#ADPTDC13: Sponsor Spotlight — Lyon Software

We’re excited that for the second year in a row, Lyon Software is a sponsor of the ADP/TDC National Meeting! Lyon Software is also an ADP Partner working to support our Campus & Community Civic Health Initiative. A number of ADP campuses use Lyon Software to track civic engagement and community service efforts on their campuses.

By Jessica Franchino, CBISA Specialist/Event Coordinator, Lyon Software

At Lyon Software, we believe in helping you and your community achieve a better tomorrow.  We enable our clients to track how their programs and partnerships are working together to improve the communities they serve.  Track both quantitative and qualitative data about your programs to make sure they are meeting the needs of your community and your organization.  Easy reporting features allow you to report to your stakeholders with the click of a button.  Customizable features ensure your community and their specific needs are tracked.  Let us show you a whole new world of data.

Come talk to us and check out our giveaways at our table, which will be set up during the ADP National Meeting!

Challenge Yourself: Use Civic Data to Meet Community Needs

by the National Conference on Citizenship (an ADP Partner organization)

The 2013 Civic Data Challenge launches today at the Data Visualization Summit in San Francisco. The Challenge invites participants to turn raw data about civic health into useful applications and visualizations that have direct impact on public decision-making.

Expanded version of last year’s challenge

Last year, the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) with the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation  launched the first-ever national Civic Data Challenge. Winning teams spanned the country and included undergraduate students and nonprofit leaders, financial analysts and graphic designers, developers and coders. They brought new eyes, new minds, and new skill sets to the field of civic health to help make this trove of community insight more valuable and accessible to decision makers and the public. For a great recap of last year’s Challenge, read Fast Company’s Visualizing Civic Data to Make the Case for Civic Health.

This year, NCoC, with the support of Knight Foundation, is launching an expanded version of the Challenge. Exciting additions to this year’s Challenge include:

• Three Challenge phases–ideation, creation, and implementation– to help teams come together to build entries that are responsive to community needs.
• Grand prizes to teams that create exceptionally useful products AND work with community partners to successfully implement those tools.
• The opportunity for participants to improve entries along the way with the support of a team of expert advisors.

Submit an idea now

The Civic Data Challenge is asking community leaders, government officials, developers, coders and all interested citizens to get involved. The first step is to submit an idea through the Challenge website, from April 11 – May 19. This ideation phase is an opportunity to creative a collective brainstorm about what tools (apps, websites, videos, and infographics) could be built using civic data. These ideas will inform the parameters of the Challenge and teams will begin building entries to respond May 24 – July 28.  Join us at www.CivicDataChallenge.org .

The Civic Data Challenge is supported by our launch partners at Innovation Enterprise who are organizing the Data Visualization Summit. DVSF is the world’s largest executive led data visualization summit and will be attended by Fortune 500 executives. The challenge is also supported by promotional partners at CEOs for Cities, DataKind, Data Visualization Summit and sponsors at Iron.io.

Apply Now for CIRCLE’s 5th annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies

The fifth annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies (http://activecitizen.tufts.edu/circle/summer-institute/) will be an intensive, two-week, interdisciplinary seminar bringing together advanced graduate students, faculty, and practitioners from diverse fields of study.

Organized by Peter Levine, Tisch College, and Karol Sołtan, University of Maryland, the Summer Institute features guest seminars by distinguished colleagues from various institutions and engages participants in challenging discussions such as:

•     What kinds of citizens (if any) do good regimes need?
•     What should such citizens know, believe, and do?
•     What practices and institutional structures promote the right kinds of citizenship?
•     What ought to be the relationships among empirical evidence, ethics, and strategy?

The syllabus for the fourth annual seminar (in 2012) is here: http://activecitizen.tufts.edu/circle/summer-institute/#syllabus. The 2013 syllabus will be modified but will largely follow this outline. You can also read more about the motivation for the Institute in the “Framing Statement”: http://activecitizen.tufts.edu/circle/summer-institute/summer-institute-of-civic-studies-framing-statement/.

The daily sessions will take place from July 8-18, 2013, at the Tufts campus in Medford, MA. The seminar will be followed (from July 18 at 6 pm until July 20 at 3 pm) by a public conference–Frontiers of Democracy 2013–in downtown Boston. Participants in the institute are expected to stay for the public conference. See information on the 2012 conference: http://activecitizen.tufts.edu/circle/summer-institute/frontiers-of-democracy-innovations-in-civic-practice-theory-and-education/

Tuition for the Institute is free, but students are responsible for their own housing and transportation. A Tufts University dormitory room can be rented for $230-$280/week. Credit is not automatically offered, but special arrangements for graduate credit may be possible.

To Apply

Please email your resume, an electronic copy of your graduate transcript (if applicable), and a cover email about your interests to Peter Levine at Peter.Levine@Tufts.edu. For best consideration, apply no later than March 15, 2012.  You may also sign up for occasional announcements even if you are not sure that you wish to apply: http://tinyurl.com/a9qfftb

Partners and Friends Spotlight: Introduing PollVault

By Sarah Lugaric, Strategy & Partnerships, PollVault

Don’t Sweat the Ballot…

It’s like a bad dream.  You walk into the final exam only to realize you’ve unwittingly neglected to study for over half the material on the test.  But what if you happened to have your smartphone with you, pre-loaded with advice from the smartest students in the class on how to answer every question? And what if it was OK to use all that information, as long as it helped you arrive at the best answer?

In this case, it’s not your final exam – it’s your ballot on Election Day.   And what most voters don’t know is that you can, in fact, bring your smartphone into the ballot box, and use it to help you make better voting decisions.

We’re hoping voters get that message this election season with the introduction of PollVault’s “See Your Ballot” tool.  PollVault is a new site that enables anyone with an Internet connection, a few friends, and a few minutes of time to start making voting decisions that better reflect their values.  PollVault gives voters access to an online version of their ballots and allows them to crowd-source ballot advice, or crowd-poll.  And on November 6th, voters will be able to refer directly to this advice on their smartphones when filling out their actual ballot, allowing them to vote with new-found confidence.

“See Your Ballot” is the realization of PollVault founder Nolan Love’s 10-year dream to use technology to empower democracy.   After a stint in the Peace Corps where Love witnessed rioting in the streets by citizens demanding fair elections, he was dismayed when he returned in 2000 to find an increasing feeling of disengagement from voters who had witnessed the overturn of the popular vote by the Supreme Court.  He wondered why the country that created Google and Apple (and later, Facebook and Twitter) couldn’t find better ways to apply technology to empower citizens.  After a decade developing custom web solutions for corporate clients, Love enlisted the help of a small, self-funded team of close friends to bring his dream to life just in time for the November 2012 election.

Old School vs. The Millennials

The problem is that up until now, getting ready to vote has been pretty old school.  It involved scanning voter-guide booklets, leafing through stacks of flyers, and searching websites to see who your favorite organizations were endorsing. This contributed to a sense of overwhelm and confusion for new and experienced voters alike, creating unnecessary barriers to participation in the democratic process.

Our goal at PollVault was to modernize this process by allowing people to get help making voting decisions the same way they get help choosing doctors or car mechanics – by seeking the help of their friends. PollVault users can choose up to ten organizations, public figures, and/or trusted friends (we like to think of it as your own “Presidential Cabinet”) to help them learn more about key ballot measures and prepare their informed votes.  The result is an easy-to-read grid showing voters their virtual ballots next to the endorsements of their advisor panel, which may include a personal colleague, the Sierra Club, the NRA, or Lady Gaga, for example.

This approach to voting is clearly a natural fit for tech-savvy voters – in other words, most Millennials.  Rock the Vote and HeadCount, both of whom focus on empowering young voters, spotted the potential of PollVault’s “See Your Ballot” tool early on and are featuring it prominently on their websites this election season as a cornerstone of their voter education efforts.

A Proud Partnership

We are also proud to partner with the American Democracy Project and The Democracy Commitment who have been working on initiatives such as eCitizenship and the Engage the Election: 2012 to help inform and empower voters on campuses and universities throughout the nation.

This afternoon, The Democracy Commitment, in collaboration with the American Democracy Project, invites you to a joint webinar to represent and demonstrate PollVault along with another exciting election tool, Politify.  If you are unable to make that date and time, the webinar will be recorded and posted online for later reference for anyone who wishes to view it.

In the meantime, please check us out at www.pollvault.com, and please send along your feedback either via through our site https://www.pollvault.com/polls/feedback or on our newly launched blog http://pollvault.wordpress.com/.

Shaping Our Future Forums: Update & Free Moderator Training Webinar

THE NATION TALKS HIGHER EDUCATION – THE LATEST FROM SHAPING OUR FUTURE

Thank you for your interest in Shaping Our Future, our project to spur thoughtful, inclusive, and open deliberation on the future of higher education on campuses and in communities nationwide. Here’s an update from the National Issues Forums and the American Commonwealth Project on what’s happening this fall.

• Who’s Participating? More than 65 institutions have committed to hosting Shaping Our Future forums. See a list of the institutions that are taking part and learn more about the project at: http://niforums.wordpress.com/tag/shaping-our-future .

• Why It’s Important? Kettering Foundation president David Mathews made riveting closing remarks at Shaping Our Future’s September 4 kick-off event in Washington, DC on why this conversation is needed now. You can view them here: http://kettering.org/featured/david-mathews-shaping-our-future-closing-remarks-2/

• What Students Think. Students at Winona State University prepared a remarkable video about the importance and impact of these discussions. See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR0U_LnStJI&feature=plcp

• Going Viral. And we expect the video idea to catch on. Shaping Our Future is collecting videos from forums around the country. Find out more about the DemocracyU Video project at: http://democracyu.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/democracyu-video-project-bringing-the-voices-of-the-citizen-dialogues-into-a-national-conversation/

• Blogging in the Huffington Post. Plus, we’re hoping to broaden the discussion by bringing the themes and ideas addressed in Shaping Our Future to the pages of The Huffington Post. Read recent op-eds by Harry Boyte and Bill Muse at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-boyte/civic-engagement-collectiveinterest_b_1825218.html , and by Jean Johnson at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jean-johnson/higher-educationreform_b_1900598.html.

• Get Started. Materials to launch community or campus forums-including  a discussion starter video, citizen’s issue guide, and moderator’s guide-are  available free of charge at: http://www.nifi.org/issue_books/detail.aspx?catID=6&itemID=21640 .

We welcome your comments, and please let us know if you’d like more information about participating in the Shaping Our Future Project.

Join Us For A Moderator Preparation Webinar
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012:  2PM

This coming year, more than 60 campuses and communities will host shaping our future forums. Here’s your chance to find out how to participate.

This free webinar is designed specifically for anyone interested in hosting or moderating deliberative forums for the National Shaping Our Future Project. This project is a joint effort of the National Issues Forums Institute and the American Commonwealth Project.

Participants can ask questions and/or give comments via chat (or voice, if your computer has a microphone).

The webinar will cover these topics and more:

• Overview: Shaping Our Future—its goals, rationale, and background
• A primer:  NIF’s approach to moderating to encourage deliberation and dialogue
• An introduction to the project’s print and video materials
• Tips on expanding the dialogue between campuses and communities
• Troubleshooting techniques
• A chance to talk with seasoned NIF moderators and learn from their experiences

Please click the link below to get registered today. Have specific questions? Send them to us ahead of time and we’ll include them in the webinar discussion period! (alee@kettering.org)

Specific web URL and user credentials to access the Webinar will be sent to you upon registration via the email address you provided during the registration process.  Register Now!

Partner Spotlight: NCoC’s new Issue Brief “Civic Health & Unemployment II: The Case Builds”

Better Civic Health means Lower Unemployment

Civic Health and Unemployment II: The Case Builds is the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC)’s latest issue brief. This 2012 Issue Brief explores the relationship between civic engagement and economic resilience. It finds that the density and type of nonprofit organizations in a community, as well as its social cohesion (the level at which citizens trust, talk to and help neighbors and socialize with family and friends), are important predictors of that community’s ability to withstand unemployment in a recession.

“Civic Health and Unemployment II: The Case Builds” is released by NCoC in partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with research by CIRCLE (the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement), Civic Enterprises, and Saguaro Seminar.

This brief is a continuation of research that began in 2011 with a brief called “Civic Health and Unemployment: Can Engagement Strengthen the Economy?” That brief found 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. See the related 2011 brief.
The research will be presented this week in Philadelphia during the National Conference on Citizenship’s 67th annual conference, which brings together civic leaders, educators, CEOs and government representatives to address issues related to our nation’s civic health.

Viewers can watch the conference, including the announcement of the winners via livestream from 1-5:30 p.m. ET on Friday, Sept. 14th. There will be a panel exploring the link between civic engagement and employment at 1:45 p.m ET.

To join the conversation on Twitter, follow @NCoC and @CivicData and the hashtag #NCoC, or on its Facebook page. The conference will include questions from Twitter followers as part of the conference.

Authors: Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg (CIRCLE), Chaeyoon Lim (University of Wisconsin) and Peter Levine (CIRCLE).

Table of Contents

• 1 – Introduction
• 2 – Executive Summary
• 3 – Evidence Builds that Civic Health Protects Against Unemployment
• 4 – Specific Findings: The Number and Type of Nonprofit Organizations Predict Resilience to Unemployment
• 5 – Specific Findings: Social Cohesion Also Predicts Resilience Against Unemployment
• 6 – Explaining Some Causal Mechanisms: Some Possibilities
• 7 – Conclusion
• 8 – Technical Notes
• 9 – Glossary of Terms and Data Sources
• 10 – Endnotes

Suggested citation for this publication:
National Conference on Citizenship. Civic Health and Unemployment II: The Case Builds, Washington DC. 2012, September.

Partner Spotlight: NERCHE’s Lynton Colloquium on the Scholarship of Engagement | September 21 at UMass Boston

American Democracy Project participants and friends are encouraged to attend NERCHE’s Lynton Colloquium on the Scholarship of Engagement on Friday, September 21, 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

2012 Lynton Colloquium

 NERCHE’s First Annual
Lynton Colloquium on the Scholarship of Engagement

A day of conversation, reflection, and celebration honoring the
pioneering work of Ernest A. Lynton and the legacy of his contributions to publically engaged scholarship.

Friday, September 21, 2012
9:00 AM – 3:30 PM
University of Massachusetts Boston, Campus Center Ballroom

NERCHE’s First Annual Lynton Colloquium on the Scholarship of Engagement will feature presentations and panel discussions inspired by Ernest Lynton’s reframing of faculty scholarship as inclusive and collaborative work in which academics and community partners share knowledge and expertise in the process of public problem solving. Discussion will explore the legacy of Lynton’s influence on scholarly practice and organizational change in higher education.  The Lynton Colloquium is a high quality, inexpensive professional development opportunity, especially convenient for those in the northeast. The event will explore the legacy of Lynton’s influence on scholarly practice and organizational change in higher education. The keynote presentation will be delivered by the recipient of the 2012 Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement for Early Career Faculty, who will be announced in early August.  Info: http://bit.ly/OP0uml.

Partner Spotlight: NCoC’s Civic Data Challenge

Countdown to Civic Data Challenge Deadline: Turn Raw Data into Community Tools

Believe that communities can take better advantage of key data in their decision making? Join the Civic Data Challenge and help turn the raw data of civic health into useful community tools. The deadline for submission is July 29th.

The first-ever Civic Data Challenge will bring new eyes, new minds, new findings, and new skill sets to the field of civic health. It’s a project of NCoC (the National Conference on Citizenship), in partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, as well as other great partners like Code for America and the Case Foundation. Kaggle, DataWeek, and GOOD are all contributing exciting prizes. The Salesforce.com Foundation has announced their commitment as a top-line sponsor—contributing $25,000 in cash prizes for Challenge winners!

Participants in the Challenge will turn the raw data of “civic health” into beautiful, useful applications and visualizations, enabling communities to be better understood and made to thrive. NCoC is providing its civic health data, as well as other data on the important topics of health, safety, education, and the economy.

You’re invited to collaborate with others, analyze the data, and create something amazing to showcase what you find. Designers, data scientists, researchers, and app developers are especially encouraged to join the challenge. All entries must be received by July 29th, so make sure to join the Google Group now!

The challenge has exciting prizes for the winners, who will be selected from each category — health, economy, safety, and education. As a participant, you will be competing for cash and other cool prizes including the opportunity to host your own data competition on the Kaggle platform, to present your winning insights at Data Week in September, and to feature your submissions through the GOOD platform.

You’ll also have the chance to get your work in front of an awesome team of judges including:

• Leslie Bradshaw, President, COO and Co-founder of JESS3
• Beth Kanter, Author, Blogger, Trainer
• Henry E. Brady, Dean and Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley
• Matt Mahan, President and Acting CEO, Causes
• Jake Porway, Founder and Executive Director, DataKind
• Darell Hammond, CEO and Founder of KaBOOM!
• Maria Teresa Kumar, Founding Executive Director of Voto Latino
• Ryan Resella, Technical Lead at Code for America
• Sonal Shah, former Director of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation
• Michael D. Smith, Senior Vice President of Social Innovation at the Case Foundation
• Christie George, Director of New Media Ventures
• Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigslist and Craigconnects
• Vivek Kundra, Executive Vice President, Emerging Markets, Salesforce.com.

Winners will be announced at the 67th Annual National Conference on Citizenship on September 14 in Philadelphia.

Watch the Civic Data Challenge team launch the Challenge at the Data 2.0 Summit in San Francisco: http://www.civicdatachallenge.org/blog/post/civic-data-challenge-launched-at-data-20-summit_1

How to find the Challenge:
www.CivicDataChallenge.org
www.Twitter.com/CivicData
www.Facebook.com/CivicDataChallenge

Partners & Friends Spotlight: U.S. Vote Foundation’s Online Voter Services

Note the special offer to ADP member campuses (see below)!

By Lorenzo Bruscagli, U.S. Vote Foundation

I am pleased to announce that Overseas Vote Foundation (OVF) has launched a new initiative dedicated to domestic voters: U.S. Vote Foundation (US Vote) www.usvotefoundation.org.

US Vote provides domestic voters with the information and online tools they need to produce completed state-specific voter registration forms (not the NVRA form!) [Watch the Video 1m;25s].

In particular US Vote provides a Domestic Absentee Ballot request tool that was designed with students in mind. It’s an easy and efficient way for students living out of state to request their ballot and remain involved in the electoral process.

After years of serving voters, the team behind U.S. Vote has found that what stands between a citizen and registration are simple questions: When and where can I vote? What are the deadlines? What ID do I need to show at the polls? US Vote sets out to remove those obstacles through our State Voter Information Directory (SVID).

US Vote also features the Election Official Directory (EOD), which contains comprehensive contact information for all election jurisdictions across the country.The database integrates with the voter registration wizard. Voters are provided the correct mailing address with their registration form mailing instructions. Note that the EOD is also licensed by the National Association of Secretaries of State and provided through the canivote.org website.

This means that voters using the U.S. Vote Foundation site will register with their own state-specific forms and send them to the Local Election Office – not the State office address.

Opportunities: U.S. Vote Foundation also offers the opportunity of hosting customized brand pages on their website. This means that an organization can offer its users a complete election service directly from their own website and with their own sponsored brand.

**As a special offer to AASCU, U.S. Vote foundation is also offering interested AASCU members the creation of customized election service banners for their website. If you are interested please contact Lorenzo Bruscagli at lorenzo@usvotefoundation.org by July 31.

The best introduction is experiencing the site for yourself. I encourage you to visit and test the various functions.

Expanding the success of their parent organization, Overseas Vote Foundation, U.S. Vote Foundation continues our pursuit of online voter services innovation.

For more information, see this U.S. Vote Brochure.

See previous blog post about U.S. Vote Foundation here.

Like US Vote on Facebook. Follow on Twitter.

Felice Nudelman and Tom Ehrlich honored with ADP Spirit of Democracy Awards

By Jen Domagal-Goldman, National Manager, American Democracy Project

Felice Nudelman and Tom Ehrlich, Spirit of Democracy honorees

The ADP/TDC 2012 national meeting marked the 10th annual meeting of the American Democracy Project. In commemoration of this event, we honored two individuals who played — and continue to play — pivotal roles in the founding and future of ADP.

Felice Nudelman, in her previous role as the Executive Director of Education for The New York Times Company where she was responsible for developing and overseeing education initiatives, including The New York Times Knowledge Network, was a co-partner with George Mehaffy and AASCU in creating the American Democracy Project in 2003. Her involvement in the deliberations and discussions which lead to the founding of ADP was crucial.

Tom Ehrlich was a a Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching when George Mehaffy and Felice Nudelman called him up to get input and advice for AASCU’s new American Democracy Project. He thought ADP sounded like a “great idea” and was thrilled to help. Tom was the keynote speaker at the first ADP meeting in 2003; he also suggested the ADP campus audits and reading circles — two early ADP implementation strategies on our campuses. Tom and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching were also our national partners in ADP’s Political Engagement Project.

To honor Felice and Tom, we created a “Spirit of Democracy” award, one that will be given infrequently to individuals whom embody ADP’s commitment to prepare the next generation of informed, engaged citizens for our democracy.

“Felice and Tom were not only critical to the creation of the American Democracy Project but valued collaborators and staunch champions of our collective commitment to education for democracy.  I’m thrilled that we could recognize Felice and Tom with Spirit of Democracy awards and I am deeply honored to call them both friends,” said George Mehaffy.

Thank you, Felice and Tom for your commitment to ADP and the important work that we all do together!