberation opportunities. This year has brought both of these opportunities to the forefront and it’s time to address them. There is plenty more for us to work towards together, and to discuss this and more, we will be announcing a call for early January. More on that soon.

But today, I’m reaching out to let you know that NCDD is launching an effort to boost our membership as we continue our end of year fundraising. This starts today with new options for membership and opportunities to invite others in.

First, NCDD has decided to make a few adjustments to our membership levels. For individuals, we have added a “pay-what-you-can” option to the membership form. This allows us to remove the primary barrier to membership and welcome everyone in.

For our organizational members, we’ve expanded our membership levels to better reflect the reality of many of our small organizations working on a limited budget. Those with budgets under $150,000 a year now have lower priced options.

Finally, we’ve launched a gift-a-membership option! That means two things: First, that members of our community have the option to invite others in with a gift of a year’s membership. And second, that you can gift a membership to those who need a subsidized member rate. These gifts are offered at a special reduced rate!
As 2020 comes to a close, we hope you will renew your commitment to the work by renewing or gifting a membership today! As always, membership and donations are tax-deductible!

Thank you for all you do to keep this community of practice vibrant. Here’s to getting through 2020, and to the work ahead in 2021!

Courtney Breese
​NCDD Executive Director