​Out of Hand, the Atlanta-based social impact arts organization, is marking 25 years of using theater to drive dialogue and social change with its 2026–2027 anniversary season. Since 2001, the organization has paired original productions with facilitated dialogue and community partnerships to engage people across differences on issues from racial equity and public health to housing, democracy, and belonging. The anniversary season centers this dialogue work through its Equitable Dinners model, its living-room "Shows in Homes," and its We Hold These Truths series of short plays on American democracy and identity, each designed to turn performance into structured community conversation. For the dialogue and deliberation field, Out of Hand offers a distinctive, arts-based approach to the shared goal of building empathy and turning conversation into civic action, closely aligned with NCDD's mission.

​Everyday Democracy, a nonprofit dedicated to building power for multiracial democracy in local communities, is offering its signature Multipartial Facilitation Training for Fall 2026. The four-session virtual course teaches experienced facilitators to engage multiple perspectives and balance power in dialogues and community conversations, moving beyond neutral moderation toward an equity-focused, multipartial approach. Through role-plays, small-group activities, and co-facilitated mock sessions with real-time feedback, participants build and refine the skills needed to lead inclusive conversations in their own communities and organizations. For the dialogue and deliberation field, the training offers a rigorous, hands-on path to strengthening the facilitation capacities that make equitable, power-aware community engagement possible, squarely aligned with NCDD's mission.

The Trust for Civic Life, a grantmaking collaborative sponsored by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, has released its second annual community survey report, The Local Advantage: How Community-Based Efforts Build the Trust and Agency America Needs, drawing on responses from over 1,000 rural community members across 24 communities. The report finds that trust in national institutions continues to decline, while trust in local institutions, particularly libraries, nonprofits, and community foundations, remains consistently strong, and that people feel the greatest sense of agency when they take on leadership roles within organizations working to solve concrete community problems. The findings also point to widespread informal bridge-building, with nearly half of respondents reporting they have taken some action to connect across political or social differences. These insights offer dialogue and deliberation practitioners concrete evidence that locally rooted, action-oriented organizing is what sustains civic trust and participation. The report reinforces NCDD's mission by demonstrating, with new data, why investment in local dialogue and collaborative problem-solving remains central to a healthy democracy.

AllSides, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to helping Americans engage across difference, is hosting a National Roundtable on the American Dream the week of August 10–15, 2026 — a series of free, structured online small-group conversations where participants from diverse backgrounds discuss opportunity, security, personal finances, and the futures they are working toward. Using AllSides' Roundtable format of four to six participants guided by an integrated conversation structure, the event is designed to foster genuine listening and mutual understanding across experiential and political divides, with anonymized insights contributing to a national report. Multiple session times are available daily throughout the week, accessible through any standard web browser with no special software required. This event directly advances NCDD's mission by modeling accessible, structured dialogue across difference and inviting broad public participation in a national conversation about shared aspirations and divergent realities.

The Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies is accepting interest applications for its 2026 Fellowship for Nonprofit and Civic Professionals, an intensive in-person program beginning in October 2026 that brings together Baltimore-area civic and nonprofit leaders to engage in interreligious dialogue and explore how religious pluralism can strengthen their efforts to build a more just and democratic community. Directed by Molly Silverstein and supported by ICJS resident scholars, the fellowship engages participants across Muslim, Christian, and Jewish perspectives — along with non-religious participants — equipping them with dialogue-across-difference skills, a peer network of cross-sector leaders, a community project, and a completion stipend. The program directly advances NCDD's mission by modeling how sustained interreligious dialogue can build the relational capacity, mutual understanding, and civic leadership that democratic community life requires.

Saskia Brechenmacher of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Laura Livingston of Over Zero, and Miriam Juan-Torres González of UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute argue in a new Democracy Notes Perspectives piece that attacks on LGBTQ and women's rights are not peripheral culture war flashpoints but core components of a broader authoritarian strategy to push targeted groups out of public life and erode democratic institutions. Drawing on examples including Kansas legislation that may effectively disenfranchise transgender voters, the authors document how gender-based narratives function as socially acceptable entry points for dismantling pluralism and legal equality — and offer concrete recommendations for democracy funders and practitioners, including expanding policy analysis, investing in cultural counter-narratives, and building cross-movement dialogue spaces. Their call for structured dialogue across communities that rarely work together — democracy advocates, LGBTQ rights organizations, masculinities researchers, and others — connects directly to NCDD's mission and the practical capacity of the dialogue and deliberation field. This piece is essential reading for NCDD members working at the intersection of democratic participation, equity, and community bridge-building.

New Profit, a venture philanthropy organization that has invested over $350 million in social entrepreneurs since 1998, has launched Connected Futures, a new Catalyze cohort offering $100,000 unrestricted grants and a year of structured support to organizations that help people bridge active divides and work together toward collective goals. The cohort targets organizations whose core programming builds the skills, relationships, and structures needed for productive dialogue, civic participation, and collaborative problem-solving across differences in background, belief, or identity. Discovery Forms are open through May 26, 2026, for U.S.-based nonprofits with annual expenses between $250,000 and $2 million and at least two years of programmatic operation. Connected Futures represents a direct and significant funding opportunity for NCDD members whose work strengthens the relational and structural conditions that make dialogue, deliberation, and democratic participation possible.

Disagree Better, a nonpartisan initiative dedicated to improving the quality of civil and political discourse in the United States, has released a new public service announcement featuring Princeton University professors Cornel West and Robert George, whose decades-long cross-ideological friendship models the kind of principled, relationship-centered engagement that strengthens democratic culture. The PSA demonstrates that sustained dialogue across big political differences is possible when grounded in mutual respect, intellectual integrity, and a genuine commitment to shared inquiry rather than persuasion. It offers practitioners, educators, and community leaders a concrete, relatable example of what bridge-building looks like outside the formal facilitation context. The work of Disagree Better aligns directly with NCDD's mission to foster dialogue and deliberation, supporting the broader field's effort to rebuild the civic trust and relational infrastructure that healthy democracy requires.

Paths to Understanding frames political violence as emerging from eroded trust and dehumanization long before physical conflict, driven by narratives that portray what people love as threatened by other groups. To counter this “shrinking belonging,” the organization brings people together through shared human identities—not partisan labels—using programs like the Potluck Project and Let’s Go Together to rebuild trust, reduce fear, and strengthen both “belonging” and “civic muscle.” Their framework highlights how individuals often defend group belonging rather than ideas, especially when political identity has cost them relationships, which can intensify polarization. This approach aligns with NCDD’s mission by showing how intentional dialogue and relationship-building can interrupt dehumanization, address root causes of political conflict, and expand the sense of a shared “we.”