The National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) has announced the recipient of this year's Taylor L. Willingham Legacy Fund awards. This year's recipient is Heidi Holliday.

Common Ground for Action (CGA) has now been “live” in some version for about 8 years now, and in that time, moderators have convened over 1,000 forums on the platform. In the last year alone, over 1500 people had a chance to experience deliberating online as part of over 350 forums. Given all the challenges of the past year, that’s an amazing feat.

From December 2019 through the 2020 elections, National Issues Forums (NIF) took part in the Hidden Common Ground project, an effort to uncover areas of agreement among Americans on the most pressing public problems of the day, including political divisiveness, health care, immigration, and rebuilding the economy.

NIF partnered with Public Agenda, USA TODAY, the Kettering Foundation and the America Amplified public radio network to explore opportunities for people across the country to deliberate and exchange ideas about issues.

Current National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) board members Kara Dillard and Verdis Robinson along with former NIFI Board members Kara Lindaman and John Theis spoke with Campus Compact about their different experiences innovating with Common Ground for Action (CGA) and videoconferencing tools during the pandemic.