Ready to Bring "What's Next, America?" to Your Community? Here's How to Get Started

The National Issues Forums Institute provides a comprehensive suite of free resources, training opportunities, and coaching support to help community organizers bring "What's Next, America?" deliberative conversations to their local contexts — from neighborhoods and libraries to campuses and faith communities. The initiative's three-part deliberative framework guides participants from community assessment through priority-setting to action planning, with an optional action summit model for translating conversation into concrete projects, drawing on a decade of successful state-based precedents in West Virginia and Alabama that produced tangible local outcomes. NIFI supports organizers through monthly intro sessions, facilitation workshops, a Community of Practice, intensive team coaching, and one-on-one staff consultations — all available at no cost. This practitioner-focused resource directly advances NCDD's mission by equipping dialogue and deliberation practitioners with an immediately deployable framework for community-centered civic engagement.

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The National Issues Forums Institute's "What's Next, America?" initiative is already generating conversations in communities across the country — and NIFI has built a robust support infrastructure to help anyone, from seasoned facilitators to first-time organizers, bring this work to their own context. Whether you're a librarian, a campus administrator, a faith community leader, or a neighborhood organizer, the resources, training, and coaching available through NIFI make starting more accessible than you might expect. This post is for NCDD members who are ready to move from "this looks interesting" to "let's make it happen."

"What's Next, America?" guides communities through three deliberative discussion questions — Where are we now? Where do we want to go? How will we get there? — typically across a series of conversations that build understanding over time before culminating in an action summit where participants identify concrete next steps and commit to working on specific projects together. The initiative is explicitly nonpartisan and designed to surface community-determined priorities rather than prescribed solutions. It is also genuinely flexible: NIFI offers versions of the participant guide tailored to standard community settings, K-12 contexts, and college and university environments, along with planning guides, outreach toolkits, and a reflection journal for tracking progress. All materials are free. The model has precedent: state-based versions in West Virginia and Alabama produced tangible community outcomes over the past decade, including a local arts festival supporting young artists, after-school programs for teens, and the formation of a county's first Narcotics Anonymous group to address opioid addiction — projects that emerged directly from local conversations rather than being imposed from outside.

​NIFI's support infrastructure for "What's Next, America?" organizers is one of the initiative's most underappreciated assets. Monthly intro sessions welcome new organizers and help them explore how the initiative might fit their community. Workshops cover planning, facilitation, monitoring impact, and moving from conversation to action. A monthly Community of Practice brings together people doing this work across the country to share insights, challenges, and ideas. For teams that want more intensive support, NIFI offers one-to-three hour coaching sessions with staff and collaborators, available at any point in the process. Drop-in office hours and one-on-one calls are also available. To get started, contact Dawn Harfmann at [email protected], explore the full resource library at whatsnextamerica.com, and find the FAQ at https://nifi.org/deliberation-whats-next-america-national-issues-forums-institute/.