The Kettering Foundation's Democracy and Community focus area hosted the 17th Summer Institute of Civic Studies (SICS) at its Dayton, Ohio campus from August 2 to 8, 2026, marking the program's first time convening in Ohio since its founding at Tufts University in 2009. Led by Kettering staff and Tisch College's Peter Levine, the weeklong institute grounded its seminars on civic studies theory in local Dayton examples, pairing participants with host families, cooperative businesses, and community practitioners actively engaged in civic action. The design intentionally paired academic reflection with direct exposure to local democratic practice, giving twenty participants from fields like journalism, higher education, and community development a shared framework for collective problem-solving. The institute closed with a joint session between participants and Dayton community partners focused on translating shared insights into concrete civic action. This model of pairing scholarly reflection with grounded, place-based practice reflects NCDD's broader commitment to building durable relationships and collaborative capacity across the dialogue and deliberation field.

The Kettering Foundation's Democracy and Community focus area hosted the 17th Summer Institute of Civic Studies (SICS) at its Dayton, Ohio campus from August 2 to 8, 2026, the program's first time convening in Ohio since it began at Tufts University in 2009. The weeklong institute was led by Kettering's Senior Program Officer for Democracy and Community Elizabeth Gish, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer John Dedrick, and Tisch College associate dean Peter Levine, who co-founded the original institute. Twenty participants took part, drawn from fields including journalism, higher education, libraries, community development, sociology, religion, and science advocacy, with half traveling from Dayton and half arriving from elsewhere in the country.

What distinguished this year's institute was its deliberate grounding in Dayton's own civic life. Seminar discussions drew on local examples of collective action, including a cooperative grocery store and city government reform efforts, while participants also shared meals with host families, toured cooperative businesses and historic landmarks, and met directly with practitioners doing civic work across the city. This structure gave participants a tangible link between the theoretical study of civic action and the lived practice of building it, reflecting a growing recognition across the field that durable democratic capacity is built through relationship and direct exposure, not classroom study alone. The institute closed with a joint gathering at the International Peace Museum, where participants, Dayton Democracy Fellows, and local community partners worked in small groups to identify concrete ways to sustain and expand civic engagement in the city.

For NCDD's network, the Summer Institute of Civic Studies offers a useful model for how national organizations can root broad civic studies work in the specific realities of a host community rather than treating it as an abstract exercise. The relationships and cross-sector connections built during the week, among participants from disparate professional backgrounds and between visiting scholars and Dayton residents, point to the kind of sustained collaboration that strengthens inclusive democratic practice over time. Readers interested in the full recap, including additional reflections from institute participants, can visit https://kettering.org/summer-institute-of-civic-studies-grounding-learning-and-fellowship-in-local-civic-action/.

​Terry Kyllo, executive director of Paths to Understanding and an NCDD member, has published The Society We Deserve: Rebuilding Trust, Belonging, and Our Life Together, distilling ten years of bridge-building practice into a single argument about American division. Kyllo contends that the country's crisis is not a failure of shared values but a failure of relationship between groups, each of which privately holds the same moral commitments while wrongly assuming the others have abandoned them, a dynamic he attributes to distance and algorithmic amplification rather than genuine disagreement. Drawing on more than ninety public gatherings and the Potluck Project toolkit now used by over 250 communities, the book offers a field-tested playbook centered on shared meals, shared service, and public celebration as the practical starting points for rebuilding trust between groups. His work offers NCDD's network a grounded, replicable model for how communities move from mutual suspicion to functioning civic life, reinforcing the field's core conviction that dialogue and deliberation begin with belonging.

Terry Kyllo, an NCDD member and executive director of Paths to Understanding, has released The Society We Deserve: Rebuilding Trust, Belonging, and Our Life Together, a book distilling a decade of bridge-building work into a single, practical argument. Kyllo, a Lutheran pastor for more than three decades who has spent the last ten years working across lines of faith, politics, class, and culture, opens with a reframe of the country's current anxiety: widespread unease about polarization and disconnection is not evidence that shared life has failed, but evidence that people still recognize how much they need one another. The book's central claim is that nearly every group in America privately holds the same basic moral agreements, including fairness, honesty, and a willingness to see others as human, but each group has come to believe the others have abandoned those commitments.

Kyllo attributes this mutual distrust not to a genuine erosion of values but to what he calls a dehumanization dynamic, in which attention-driven media, algorithms, and political incentives amplify the worst behavior of any given group while distance prevents that caricature from ever being tested against real experience. The book argues this dynamic has one structural weakness: it depends on groups staying apart, which makes any shared table a direct challenge to it. That argument is grounded in a decade of practice, including more than ninety public gatherings with Muslim neighbors, the Potluck Project toolkit now in use by over 250 communities and organizations, and the Let's Go Together initiative in Washington's Skagit Valley. The book closes with a practical playbook for starting this work locally, built around shared meals, shared service, and public celebration between groups, requiring no special credentials to begin.

For NCDD's network, Kyllo's book offers a tested, replicable model that reinforces a principle central to the field's work: that trust between groups is invited through shared experience rather than demanded through argument, and that belonging is a precondition for productive dialogue rather than an outcome of it. His emphasis on starting with concrete, low-barrier practices like potlucks and shared service gives practitioners a way to translate bridge-building theory into action within their own communities, congregations, or organizations. Readers can order the book, download the free discussion guide, or explore the Potluck Project toolkit at https://pathstounderstanding.org/the-society-we-deserve/.

​The Democracy Stories Lab, a new initiative from People Powered in partnership with the Democracy Narratives Alliance, is calling on creators worldwide to submit visual storytelling that reimagines what democracy could look and feel like in everyday life. The call invites short videos, illustrations, and graphics that move beyond policy talking points to explore voice, fairness, belonging, and what happens when communities hold real power over the decisions that shape their futures. Submissions must engage with the Democracy Narratives Alliance's research on how to talk about democracy, giving participants a practical framework for translating dialogue and deliberation principles into accessible, creative formats. Applications open July 14, 2026, with a submission deadline of September 14, 2026, and winners receiving cash awards plus amplification across both organizations' networks. The initiative reflects NCDD's mission of expanding who gets to shape conversations about democracy, extending the field's reach into creative and media spaces it rarely touches.

People Powered, a global hub for participatory democracy, has launched the Democracy Stories Lab in partnership with the Democracy Narratives Alliance, an initiative focused on shifting how the public talks about democracy. The call invites individual creators and small teams from anywhere in the world to submit original visual content, including short videos, illustrations, and graphics, that tells a compelling story about what democracy feels like when people genuinely have a say in decisions that affect them. Rather than centering policy debates or institutional processes, the initiative asks creators to explore themes of dignity, trust, fairness, and the freedom to disagree without fear, using narrative frameworks drawn from the Democracy Narratives Alliance's research on effective democracy storytelling.

The initiative places particular emphasis on reaching creators who work outside traditional democracy and advocacy circles, including those in comedy, illustration, gaming, and lifestyle content, as well as creators from communities that have historically had less influence over public discourse. This approach reflects a core value shared across the dialogue and deliberation field: that meaningful civic conversation depends on who is included in the room, or in this case, whose stories reach the screen. Notably, the Democracy Stories Lab itself emerged from PP Decides, People Powered's internal participatory budgeting process, making the initiative a direct product of the same democratic practice it hopes to popularize.

​Creators interested in applying should note the timeline: applications open July 14, 2026, and submissions are due by September 14, 2026, with winners announced between October and November 2026. Four winning entries will receive $1,000 each, and five honorable mentions will receive $500 each, alongside amplification across the People Powered and Democracy Narratives Alliance networks and inclusion in a global screening event. For NCDD's network of dialogue and deliberation practitioners, this call offers a rare opportunity to bring participatory democracy's core values into creative and media spaces that reach audiences the field has struggled to engage directly. Visit https://www.peoplepowered.org/news-content/announcing-the-democracy-stories-lab to read the full call for proposals and sign up for notification when applications open.

​Jason Vadnos, a Vanderbilt University student and contributor to the State of the Student Vote Substack, examines what existing research can tell us about the long-term impact of student voter engagement work in a May 2026 article. Drawing on decades of service-learning and civic engagement studies, Vadnos argues that high-quality, reflective civic work in college is consistently linked to later careers in public service, nonprofit leadership, and civic life, even though direct evidence specific to nonpartisan student voter mobilization remains thin. He points to a practical takeaway for practitioners now: programs that build in structured reflection, mentorship, and explicit connections to civic identity produce more durable outcomes than turnout numbers alone can show. His call to invest in better data collection on these programs speaks directly to NCDD's mission of strengthening the infrastructure and practice of dialogue, deliberation, and civic engagement across generations.

Every election cycle, thousands of college students take on the work of registering their peers, staffing polling-place information tables, and building nonpartisan voter engagement programs on campuses across the country. Jason Vadnos, a Vanderbilt University student and contributor to the State of the Student Vote Substack, poses a question that the student voting movement rarely stops to ask: what happens to these students after graduation? His research review draws on studies of service-learning and civic engagement programs going back more than a decade, synthesizing findings that consistently connect meaningful civic work in college to later careers in public service, nonprofit leadership, law, and policy.

The pattern across these studies is notable. Alumni of high-quality service-learning programs are more likely to accept jobs in the fields where they served, more likely to volunteer years later, and more likely to describe their professional identity in explicitly civic terms, regardless of the field they ultimately enter. Vadnos is careful to note the limits of applying this research directly to student voter engagement work, since most existing studies examine credit-bearing, faculty-mentored service-learning rather than the paid fellowships and hourly staff roles that make up much of the current voter mobilization landscape. That distinction matters: the research suggests that reflection, mentorship, and intentional program design, not simply the act of participating, are what shape whether a student's civic work leaves a lasting mark on their life and career.

For NCDD's network of dialogue and deliberation practitioners, this work offers both a challenge and a starting point. Vadnos's call for longitudinal data on student civic engagement outcomes echoes a broader need across the field: better tools for tracking whether the programs practitioners build today are producing the durable civic leadership the field hopes for. Programs that intentionally build in reflection and mentorship, rather than treating turnout as the only measure of success, are positioned to generate the kind of long-term impact that strengthens not just individual careers but the broader ecosystem of people committed to democratic participation. Readers interested in the full research review can visit stateofthestudentvote.substack.com/p/from-the-ballot-box-to-a-career-what to explore Vadnos's analysis and its implications for the future of student civic engagement.

The Council on Foundations has launched the Community Foundations Working Across Differences Accelerator, a new grant opportunity designed to help U.S. community foundations deepen their capacity to bring people together across social and political divides. The program pairs direct funding, including a $20,000 planning grant and up to $45,000 in follow-on support, with expert coaching and a structured peer learning agenda, giving foundations both the resources and the skills to design local strategies for working across differences. Selected organizations commit staff time to a bimonthly peer learning circle and at least one additional capacity-building program, such as the Council's Bridging Differences Leadership Cohort. Applications are due September 4, 2026, and are open to U.S. community foundations, with preference given to Council members and organizations planning for long-term engagement. The accelerator reflects a growing recognition among funders that bridging divides requires sustained investment, positioning it as a valuable resource for NCDD's network of practitioners and philanthropic partners.

Community foundations occupy a distinct position in American civic life, trusted by residents across the political spectrum and often positioned to convene people who might not otherwise sit at the same table. The Council on Foundations is investing in that potential through its new Community Foundations Working Across Differences Accelerator, a grant program built to help these foundations turn local trust into structured, lasting strategies for bridging differences in their communities. Applications are due September 4, 2026, and the program is open to U.S. community foundations, with preference given to Council members and organizations prepared for sustained engagement beyond the grant period itself.

Rather than offering funding alone, the accelerator combines a $20,000 planning grant, with the possibility of $45,000 in additional implementation funding, with wrap-around coaching and a structured learning agenda. Selected foundations begin their participation in November 2026 and commit staff to a virtual peer learning circle meeting every other month, alongside at least one additional capacity-building opportunity such as the Council's Bridging Differences Leadership Cohort or Building Cultures of Dialogue workshops. This combination of resources is intended to help foundations move from identifying a need for cross-difference work to building the internal skills and community strategy required to sustain it.
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For NCDD's network, the accelerator represents a model worth watching: a national philanthropic association channeling significant funding directly into local bridge-building capacity, rather than treating dialogue work as a one-time project. It offers a concrete example of how funders can support the kind of sustained, skill-building infrastructure that dialogue and deliberation practitioners have long argued is necessary for lasting community impact. Community foundations interested in applying, or in learning how the program defines "working across differences," can find full eligibility requirements and the application at https://cof.org/community-foundations-working-across-differences-accelerator.

​Organization Name: Rutgers University Foundation

Role Title: Associate Director of Development, Rutgers Democracy Lab

Employment Type: Full-time

Compensation: $90,000 annually

Location: Hybrid (New Brunswick, NJ)

Link to Apply: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4451639517/​

Position Overview: The Associate Director of Development will lead major gifts fundraising for the Rutgers Democracy Lab at the Eagleton Institute of Politics, building and managing a portfolio of donors and prospects at the major gift level. Responsibilities include identifying, cultivating, soliciting, and stewarding donors, developing fundraising strategies as the Lab grows, and collaborating with faculty, communications partners, and Rutgers University Foundation colleagues on proposals and reporting. The ideal candidate holds a bachelor's degree and has at least four years of experience in fundraising, alumni relations, higher education, or a related field, with a preference for experience in policy or education fundraising.

The Compassionate Listening Project, a nonprofit organization that teaches listening as a tool for peacebuilding, is inviting participants to join its Borderlands Journey, an immersive nine-day program running November 7-15, 2026, through the Arizona-Mexico border region. The journey is built on the practice of Compassionate Listening, an approach that asks participants to seek the humanity in every person they encounter, and applies that practice to one of the country's most polarized policy debates. Over the course of the trip, participants meet with migrants, ranchers, Border Patrol agents, tribal members, and humanitarian volunteers, gaining firsthand exposure to viewpoints that rarely share the same room. The experience is designed to leave participants with an embodied listening practice they can carry into their own communities long after the trip ends. By modeling how deep listening can hold space for conflicting perspectives on a divisive issue, the Borderlands Journey offers a concrete example of the bridge-building and conflict transformation work at the heart of NCDD's mission.

Immigration policy at the U.S.-Mexico border is one of the most contested issues in American public life, and most conversations about it happen among people who already agree with each other. The Compassionate Listening Project takes a different approach. Founded on the principle that every person deserves to be heard, regardless of where they stand politically, the organization has spent years training facilitators and leading group experiences that prioritize listening over persuasion. Its upcoming Borderlands Journey extends that work into one of the country's most contentious geographic and political landscapes, offering participants a rare chance to encounter the full range of people shaped by border policy rather than a single side of the debate.

Running November 7-15, 2026, the journey takes participants through the Sonoran Desert and the Arizona-Mexico border region, with stops designed to surface perspectives that rarely appear together in the same conversation. Participants will volunteer with an organization supporting migrants in Nogales, Mexico, visit the Tohono O'odham Nation with a longtime human rights activist, hear directly from ranchers whose land borders the wall, and ride along with Border Patrol agents on a line tour. The itinerary also includes a session on how the wall affects local ecosystems and a meeting with a leader of the modern Sanctuary movement, giving participants a fuller picture of the border's human, environmental, and political dimensions than most public discourse allows.
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For NCDD members working on dialogue, deliberation, and community conflict transformation, the Borderlands Journey offers a working model of what sustained, cross-perspective listening looks like when applied to a genuinely divisive issue. It demonstrates that understanding does not require consensus, and that listening across deep political difference is a practice that can be taught, structured, and carried home. Spots are limited and a deposit is required to hold a place, with the balance due by September 7, 2026. Readers interested in participating or learning more can visit www.compassionatelistening.org/borderlandsjourney to register.

Tzofnat Peleg-Baker, PhD, an applied social psychologist and developer of the 4⁴ Structured Reflective Instrument (4⁴SRI), is opening a new cohort of her international certificate program for mediators, facilitators, ombuds, and other conflict professionals beginning September 30, 2026. The program is grounded in the idea that many of the dynamics driving conflict operate beneath conscious awareness, and it trains practitioners to use a structured, four-layered reflective framework to notice and address those hidden dynamics rather than relying on instinct alone. Over seven monthly sessions, participants apply the framework to their own real cases within a supportive peer community, building a reflective practice they can carry into their work long after the program ends. Early-bird registration closes on August 31, 2026, offering a 20 percent discount on tuition. The program reflects NCDD's ongoing commitment to strengthening the skills and self-awareness of practitioners working at the front lines of dialogue and deliberation.

Conflict professionals spend their careers helping others navigate disagreement, yet even experienced mediators and facilitators often leave a session sensing that something important went unaddressed without being able to name what it was. The 4⁴SRI Certificate Program, developed by applied social psychologist Tzofnat Peleg-Baker, was created to close that gap. Rather than treating reflection as a vague or occasional habit, the program offers a research-based, systematic method for examining what happens beneath the surface of a mediation or dialogue session, including the implicit substantive, process, identity, and relational dynamics that often go unnoticed but shape outcomes all the same.

The certificate program runs as seven monthly two-hour sessions, combining short presentations, guided readings, and hands-on practice built around participants' own cases and dilemmas. Enrollment is intentionally limited to preserve a structured, safe learning environment where mediators, ombuds, restorative practitioners, and facilitators can examine their work openly alongside peers facing similar challenges. Past participants have described the process as sharpening their professional judgment and restoring a sense of purpose in their practice, learning to interrupt habitual patterns and respond more effectively to the emotional and relational undercurrents of conflict.

For NCDD's network of dialogue and deliberation practitioners, the 4⁴SRI program offers a concrete, transferable tool for strengthening the quality of facilitation and mediation work at its root: the practitioner's own awareness and judgment in the room. The next cohort begins September 30, 2026, and early bird registration closes August 31, 2026. Readers interested in joining can register at https://site.corsizio.com/event/6a69024b6905bd52ffdc1d46.

​FIDE — North America and We Do Democracy are hosting a three-day Lead Facilitator Masterclass this October, with sessions in Washington, D.C. (October 15–17) and San Francisco (October 22–24), designed to train experienced facilitators to lead citizens' assemblies from start to finish. The training draws on instructors from Denmark, Germany, and Canada and centers on hands-on practice, with participants spending half their time actively facilitating rather than listening to lectures. Attendees leave with concrete skills in process design, group facilitation, mediation, and managing dysfunction within deliberative settings, along with direct feedback from an international team of trainers. The masterclass reflects the kind of rigorous, practice-based skill-building NCDD's network relies on to sustain high-quality dialogue and deliberation work across the country.

Well-designed citizens' assemblies depend on facilitators who can hold complex group dynamics, guide participants through structured decision-making, and adapt when things don't go as planned. FIDE — North America, in partnership with We Do Democracy, is addressing that need directly with the Lead Facilitator Masterclass, a three-day intensive training running in two U.S. cities this October: Washington, D.C., from October 15 to 17, and San Francisco, from October 22 to 24. The training is led by an international team of facilitators and process designers, including Zakia Elvang of We Do Democracy, Jacob Birkenhäger of the European Commission, Marjan Ehsassi of FIDE — North America, and Peter Macleod of MASS LBP, each bringing direct experience running citizens' assemblies in Denmark, Germany, and Canada.

The curriculum is structured around four core areas: foundational principles of deliberative facilitation, process design, hands-on facilitation practice, and decision-making and reflection. Rather than emphasizing theory, the training is built around a 30-50-20 model, with half of participants' time spent actively practicing facilitation skills such as managing group dysfunction, mediating conflict, and guiding large-scale dialogue and voting processes. Participants leave with a practical toolkit for supporting deliberation, the ability to design a full assembly process and team, and a connection to an international community of practice, giving them tools that extend well beyond a single training weekend.

​For practitioners in the dialogue and deliberation field, the ability to run a citizens' assembly at a professional level remains a specialized and often scarce skill, making structured, expert-led training like this one especially valuable to the broader network NCDD supports. Facilitators looking to deepen their practice and connect with peers working on deliberative democracy internationally can find full details and register at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd8p_kNb2jTs2P9JjUGCQQCFhO8FUJOLOLQzo4voBZvlCLWnw/viewform.

iCivics and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation are co-hosting the 2027 Civic Learning Week National Forum on March 11–12, 2027, in Charlotte, North Carolina, under the theme Civic Education in the Digital Age, and are now accepting proposals from presenters. The Forum brings together researchers, educators, policymakers, and public- and private-sector leaders to strengthen the national movement for civic education, with this year's call seeking sessions on digital tools in civic learning, how young people learn, trust in civic institutions, and field adoption and assessment. Prospective presenters can join an optional webinar on August 28, 2026, and must submit proposals by September 18, 2026. This call offers NCDD's network of educators and practitioners a direct avenue to shape national conversations about civic education, reinforcing NCDD's mission to strengthen democratic participation through informed, engaged citizenship.

iCivics and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation are seeking proposals from civic learning practitioners, researchers, and educators to present at the 2027 Civic Learning Week National Forum, taking place March 11–12, 2027, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Held under the theme Civic Education in the Digital Age, the Forum draws together thought leaders, policymakers, students, and public- and private-sector leaders to energize the national movement for civic education. This year's call for proposals specifically invites breakout and poster sessions on digital tools in civic learning, how young people are learning today, trust and expertise in civic institutions, and how the field measures and adopts new approaches.

The Forum's focus areas speak directly to challenges many in NCDD's network already navigate: how digital platforms are reshaping the way people encounter civic information, how younger generations build trust in institutions and each other, and how practitioners can move from isolated experimentation to field-wide adoption of effective practices. Presenting at a national gathering of this scale gives educators and dialogue practitioners a platform to translate on-the-ground experience into broader policy and practice conversations, extending the same commitment to informed, participatory citizenship that anchors NCDD's own work.
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Those interested in presenting can join an optional call for proposals webinar on August 28, 2026, to ask questions before submitting. The submission deadline is September 18, 2026, with presenters notified by November 23 and an acceptance deadline of December 18, 2026. Educators and practitioners ready to contribute to this national conversation can submit a proposal at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSexfLuuIllg821SuwO-tGUoVZvw1SV1AUws-ENr4hlMXjFKlw/viewform.