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 sociocracy is about one-ness. One-ness as in: we are all one. And I don't mean it in an esoteric way. I mean it as interdependence. You cannot do anything without others' contribution. And you cannot do anything without affecting others

How does it work? We give you 602 million dollars. It's your job to balance the budget while funding the many important responsibilities of city government. We'll give you some guidelines - what do the departments do? What happens if you give them more-or less - money?

For almost a decade, the Davenport Institute has been researching, training, and consulting with public officials to improve the ways in which governments involve their residents in making tough policy decisions. This work has taken us throughout California and across the country, learning about and teaching the latest techniques in effective participatory governance. We continue to hear from public leaders seeking to capture a "30,000-foot view" of their government's practices in this area. That is why we are launching "How are WE Doing?" to be that lens through which you can evaluate your municipality's public engagement processes.

Welcome! We are the Devon Doughnut Collective, a group of Devon Doughnut Makers on a mission to co-create the first iteration of a Devon Doughnut. We are asking, "Could a dashboard of some kind help to provide a picture of how Devon is faring ecologically and economically? Would this be useful to people living and working here? If so, how, and to do what?"

Federal-aid Simplified. Understanding the Essentials. More and more, transportation agencies must pursue better, faster and smarter ways of doing business. Federal-aid Essentials offers a central online library of informational videos and resources, designed specifically for local public agencies. Each video addresses a single topic-condensing the complex regulations and requirements of the Federal-aid Highway Program into easy-to-understand concepts and illustrated examples.

Here's how the positive deviance approach is different: * Outsiders don't bring in ideas to change a community's culture. Instead, they ask the community to look for its own members who are having success. Those local ideas, by definition, are affordable and locally acceptable - at least to some people in the community. Since they spring from a community's DNA, the community is less likely to feel threatened by these ideas and more likely to adopt them. * The focus is not a community's problems, but its strengths.

All Minnesotans should have the opportunity to make choices that allow them to live a long, healthy life, regardless of their income, education, or ethnic background. Everyone wants good health in order to be productive at work and to succeed in school, and to have affordable medical and housing costs. To make this opportunity a choice for all Minnesotans, we all have to do our part in creating and maintaining healthy homes and communities. Every person and every organization has a role to play, small or large.

The U.S. Economic Development Administration's investment policy is designed to establish a foundation for sustainable job growth and the building of durable regional economies throughout the United States. This foundation builds upon two key economic drivers - innovation and regional collaboration. Innovation is key to global competitiveness, new and better jobs, a resilient economy, and the attainment of national economic goals. Regional collaboration is essential for economic recovery because regions are the centers of competition in the new global economy and those that work together to leverage resources and use their strengths to overcome weaknesses will fare better than those that do not. EDA encourages its partners around the country to develop initiatives that advance new ideas and creative approaches to address rapidly evolving economic conditions.

Results Based Community Planning implements RBA™ population accountability within a local community. It is ….. - Working with a cross section of members of a local community (eg Maitland or Coonamble) - To decide what are the big picture results or outcomes they want for their local community (eg People Belong and are Connected to their Community) - Then work out how they would measure if they had achieved that result (eg Percentage of People with an Effective Neighbourhood Network) - To consider what factors effect that measure and how the local community is going against that measure at the moment - And brainstorm potential partners and potential strategies that could be undertaken to "improve" this measure (eg increase the percentage of people with an effective neighbourhood network) - With some of the strategies having to be Low Cost or No Cost, and some of them Off the Wall because who knows what just might be possible!! - And it is not just about planning, but then getting on and doing it!

Main Street Crowd is designed to bring projects directly to the investors who are most likely to be looking specifically for projects of that kind. We do this with our exclusive network of Clowdz™. Here's how it works:

Our goal is to advance urban sustainability and shared prosperity through initiatives in transportation, water, climate, and public policy. We coach city leaders, advise decision makers, and find new ways to solve challenges.

The way we work is changing forever. A host of technologies-from automation to digital platforms for coordination of tasks-are reinventing not just what people do to earn a living but at a much deeper level how we organize to create value. The landscape of labor economics is in upheaval. Solutions won't come from any one agency, discipline, or company. It will take collaboration, broad public engagement, smart policy, and an openness to reinventing old economic models. The IFTF Workable Futures Initiative is a call-to-action for policymakers, platform developers, corporate strategists, activists, and of course other workers of all kinds, to join us in blueprinting these positive platforms for the future of work. The time is now to grapple with the challenges ahead, develop sustainable solutions, and create a future of work that is workable for everyone.

The 50 State Solution was conceived in early 2016 by California Forward (CA Fwd) as a transpartisan effort to build supportive infrastructure--and a platform for sharing information and ideas--among those working on political reform at the state level. While CA Fwd has served as the initiator and early catalyst of the effort, the vision for 50 State Solution is that it becomes an ongoing effort with shared leadership from the political reform community. The goal of the effort is explicitly not to make sure every organization is doing the same work or working on the same issue. Instead, the goal is create a learning community where reformers can share stories of success and failure, find allies, create coalitions and build community.

We're innovators. We're curious. And we're dissatisfied with the status quo. We're dedicated to strengthening the field of practice that bridges health and communities. Bridging Health & Community aims to transform how we approach health so that it goes beyond health care and public health to include fostering community agency. Based in Seattle, WA, with an office in London, UK, we do our field-building work through convening and coaching. We share the fruits of our work with a view to further describing and strengthening the field of practice that bridges the health sector and those that foster community agency. We met through the Creating Health Collaborative, an international group of innovators exploring health from the perspective of communities. By sharing our work through the Collaborative, we learned of the critical link between a community's ability to make purposeful choices and its health.

Equity is more than the right thing to do-it is an absolute economic imperative. The National Equity Atlas is a first-of-its-kind data and policy tool for the community leaders and policymakers who are working to build a new economy that is equitable, resilient, and prosperous.

But an increase in local control couldn't do away with every barrier. The C40 report identifies six main challenge themes standing in the way of city action: 1) the relationship between a city's authority and the authority of different levels of government, including national and international; 2) the structure, culture, priorities, planning, decision-making and financial practice within city government; 3) the need to communicate the costs and benefits of engaging in pro-climate actions; 4) engaging and collaborating with stakeholders in and outside of government; 5) forging an effective working relationship with the private sector; and 6) funding climate action.

"I cannot overemphasize the importance of this fundamental flaw in poverty policy, i.e., the assumption that there is an ample supply of perfectly good jobs out there that poor people could tap if they just wanted to do so. To this day, this misguided notion underlies the conservative policy agenda that views anti-poverty policy as a narcotic that weans people away from the jobs awaiting them. Kill the programs, and they'll get out of their hammocks (Rep. Paul Ryan's term for the safety net) and get to work."

Since the 2011 Stanford Social Innovation Review article introduced the concept, collective impact has been widely adopted as an effective form of cross-sector collaboration to address complex social and environmental challenges. Though collective impact has proven to be a powerful approach in tackling a wide range of issues in communities all over the world, many practitioners are searching for the tools they need to be successful in this work. The thought leadership and resources below, and in the Resources and Blog sections of this website, will help you build a foundation for doing this work

We find that a powerful approach to understanding your stakeholders is to view them as parts of a wider ecosystem. To do this, we start with a group mapping exercise. The power of the group process means you're more likely to uncover the best information and the learning goes much deeper. Once you've defined the audience, you can go on to identify relationships, who influencers who and then to develop appropriate messages and channels to connect with them.

Efforts to get the middle class back on track have focused mostly on the jobs lost due to automation, and on programs that could retrain people to do the types of jobs that are now being created in the economy-jobs in healthcare, technology, and advanced manufacturing. But this focus on apprenticeships and employment probably won't be enough to pull the middle class from its tailspin. That's because these types of programs ask the worker to adjust to the changing economy, and in essence blame the worker for not getting the skills they need.