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Vision: Publicly engaged artists, designers, scholars, and community activists working toward the democratic transformation of higher education and civic life. Mission: Imagining America creates democratic spaces to foster and advance publicly engaged scholarship that draws on arts, humanities, and design. We catalyze change in campus practices, structures, and policies that enables artists and scholars to thrive and contribute to community action and revitalization.

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. Most examples involve city governments that have opened up decisions around municipal budgets, such as overall priorities and choice of new investments, to citizen assemblies. In other cases, states, counties, schools, universities, housing authorities, and coalitions of community groups have used participatory budgeting to open up spending decisions to democratic participation.

Advancing a new understanding of democracy for the 21st century and promoting new strategies and innovations in community development that enhance democratic life. Promoting new strategies and innovations in community development that enhance democratic life. The Collaborative is a national leader in the field of community development through our Community Wealth Building Initiative. The Initiative sustains a wide range of projects involving research, training, policy development, and community-focused work designed to promote an asset-based paradigm and increase support for the field across-the-board.

Democracy Beyond Elections is a collaborative, national campaign dedicated to transformative democracy rooted in community led decision making.  It is not enough to get the right person elected or to know that those closest to the issues are closest to the solutions - we must act on this knowledge and put real decision making power in community hands. This means equipping community-members often ignored, pushed out, or marginalized by our current democratic systems with the tools, resources, and opportunities to deeply engage in democratic processes. This means committing to radically reimagine what participation and civic engagement really entail - including tangible and consequential power sharing. And this means expanding our definition of democracy to extend between and beyond elections in participatory practices that include everyone.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) was established in 1999 to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives. In order for citizens to effectively exercise their voices in a democracy, they should be informed about the problems and choices that they face. CEPR is committed to presenting issues in an accurate and understandable manner, so that the public is better prepared to choose among the various policy options.

Democratise (formerly FutureDigital) was founded in New Zealand in 1997 as Wairua Consulting. Our new name reflects our relaunch in 2012, our new based in Europe and our broader approach. Away from digital democracy towards a more strategic and systemic approach to democratic strengthening, open government and effective engagement. It reflects our mission to operate as a collaborative social business, where we partner for good and put people and communities ahead of profit.

The Project on Social Innovation provides this virtual knowledge hub for social innovation in cities and municipalities. Its purpose is to provide a practical platform for sharing the stories and lessons of exciting innovators from the nonprofit, philanthropic and public sectors. The Project on Social Innovation accomplishes this purpose through an innovator's toolkit, relevant news updates, profiles of best practices, regular blogging, and links to other online resources. The site is an initiative of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

The two-year bipartisan Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship launched in 2018 to explore how best to respond to the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in our political and civic life and to enable more Americans to participate as effective citizens in a diverse 21st-century democracy. The Commission recognized that the political culture of the United States and the makeup of its population have both changed dramatically in recent decades. From "fake news" to partisan polarization to the rise of social media, the environment in which citizens gather information and engage with one another and with their government is entirely different from what it was at the turn of twenty-first century.

The slow implosion of the Republican Party - along with the growing strength of a Democratic coalition dominated by low-to-middle-income voters - threatens the power of the corporate establishment and will force big business to find new ways to reassert control of the policy-making process.

work with communities to tell great stories that inspire, activate and enliven our democracy. We believe that communities thrive when they draw on participants' personal experiences and local cultures. By telling stories-whether in the form of performance, radio, video, or other media-communities build power, envision new democratic possibilities, and change culture and policy. Our work is located at the intersection of arts, technology, and social change.

Informed by research, NICD's programs are designed to create safe spaces for elected officials, the media, and the public to engage different voices respectfully and take responsibility for the quality of our public discourse and effectiveness of our democratic institutions. NICD identifies opportunities to drive change across all three groups while deepening the networks among and between them. Our vision is of elected officials who work collaboratively to tackle the big issues facing our country, a media that accurately informs and involves citizens, and a public that engages a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

The solution lies not in a freer marketplace with less government intervention, but in a marketplace that expresses the wishes and best interests of the majority, in one that fairly protects the rights of minorities with what we might call a "democratic marketplace," driven by a commitment to justice, equity, interdependence, ecological regeneration, and the well-being of all life. 

What interests me is how the lessons found in the article could be applied to real world community governance in relation to the public sector. Such communities are already in existence so cannot be created outside of the box to start with, however many of the other observations can be applied especially with the use of the Internet and application of direct democratic dialogue. It should be possible to create some new disruptive innovations which such an approach and resources to create some new community paradigms.

No Labels is a large and rapidly growing citizen-led organization mobilizing frustrated Republicans, Democrats and Independents - the majority of Americans - into a new political force to break the paralysis of hyper-partisanship and dysfunction in Washington. The goal is to make government work again by fighting for bipartisan, common sense solutions to our nation's biggest problems and reforms to our political system.

United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) represents and defends the interests of local governments on the world stage, regardless of the size of the communities they serve. Headquartered in Barcelona, the organisation's stated mission is: To be the united voice and world advocate of democratic local self-government, promoting its values, objectives and interests, through cooperation between local governments, and within the wider international community.

The Deliberative Democracy Consortium is an alliance of the major organizations and leading scholars working in the field of deliberation and public engagement. The DDC represents more than 50 foundations, nonprofit organizations, and universities, collaborating to support research activities and advance democratic practice, in North America and around the world.

DemocracyLab's mission is to improve the democratic process and produce collaborative solutions to public policy problems. Our vision is to help communities throughout the world engage their members to make better decisions and create positive change through collective action.

The Democracy Collaborative was established in 2000 to advance a new understanding of democracy for the 21st century and to promote new strategies and innovations in community development that enhance democratic life. Our goal is to change the prevailing paradigm of community economic development-and of the economy as a whole-in the United States toward a new emphasis and system based on: Broadening ownership and stewardship over capital Democracy at the workplace Stabilizing community and emphasizing locality Equitable and inclusive growth Environmental, social, and institutional sustainability The Collaborative is a national leader in the field of community development through our Community Wealth Building Initiative. The Initiative sustains a wide range of projects involving research, training, policy development, and community-focused work designed to promote an asset-based paradigm and increase support for the field across-the-board.

Stephen Kearney (CEO) and Nick Gardham (Projects Director) introduce RSLM as an educative process for systematic neighbourhood change RSLM™  or Root Solution - Listening Matters™, is the process for democratic engagement and civic renewal developed by Action to Regenerate Community Trust (reg. charity no. 1078551) over the past 25 years. It is a community engagement framework, strategy and process which is at the heart of the effective animating and organising of communities, groups and organisations. It has been proven to: develops trust, respect and relationships engages local people in conversations that lead to networks and action supports established and independent organisations and service providers to collaborate with communities in meeting their needs and aspirations. demonstrates a model of practice that may be utilised by existing and new project partners and communities. RSLM techniques allow trained Community Animators and Organisers to listen and to explore things that people love about their area that they can build on, things that concern them most - their motivations and their ideas for action , whilst focusing on and drawing out solutions.

The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (Public Lab) is a community -- supported by a 501(c)3 non-profit -- which develops and applies open-source tools to environmental exploration and investigation. By democratizing inexpensive and accessible Do-It-Yourself techniques, Public Lab creates a collaborative network of practitioners who actively re-imagine the human relationship with the environment. The core Public Lab program is focused on "civic science" in which we research open source hardware and software tools and methods to generate knowledge and share data about community environmental health. Our goal is to increase the ability of underserved communities to identify, redress, remediate, and create awareness and accountability around environmental concerns. Public Lab achieves this by providing online and offline training, education and support, and by focusing on locally-relevant outcomes that emphasize human capacity and understanding.