Community Assistance

National expertise to support your local engagement efforts

At the National Civic League, our approach is multifaceted, evidence-based, and tailored to the unique needs of each community. The League utilizes unique tools during our civic engagement process to better determine the needs of your community.

We identify ways to move from conversation to action and from ideas to implementation, ensuring that engagement reaches beyond those who typically engage.

The League offers expertise in many different areas and we can create a custom package from the offerings below that’s unique to your organization and tailored for your specific needs.

Better Public Meetings

In many places, official public meetings no longer work. Most of the official interactions between citizens and local governments, school systems, planning boards, and police departments are full of frustration, conflict, and mistrust. The League’s Center for Democracy Innovation can help make official public meetings more civil, deliberative, and productive through our proven process.

City Charter Revision Guidance

The League’s Model City Charter is used by hundreds of cities to guide their charter language and governance structure. The League can work with charter commissions to assess the current charter, review state open meetings laws, and conduct interviews with stakeholders both inside and outside of government. Recommendations are then crafted based on these findings.

For a more involved approach, the League can incorporate extensive community visits, substantive public engagement for charter “visioning,” and the flexibility to add extra services tailored to the unique needs and interests of your community.

Deliberative Democracy

Citizen Assemblies
Policymakers are used to hearing from the loudest voices, those with the time and resources to show up make noise. Citizen assemblies bring in the voices we don’t always hear and put them on equal footing – in a solutions-focused setting without divisive political antics. In a citizen assembly, a randomly selected, representative group of people comes together across ideological and demographic differences to learn about, deliberate on, and recommend solutions to key public policy questions. Around the world, more than 600 citizen assemblies have driven real government action. Civic Genius works in partnership with YOUnify and communities across the country to build citizen assemblies into civic life.

It’s Your America
A citizen problem-solving initiative that brings together Americans from across the political spectrum to learn about, discuss, and tackle critical national issues. Learn more here – and let us know on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram if you’re interested in bringing an event to your community!

Civic Measurement

The League has developed a range of tools and strategies to measure both the quantity and quality of engagement opportunities in a community. Each tool provides a unique approach to assessing the health of local democracy.

Civic Infrastructure Scans

Local leaders need to know what pitfalls to avoid and what assets they can count on. The Scan is a qualitative research methodology that examines the strengths and gaps in the support structure for local democracy, including the recent history of engagement, skills and capacities present in the community, and the state of discussion online. Each scan consists of semi-structured qualitative interviews with key local leaders, media and social media analysis, and desk research.

Civic Index

The Civic Index is a self-assessment tool designed to help communities evaluate and enhance their civic capital. The tool provides a structured framework for discussing and measuring a community’s civic strengths, while identifying areas that may require further attention. Many communities have successfully used the Civic Index to establish a baseline measure of their civic capital, gathering community input to monitor progress as they work to build more equitable and thriving communities.

The League can assist your community in using the Civic Index by facilitating discussions with community members, partner organizations, or staff. These gatherings can spark meaningful conversations about strengths and areas for improvement, driving collective action toward a stronger, more engaged community.

Engagement Scorecard

Public meetings can be both productive and impactful, but to truly make them work for people, it’s essential to quickly and easily gauge participant satisfaction. The Scorecard is a quantitative, user-centered data-gathering tool that allows participants to swiftly rate public engagement opportunities and assess the overall quality of local democracy and civic health using a tag-based system. It also provides multiple ways to visualize the collected data.

Strategic Planning

The League has a strong track record (Sioux Falls, Eau Claire, Gladstone) of facilitating resident-led strategic planning processes that emphasize inclusion and collaborative problem-solving. We partner with communities to design and execute planning processes that integrate large community meetings with focused workgroups, ensuring representation across ethnic, geographic, age, gender, and occupational diversity.

By engaging stakeholders from business, education, environmental, faith-based, healthcare, housing, neighborhood, and nonprofit sectors, we help communities develop actionable goals and implementation strategies with measurable outcomes.

Trainings

League staff are available to offer trainings and workshops at community meetings and professional conferences on a range of topics, including:

Creating Better Public Meetings: Moving from Microphones to Meaningful Deliberation
Healthy Democracy Ecosystem
Civic Measurement
Waves of Democracy Innovations
Public Participation Strategies
Integrating Engagement and Equity into Your Model City Charter

Contact the League to talk about your local challenges and how we can help your community.