Apply Again for Harvard’s $100,000 Award in Public Engagement and Participation!

The Innovations in American Government Awards program is currently accepting applications and nominations for the next round of competition (Deadline: April 15, 2016). The awards are given to programs that serve as examples of creative and effective government at its best.

For the second time, the Ash Center is pleased to offer a special $100,000 award — named the Roy and Lila Ash Innovations Award for Public Engagement in Government — for government-led innovations that demonstrate novel and effective approaches to increasing public engagement and participation in the governance of towns, cities, states, and the nation. Learn more about the award below in the form of four FAQs: Should I apply? How will my application be evaluated? What happens if I win? And who wins these awards?

Should I apply?

For the Roy and Lila Ash Innovations Award for Public Engagement in Government, we are seeking citizen engagement and participation programs, policies, and initiatives that address one or more of the following goals:

• Make government more participatory, more transparent, more responsive, and/or more representative
• Expand public participation in the development of policies and regulations
• Encourage public participation in community spending decisions
• Leverage digital technologies or other government resources to broaden or deepen public engagement
• Utilize crowd-sourcing and collaboration to drive problem solving
• Encourage the public to be on the front line in taking action to solve problems
• Enhance public participation in electoral politics and voting
• Foster new strategies for citizen engagement within policy sectors
• Involve the public and citizens in governance in other creative ways

All units of government — federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial — from all policy areas are eligible to apply for recognition. Programs or initiatives must be administered under the authority of one or more governmental entities. Nonprofit, private sector, and union partnerships are eligible with governmental involvement and oversight.

Programs must also be currently in operation, and they must have been implemented 12 months prior to the date of submission — e.g. for the 2016–7 Award competition, the program must have been launched prior to June 1, 2015.

How will my application be evaluated?

Applicants will be judged on the standard Innovations in American Government Awards criteria of novelty, effectiveness, significance, and transferability, as well as the impact of the innovation on public engagement and participation. This impact could be demonstrated, for example, by:

• Number of people reached
• Diversity of people from all parts of a community
• Impact of public input on public policy
• Impact of public engagement on solving public problems
• Impact of public participation on quality of governance

After a rigorous process of identification and evaluation, a national selection committee of distinguished scholars and practitioners selects the top programs.

What happens if I win?

The Innovations Awards Program works vigorously to disseminate the valuable lessons offered by these initiatives.

Winning programs receive grant funding and significant press coverage. The top winner of the Innovations in American Government Award and the winner of the Roy and Lila Ash Innovations Award for Public Engagement in Government will each receive a $100,000 grant to support replication and dissemination activities. Top finalists will also receive monetary grants.

Case studies are developed with select award winners and incorporated into the curricula of hundreds of Harvard University courses and thousands of courses offered by institutions around the world. Three of the program’s case studies are consistently ranked among Harvard Kennedy School’s 20 bestsellers.

In addition to the Ash Center’s teaching and research platforms, finalists and award winners are encouraged to host an Ash Center Summer Fellowship, which places Harvard Kennedy School students in operational roles within their agencies. Students not only learn but add value by sharing cutting-edge trends and ideas explored at the Kennedy School.

Who wins these awards?

The Program has received over 27,000 applications and recognized nearly 500 government initiatives since it was established in 1985 with funding from the Ford Foundation, and many of these programs become established best practices. You can learn about all of our past winners and finalists in our awards database, which provides access to hundreds of award-winning government innovations in the U.S. and worldwide.

In its inaugural year, the Roy and Lila Ash Innovations Award in Public Engagement in Government received over one hundred submissions of programs, policies, and initiatives that enhance citizen engagement and participation in the development of policies, regulations, and community spending decisions, and in taking action to solve public problems in a variety of creative ways. Many programs leverage digital technologies or other government resources to broaden or deepen public engagement and utilize crowdsourcing and collaboration to drive problem-solving.

Through a multistage evaluation process that included two application rounds, a research round, a site visit, and a final public presentation, the Ash Center named Participatory Budgeting in New York City (PBNYC) as the winner of the first Roy and Lila Ash Innovations Award in Public Engagement in Government.

Participatory budgeting is a community-level democratic approach to public spending in which local people directly decide how to allocate public funding. Participatory Budgeting in New York City (PBNYC), called “revolutionary civics in action” by the New York Times, is the largest and the fastest-growing participatory budgeting process in the United States. PBNYC’s cycle lasts eight months, beginning with thousands of people attending hundreds of neighborhood assemblies to brainstorm spending ideas that could improve their communities.

Hundreds become “budget delegates” and work with their neighbors, elected officials, city agencies and community organizations to create project proposals. This year, more than 40,000 people voted on the projects they want to see in their communities. Winning proposals — such as new computers for underserved public schools, public park renovations, and pedestrian safety improvements — are funded and implemented by the city.

Three other programs were recognized by the Award as finalists for the 2015 Roy and Lila Ash Innovations Award in Public Engagement in Government:

Creating Community Solutions was a response to the Sandy Hook tragedy and President Barack Obama’s January 2013 directive to the secretaries of the US Department of Health and Human Services and the US Department of Education to launch a national dialogue on mental health. Knowing these dialogues would require an innovative approach to public participation, the Obama administration reached out to experts in deliberative democracy.

The result was a partnership of leading organizations in the field that convened a national participation process aimed at helping communities learn more about mental health issues, assess how mental health problems affect their communities and younger populations, and decide what actions to take to improve mental health in their families, schools, and communities. The initiative began with a series of community dialogues and has since extended to online and text-based support in order to reach the youth population often left out of traditional forms of public engagement.

Engaging Citizens and Problem-Solving Initiative from the City of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, was launched in response to a major fiscal and public-service crossroads in 2007. Local government officials convened an ad hoc group of government, business, education, and nonprofit leaders to discuss how the community could work together more effectively. Partnering with the National Civic League, the group embarked on an inclusive, citizen-centered community visioning and strategic planning process. Over 500 diverse stakeholders were invited to participate in the kickoff to the Clear Vision Eau Claire process, whose mission statement was “to engage our community for the common good.”

Working also with the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at Augsburg College, Clear Vision created a model for civic engagement and public problem-solving that brings together everyday people and public leaders in collaborative work. The results in Eau Claire include a community homeless shelter, neighborhood community gardens, youth environmental action teams, and, most recently, approval of a $70 million, public-private joint venture performing arts center and downtown revitalization project, and future plans for a major events and recreation complex.

Oregon’s Kitchen Table helps connect elected officials and the public in Oregon in joint projects at nearly every scale (state, regional, local, and even individual) through public consultations, in-person events, civic crowdfunding, and Oregonian-to-Oregonian micro-lending.

The program was founded in 2010 at Portland State University by a group of nonprofit community leaders and former elected officials in order to create a permanent civic infrastructure through which Oregonians can access a suite of different opportunities for civic engagement. Each Oregon’s Kitchen Table project includes organizing and outreach components to generate participation from Oregonians.

Read more here about the remaining Top 10 programs from the 2015 Award cycle, including State of Oregon’s Citizens’ Initiative Review, City and County of San Francisco’s Neighborhood Empowerment Network, State of New York’s NY Rising Community Reconstruction Program, City of Vallejo’s Participatory Budgeting, and City of Philadelphia’s Textizen and PHL2035.

Applications and additional information are available at www.innovationsaward.harvard.edu.

APPLICATIONS ARE DUE ON APRIL 15, 2016.

Originally published at www.challengestodemocracy.us.