The Trust for Civic Life has launched Digital Civic Experiments, a pilot grantmaking portfolio supporting eight organizations that use digital tools to strengthen community connection, increase civic participation, and drive meaningful offline engagement among underserved and place-based communities nationwide. Grantees range from Entidad, which builds documentation tools for farmworkers, to Front Porch Forum, a Vermont-wide neighborhood network that consistently moves online interactions into real-world civic life, to the Relational Tech Project, which builds hyper-local tools collaboratively with and for approximately one hundred neighbors at a time. Informed by the Trust's own community research, the portfolio reflects a community-first philosophy that treats trust, local design, and offline impact as core criteria for what makes digital civic technology worth funding. For NCDD members navigating the intersection of technology and civic engagement, this portfolio offers both inspiration and a useful framework for distinguishing digital tools that genuinely serve dialogue and deliberation from those that merely replicate its surface features.

Simma Lieberman, consultant, speaker, and podcast host known as "The Inclusionist," joins the NCDD network with more than four decades of experience facilitating dialogue and building inclusive cultures across communities and organizations. Through Simma Lieberman Associates and her nonprofit podcast Everyday Conversations on Race, she advances an approach to cross-difference engagement grounded in curiosity, relational trust, and the belief that inclusion must be embedded in systems — not added as an afterthought. Her facilitation work spans some of the most challenging divides in civic life, offering practitioners concrete models for creating conditions where genuine dialogue can take root. Lieberman's membership strengthens the NCDD community with a seasoned voice committed to the equity, inclusion, and dialogue values that define the field.

​The Democracy Resources Hub (DRH) and NCDD will offer a webinar titled "Using Civic Technology to Facilitate Meaningful Engagement" featuring speakers Lucas Cioffi from QiqoChat, Josh Lerner from PeoplePowered, Ramon Perez from the Digital Democracy Project, and Ann Reidy from the Civic Health Project sharing real-world examples of how communities use digital platforms to listen, deliberate, and decide together across distance and difference. The training addresses critical questions facing dialogue and deliberation practitioners: how digital systems complement rather than replace face-to-face facilitation, what frameworks ensure online participation remains accountable and democratic rather than amplifying power imbalances, and how hybrid approaches create more inclusive processes reaching people facing barriers to in-person participation while maintaining depth and relationship-building. For NCDD members and the civic engagement field, this training offers practical guidance for thinking critically about both possibilities and limitations of civic technology—understanding when digital tools genuinely expand participation and when they risk reproducing or deepening existing inequities in who gets heard and whose voices shape decisions.

Project Liberty Institute and Georgetown University's Tech and Public Policy program held a two-day Workshop on Deliberation, Governance and Decentralized Social Networks in November, exploring how AI-assisted deliberation can help online communities govern themselves democratically by enabling meaningful deliberative decision-making entirely online in hours or minutes at modest cost. McCourt Public Policy students tested three online deliberative tools—deliberation.io, Online Deliberation Platform, and Frankly—through mock content moderation deliberation, with survey results showing the process encouraged listening and understanding, followed by sessions examining legitimacy criteria for digital deliberation and self-governance needs of decentralized networks. Three key insights emerged: a robust ecosystem of deliberative tools already exists with the challenge being tailoring them for specific communities; deliberation must be inclusive, transparent, and yield binding decisions regardless of format; and deliberative tooling design must remain human-centered even when incorporating AI assistance, representing important progress for practitioners navigating how digital tools can extend rather than replace traditional deliberative values.

The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) is proud to partner with the 2025 Online Facilitation Unconference (OFU), taking place from November 17 to 21, a global, participant-driven event that explores how dialogue and collaboration are evolving in the “Intelligent Age.” Centered on the theme "Rethinking How We Work Together in the Intelligent Age," OFU invites facilitators, educators, and community leaders to examine how AI and emerging technologies are reshaping connections and participation. True to its democratic spirit, OFU empowers attendees to co-create the agenda through interactive formats like World Café, Open Space Technology, and Pro-Action Café, ensuring peer learning and collective insight drive the experience. With sessions designed to span global time zones, the event fosters inclusive participation across continents while modeling the collaborative, decentralized practices that strengthen democratic engagement. For NCDD members, OFU offers a timely opportunity to explore how facilitation and dialogue can thrive in virtual, hybrid, and tech-enhanced environments. Read more in the blog post below.

​The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) proudly welcomes Civic Health Project, a nonprofit innovating at the intersection of technology and social cohesion to bridge societal divides. Since 2019, Civic Health Project has developed cutting-edge tools like AI-driven platforms to reduce polarization and promote constructive civic engagement, backed by rigorous research and evidence-based approaches. Their collaborative efforts, including co-chairing a global council and awarding grants to support grassroots bridge-building, align closely with NCDD’s mission to strengthen democracy through connection and dialogue. Read more in the blog post below.

A free virtual workshop hosted by the Association of Science-Technology Centers on June 16, 2025, will bring together dialogue practitioners, science communicators, and museum professionals to explore how structured conversations can bridge scientific knowledge and community decision-making. Highlighting museums as trusted venues for dialogue, the event features hands-on exercises, real-world case studies, and practical tools to support inclusive engagement on issues like climate change, public health, and technology policy. By bridging science and society through dialogue, this timely and accessible workshop builds vital skills for navigating today’s complex challenges. Read more in the blog post below.

ICYMI - A great line-up for the National Week of Conversation (NWOC) is happening now until this Friday. Today is an interesting NWOC signature webinar titled "Building Communities that Listen: Crossing Party Lines Using the Fora App", at 12pm Eastern, 9am Pacific.

Participants from the Fora Mobile pilot will share their experiences with the platform aimed at enhancing civic conversations. This event showcases an app-based solution for addressing toxic divisions and encourages attendees to explore implementing similar tools in their communities. It's tailored for individuals involved in fostering meaningful conversations across diverse sectors like local government, education, faith-based organizations, and media. Learn more in the post below and join the event here!