The Civil Debate Wall—popularly known as ‘The Wall’—is a unique, innovative social media tool created by Local Projects for The Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida and funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation. The Wall creates constructive dialogue by providing a physical social media tool that connects large touch screens, a texting system, and a website. These three synchronized components create a single, seamless interactive experience for the broader University of Florida community to actively engage in local, ... (continue)

Engagement Commons, currently in beta, is a collaborative, dynamic, and accessible resource that both catalogs technology for civic engagement and highlights stories of real-world success. City officials and civic leaders can leverage the platform to identify, evaluate, and deploy the right apps to engage their communities. Engagement Commons is a project of Code for America and the Knight Foundation. Engagement Commons is a wiki-based, community-built resource. Contribute by adding an app or organization entry, or sharing an engagement-related story. Engagement Commons is part of the ... (continue)

The Fund for Democratic Communities (F4DC), a Greensboro, North Carolina based private foundation, supports community-based initiatives and institutions that foster authentic democracy to make communities better places to live. These are some of the things F4DC does: makes grants to groups that engage in participatory democracy to further their social change objectives convenes groups and individuals committed to social and economic justice through deepening democratic practice conducts research and and produces materials to nurture the growth of authentic democracy. Learn more about F4DC’s grantmaking at http://f4dc.org/grants. ... (continue)

Tele-Town Hall, LLC ™ is the creator and the leading provider of “telephone town hall” events. Tele-Town Hall™ events are the culmination of our nearly two decades of planning and testing to create an unparalleled breakthrough in LIVE, person-to-person communications. We currently provide thousands of elected officials, political candidates, non-profit organizations, associations, and businesses with one of the most convenient and cost-effective means of mass personal communications. In the past couple of years, tele-town halls have replaced face-to-face town hall meetings for many legislators — ... (continue)

The Center for Civil Discourse is organized around the central principle that open, fair and truthful debate, characterized by respect for opposing viewpoints is essential to a healthy democracy. The Center’s mission is to advance the values of respectful discourse and to call on Americans to embrace civility and reject demagoguery in government, media and our personal lives. Founded in 2011 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center is is affiliated with the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and ... (continue)

Check out the new DemocracyU website, the internet home to the American Commonwealth Partnership. The website highlights the inspiring work that engaged students are achieving at universities, colleges and communities across the country. The site will include students’ personal stories of off-campus activities as well as discussion and debate on the evolving role of university and college students in engaging in public work that benefits society. (continue)

Pathways to Participation is a 2011 report from the UK that explores why and how people participate in their society. Tim Hughes, one of the report researchers, pointed out in an email to NCDD member Susanna Haas Lyons a critical finding for public engagement efforts: too often public consultation changes nothing for citizens but a decreased willingness to continue to be engaged. The reason for this is two-fold, he said. One, the engagement exercises are seen as tokenistic, and participants believe that nothing will really ... (continue)

This new report from the Institute for Local Government focuses on youth engagement with local governments, particularly on the issues of climate change and energy. The white paper looks at the impact of youth boards and commissions in some California cities, youth involvement in public meetings, and creating programming geared toward a younger audience. The report compiles a fairly comprehensive set of resources to use when thinking about and developing youth involvement strategies. This white paper originally appeared as an article in the September 2011 ... (continue)

This 2011 “issue brief” published by the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) explores the relationship between civic engagement and economic resilience. The report finds that five measures of civic engagement – attending meetings, helping neighbors, registering to vote, volunteering and voting – appear to help protect against unemployment and contribute to overall economic resilience. “Civic Health and Unemployment: Can Engagement Strengthen the Economy?” was released by NCoC in partnership with CIRCLE (the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement), Civic Enterprises, Saguaro Seminar, ... (continue)

In the past two decades, '"civil society" has become a central organizing concept in the social sciences. Drawing together 38 contributions from leading scholars and activists, The Oxford Handbook on Civil Society aims to be a definitive work on this topic. (continue)