The AAA-ICDR Foundation generously contributed $200,000 to the National Institute for Civil Discourse (NICD) in support of its CommonSense American program. NICD is at the cutting edge of developing grassroots policy solutions that are wise enough to attract bipartisan support through our politically balanced membership of over 46,000. This grant from the AAA-ICDR Foundation will deepen member engagement by funding the creation and delivery of an option for members to discuss with each other the chosen policy topic in a small and politically diverse group. Those discussions will be convened over a video conferencing platform and will be moderated by a select set of members who had been trained in facilitation. With this generous grant, NICD is now better situated to reach across partisan differences to bridge Americans in all of their diversity from across a range of racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.
The AAA-ICDR has powerfully enhanced NICD’s abilities to provide high-hope solutions, addressing policy differences while also quickly and credibly provide line-of-sight that it can actually make a difference. Beyond engaging thousands of Americans with each other across our differences more effectively, we do it on specific issues so that there is real-world impact by providing a robust platform for civil political discourse, in-person and digitally. Building on our demonstrated success already, the generous support of the AAA-ICDR grant will help build a potent way to address the bitter partisanship that is making effective policy dispute resolution so challenging.
NICD and AAA-ICDR have collaborated in the past and this grant continues to build on this organizational relationship with a goal to improve how we engage difference, confront conflict constructively, and to improve our interpersonal relationships and our collective politics.