In 2024, NIFI launched the Deliberative Democracy Fellowship to support and fund the development of new Issue Guides that provide a framework for public deliberation and public decision making. Fellows are welcome from a broad range of backgrounds and disciplines who have knowledge and experience with deliberative practices.

Submission deadline is August 28, 2024.

Fellows Term: One Year  (September – August) 

Eligibility: For the inaugural Fellowship year we are seeking two individuals who have previously facilitated the development of an Issue Guides. One Fellow will be connected to an academic institution and one Fellow will be community-based.

Fellows Responsibilities:

Each Fellow will be responsible for facilitating the process to generate one new Issue Guide during their term.

• Identify the Issue Guide topic (drawing from the annual NIFI Issue Guide Topics survey) 
• Assemble an Issue Guide Development Team (aka Naming and Framing team)
• Convene and coordinate the team meetings
• Facilitate and manage information gathering process (e.g. concern gatherings, surveys, etc)
• Delegate and manage the writing process
• Complete the writing process within their Fellows term

Compensation: Each Fellow will receive a $5000 stipend plus $1500 to support the information gathering processes. A total of $1000 is available to incentivize team member participation.

 APPLY HERE

Submission deadline is August 28, 2024.

What is an Issue Guide?

An Issue Guide is a document that includes unbiased facts and research related to help participants gain a deeper understanding of the problem to be deliberated. The Guide outlines several values-based options for how to address the issue with costs and consequences to explore based on that approach. 

While issue guides can vary in length and complexity, the Issue Guide provides the necessary background and context for in-person or online deliberative forums and serves as the primary discussion guide for facilitators and participants through the deliberation. As such naming and framing the issue guide appropriately is a crucial step in successful deliberation.

Here are several hallmarks of a quality issue guide framework, from Julie Pratt’s A Guidebook for Issue Framing (2015):

• The framing reflects people’s starting points on the issue, using public-friendly concepts and language.
• The framework reveals what people hold valuable, and you understand the motivations that underlie different points of view.
• The statement of the problem matches up with the choices you developed. Each choice addresses that problem directly.
• The framing makes a strong case, or puts the “best foot forward,” for each of the choices, while at the same time acknowledging the downside and trade-offs involved.
• There is tension between and/or within the choices to facilitate true deliberation on the issue. 
• Potential actions are clearly defined for each choice and require multiple actors, e.g. individuals, organizations, businesses, and government. The potential actions feel reasonable and doable.

About NIFI

Formed in 1981, National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) is a network of civic, educational, and other organizations, and individuals, whose common interest is to promote public deliberation in America. It includes civic clubs, religious organizations, libraries, schools, and many other groups that meet to discuss critical public issues. Forum participants range from teenagers to retirees, prison inmates to community leaders, and literacy students to university students.

NIF does not advocate specific solutions or points of view but provides citizens the opportunity to consider a broad range of choices, weigh the pros and cons of those choices, and meet with each other in a public dialogue to identify the concerns they hold in common.

 APPLY HERE

Submission deadline is August 28, 2024.