Center for Public Deliberation Partnership Guide

PARTNERSHIP
GUIDE

TABLE OF
CONTENTS
What is Public Deliberation? 2
A Way of Decision Making 3
Addressing Wicked Problems 4
What We Do 5
More Than Facilitation 6
Project Timeline 7
Selecting Projects 8
Working Together 9
Partnership Guidelines 10
What You Gain 12
Pricing 13
Our Approach 14
Questions to Ask Yourself 15
Frequently Asked Questions 17
Additional Resources 19
1

ABOUT THE CENTER
The Colorado State University Center for Public Deliberation (CPD) serves as an impartial
resource to the northern Colorado community. Working with students trained in small group
facilitation, the CPD assists local government, schools, and community organizations by
researching issues and developing useful background material, and then designs, facilitates,
and reports on innovative public events.
2

WHAT IS PUBLIC
DELIBERATION?
3

A WAY OF DECISION
MAKING
Deliberation is an approach to community
decision-making in which community
members, not just experts or politicians, are
deeply involved in community problemsolving.
Working with trained facilitators who
utilize a variety of deliberative techniques,
community members come together to:
• Learn about the issue
• Talk with, not past, each other
• Consider diverse points of view
• Discover key tradeoffs and values
• Spark new ideas
• Make decisions
Deliberation differs from two other common
forms of public communication: dialogue and
debate. Dialogue focuses on building
understanding between multiple viewpoints.
It’s useful when different groups are having
trouble understanding one another. Dialogic
facilitators help participants to share personal
experiences and build trust. While
deliberation may require building common
ground, it’s more focused on collaborative
problem-solving.
There are many ways to practice deliberation.
One of the most common ways we think
about deliberation is when juries come
together to make a decision on a legal case.
The Center for Public Deliberation’s (CPD)
approach looks a little different. We focus on
complex problems without simple solutions.
We open the conversation anyone who may
be affected by a problem or decision. Then
we partner with experts to design a
conversation that will help participants work
through the tough choices. Our trained
undergraduate facilitators lead groups of 6-8
individuals through a deliberative discussion,
using a variety of tools that capture
everyone’s input. That way, we can report out
what we heard to decision-makers and
participants.
Alternatively, debate is used when there are
important questions of fact at stake. Some
issues are more technical than others. These
kinds of problems need experts and key
stakeholders to evaluate different options.
Debate allows the public to hear from experts
and weigh competing information. Some
issues, however, are too complex to be
effectively handled through the pro-con
framing of traditional debate.
4

ADDRESSING WICKED
PROBLEMS
Some issues are wicked because, unlike
fixing a toaster, there are multiple
experiences, values, and opinions that have
to be taken into consideration. Sometimes
solutions fail, despite expert design, because
those impacted by a decision weren’t part of
the process.
In fact, wicked problems cannot be solved. At
least not in the traditional sense. That’s
because every wicked problem includes key
tradeoffs. These tradeoffs often come up
when people have to choose between two (or
more) good things, like safety and
convenience. We’ll never be able to decide
that one is important and the other is not, so
we’ll have to continue to balance both in our
decision-making.
Tough Choices
Thinking about issues as wicked helps us to
reframe how to solve them. For an issue like
airport security, few people are simply pro or
con airport security. However, if an airport
considers increasing randomized searches
those who are pro searches will be called
anti-equality, while those who are con
searches will be called anti-safety. If we
reframe this situation as a wicked problem we
can consider the various values that play into
airport security design, including:
SAFETY
EQUALITY
CONVENIENCE
PRIVACY
EFFICIENCY
TRUSTWORTHINESS
AFFORDABILITY
JUSTICE
While all these values are positive, having
more of one can mean less of another. Taking
off your shoes and emptying your water bottle
may increase safety in an airport, but it’s
definitely less convenient. Including a wholebody
imaging device may make the process
more efficient, but lowers everyone’s sense of
privacy. Deliberation works to help groups
understand the key values and tensions that
influence the problem. Facilitators get
community members to understand one
another’s perspectives and make tough
choices.
5

WHAT WE DO
6

MORE THAN
FACILITATION
Our aim is to catalyze a vibrant deliberative
community locally. To do this, we want to
transform the culture of our local democracy.
This requires change across the board, from
creating the next generation of civic leaders
to changing the way institutions interact with
their communities. Through our own local
changes, we want to inspire similar change in
communities across the state, nation, and
larger global communities. If we have
achieved our goal, people will look at our
Northern Colorado community and say,
“That’s the way democracy should work.”
At the local level, we partner with various
organizations to tackle wicked problems
head-on. Each semester we select around five
projects and provide the following services.
Services
Issue Analysis & Framing
We work with experts and key stakeholders,
to craft a central question or problemstatement.
Interdisciplinary research helps us
make sense of the voices currently engaging
in the issue. Taking multiple perspectives into
consideration enables these same voices to
be part of the conversation later on.
Process Design
This is how the conversation comes together.
We create a facilitator guide that structures
how and when participants receive
information and give input.
Participant Recruitment
We ensure that all those who will be impacted
by a decision have an opportunity to influence
the final result. This begins with a
stakeholder analysis to determine who should
be involved. Recruitment includes event
marketing, survey design, and targeted
sampling methods.
Event Coordination
This stage consists of the logistics required to
run a deliberative forum. This includes
scheduling an event and venue, contracting
translators and interpreters for language or
accessibility (i.e. ASL, enlarged images),
ordering food, coordinating child care, etc.
Facilitation
Our student facilitators are trained in smallgroup
facilitation techniques and guide
groups of 6-8. They complete a 3-credit
course on facilitation before applying what
they’ve learned to community events.
Data Collection & Analysis
We collect multiple forms of data including
conversation notes, audio/video recordings,
easel notes, participant worksheets, live
polling, graphic recording, and surveys. We
use quantitative and qualitative methods to
synthesize input from the community into key
themes.
Reporting
After analyzing the data, we can provide quick
summaries or in-depth reporting to our
partners. Reports are designed to
communicate conversation results to
participants and community members who
could not participate. They are also intended
to to inform decision-makers.
Throughout the process we partner with CSU
and community resources. Professional
translators and interpreters are hired and CSU
students of Spanish translation and
interpretation complete a 1-3 credit Service
learning course in which they translate and
interpret for events. The Institute for Research
in the Social Sciences provides survey and
recruitment support. View the project timeline
to see different steps in the process.
7

PROJECT TIMELINE
Issue Analysis
and Framing
Identify Research
Questions
Brainstorming &
Conceptualization
Identify Project
Objectives
Write Project
Description
Design Pre- and
Post-survey
Draft Marketing
Materials
Draft
Facilitator
Guide
Issue Framing
Reserve Venue
Obtain Institutional
Research Approval
Prepare Project
Experts
Stakeholder
Analysis
Schedule
Facilitators
Revise
Marketing
Materials
Translate Event
Materials
Recruitment
Translate
Marketing
Materials
Prep
Facilitators
Develop
Facilitator Prep
Prep Event
Materials
Coordinate
Childcare
Order Event
Food
Finalize
Facilitator
Schedule
Engagement
Compile Raw
Data Report
Host Event
Debrief
Facilitators
Enter Project
Data
Reporting
Create Full
Report
Release Report
● Process Design ● Recruitment ● Event 8 Coordination ● Facilitation ● Research

Selecting Projects
Community projects allow us to put our
learning into practice and provide
opportunities to our students. But not every
project is the right fit for deliberation. To start,
most projects we select are centered around
the following question:
WHAT SHOULD WE DO
ABOUT ___________?
Our partners fill in the blank with their current
issue. In general, we like questions that are
open-ended. A couple of examples from past
projects are:
• What should we do about a lack of
affordable housing?
• What should we do about an
increasing percentage of senior
residents?
• What should we do about substance
abuse among our youth?
We avoid projects where our partner(s)
already have the answer to the question
figured out. For example, a group may come
to us concerned about substance abuse
among high schoolers. In response, they’re
working to provide more extracurricular
activities to high schoolers. They want to
engage the larger community to talk about
how to build more opportunities within local
businesses and nonprofits. While this may be
a beneficial program for our community, it falls
more into education and advocacy than
deliberation.
According to the Kettering Foundation, a
nonprofit research entity dedicated to
studying democracy, a problem is best suited
to public deliberation when:
• The issue is of broad concern to the
community
• There is a decision that must be made
about the issue
• There is no definitive or single solution
to the problem
• Every solution involves trade-offs or
downsides that involve things held
valuable
• The problem is intractable, ongoing, or
systemic
• People will face moral disagreement
while discussing the issue
• Any solution will take multiple actors
(e.g. community groups, individuals,
and government)
Not sure?
That’s okay. We’re happy to talk through
potential projects and help you craft a central
question. Fill out our project inquiry form to
get started. If you’re looking for mediation,
graphic facilitation, or strategic planning,
check out the other local facilitation resources
included at the end of this guide.
9

WORKING
TOGETHER
10

PARTNERSHIP GUIDELINES
When you partner with us, you partner with the public.
We are an organization that prides itself on learning from each project, improving methods for
community decision-making, and spreading that knowledge. While we remain impartial about the
topics we facilitate, we are committed to the democratic principle of inclusion. We developed the
following guiding principles to ensure that we serve the public, students, and our partners
throughout our work.
Collaboration
The CPD and partner(s) have a collective responsibility for completing
our shared goals.
Incredible things are possible when we work together, but collaboration isn’t
always easy. For many of our projects, there is a multitude of layers that require
diverse expertise. To truly succeed at this work, we need to have open
communication, clear roles and responsibilities, and a shared sense of where
we’re going. Once we have these three ingredients, we all work to follow
through on our commitments to one another and the project.
Community-Centered
We are dedicated to producing solutions that are generated by and for
the community.
When you partner with us, you partner with the public. Our communities are
bursting with creativity and passion, but harnessing them requires a tool like
the Center for Public Deliberation. As an organization, we are more interested
in elevating the conversation than winning the argument. On a practical level,
this means partners are able to give input and feedback but do not have
control over the final results. This is the promise we make to the community.
Inclusion
All those affected by an issue should have a meaningful opportunity
to affect the decision.
This doesn’t mean everyone will take us up on the opportunity. What this really
says is that we make a commitment to figuring out who isn’t in the room and
what’s preventing them from getting there. We’ll help our partners figure out
how to reach these groups and in return, we expect partners to make good
faith efforts to engage a multitude of perspectives. In order to include different
members of the community, the event and all its materials must be accessible
to people with different cultural backgrounds and capabilities, and this requires
the use of linguistic and cultural mediation services.
11

Learning
At every stage in a project, we are looking for learning opportunities.
The benefits of partnering extend past project results. Every partnership we
engage in helps to produce the next generation of civic leaders. By providing
students with real-world opportunities to practice a different way of community
decision-making, we foster leaders who are able to imagine the world anew.
Furthermore, we continuously seek feedback form our partners and
researching each engagement process. We use that feedback to improve our
projects moving forward.
Access
The information we gather will be made anonymous and shared.
We have a responsibility to provide participants with the results of their input.
At the same time, we avoid capturing any identifying information or remove it to
protect the identity of participants. Too often, projects falter when those
involved can't see what happened next. We also believe that we will be better
prepared to tackle our future challenges if there are more of us working on
solutions. Providing data to other deliberative scholars and practitioners helps
us all to learn and improve.
Mutual Respect
All parties, including partners, students, and participants, promote
mutual respect throughout the process.
Open communication and collaboration require trust. Yet trust takes time to
develop, especially with people we don’t have much in common with. The
communities in which we work and the students we teach are diverse in
background, ideology, experience, presentation, and more. We don’t expect
everyone to agree. In fact, we encourage disagreement, but we do expect all
parties to respect each individual’s inherent value. We use ground rules to
establish ways of showing mutual respect in the conversation.
12

WHAT YOU GAIN
Community Trust
The CPD has over ten years of experience
building trust with communities across
Northern Colorado. Fundamental to the
deliberative process is establishing a sense
that the process will be fair to everyone
involved. It turns out that feeling like the
process is fair can extend feelings of trust to
public officials involved in the issue.
Increased Participation
It can be disheartening to arrive at a public
forum, listening session, or board meeting
only to find that there’s hardly anyone there.
Even worse, the people there are those who
are the most extreme. How do we create
common ground when the middle doesn’t
show up? Well, research shows that those
who have participated in a quality deliberation
are more likely to engage in a multitude of
civic activities. We work to cultivate the
middle. While participants may initially attend
a CPD event because they’re interested in the
topic, more than 80% of participants request
to be notified about future civic engagement
opportunities, regardless of the topic.
Better Informed Public
Education plays an essential role in any
deliberative project. This happens at the
issue-analysis stage. But deliberation does
more than simply provide information. Using
that information to weigh the benefits and
drawbacks to different solutions aids the
learning process. Participants are able to
better understand how decisions affect others
and learn about the issue outside of their own
perspective or opinions.
Improved Implementation
Technical solutions can’t adequately address
wicked problems. Just because we provide
recycling service does not mean people will
use it, or, use it correctly. To implement these
changes, we need buy-in from community
members. When people are part of the
decision-making process, they’re more likely
to take actions in their own life and
collaborate across networks. They see a new
policy, incentive, or training as just one part of
the puzzle and are willing to make changes at
an individual level as well.
13

PRICING
14

PRICING
Our Approach
Like the issues facing our communities, every project is different. This guide will help you
determine some of the services you may require.
Educational Projects
We’ve made a commitment to offer some services for no charge. At every level, we value
opportunities to provide learning opportunities to our students. Our Communication Studies
department ensures that student service comes without a cost to our community. First and
foremost, this means facilitation comes free. If you would like to have a student design your
process or create your event marketing, you’ll see a benefit in pricing.
Additionally, small-scale projects that allow students to experience deliberative democracy in the
classroom come at no cost. These projects include facilitation from our student associates, but
don’t require us to collect any data. This could be in a high school history class or an
undergraduate communication course.
Rates
We provide services at three rates to customize projects to the following partners:
• Colorado State University Partners
• Nonprofit Partners
• Community Partners (i.e. Local Government, School Districts, Businesses)
Partner rates start at $60/hour. CSU and Community projects are assessed based on the
following:
Partner Rate x Project Hours + Materials Costs = Project Cost
With support from generous funders, we will only charge nonprofits for project hours and their
projects will be assessed based on the following:
Partner Rate x Project Hours = Project Cost
Each project starts by filling out the Project Inquiry Form and sitting down with one of our staff
members. We’ll help you identify the types of services that are right for you and develop a
proposed scope of work. This will include an estimate of billable hours and material costs. Don’t
forget about grants. We’re happy to collaborate with our partners to apply for grants that can help
to fund this work.
15

Questions to Ask Yourself
It’s hard to group our projects into small, medium, and large bundles. For example, a project that
is open to all community members and aims to engage 100 can be as expensive as a small jury of
community members that is statistically representative of the larger community. To figure out the
size of your project, start by asking yourself some of the following questions.
Who do you want to engage?
• Do you need to hear from a large or small group of community members?
• Are there certain groups or stakeholders you want to hear from in particular?
• Should participants be representative of a given region or set of stakeholders?
• Are you already connected to the community members you want to hear from?
How you answer these questions can greatly impact the degree to which the community will trust
the process and its results. If they feel it wasn’t representative, they can disregard the decisions
that come out of a process. We have a variety of tools for thinking about who’s at the table. This
starts with conducting a stakeholder analysis before determining our approach to marketing and
recruitment services.
What’s the issue at hand?
• How complicated or technical is the topic?
• Where in the decision-making process are you?
• Are there existing frameworks for talking about the issue or similar topics?
• What are community members currently saying about the topic?
Before we’re ready to engage the public, we need to understand how to frame the issue. In some
cases, there’s already a national discussion guide that can be tailored to a local context. Other
times we have to start from scratch. This could include surveying the community to understand
the different perspectives. Alternatively, it may mean doing a research dive to conduct an issue
analysis.
What will you do with the results?
• Will you share them with a committee or team that’s making a decision?
• Will you present them at a conference or meeting?
• Will you make them available to the public so they understand what participants had to say?
• Will you use them to guide the creation of a strategic plan?
Depending on your answer, we can provide the results as a raw data report, slide deck, full
analysis and report, or data visualization. For each project, student note takers capture key ideas
and stories from each participant in a spreadsheet. These spreadsheets can then be compiled,
sorted, and coded for key themes.
16

FREQUENTLY
ASKED QUESTIONS
17

FAQ
Q: How large are the groups
you facilitate?
A: Our participant numbers range from
10-150. Each semester we train 15 new
Student Associates as facilitators and
15-25 students return to complete
facilitation practicum hours. We tend to
have a facilitator and note taker at tables
of 6-8 participants. If events require
additional facilitators, we have a network
of Community Associates who have
completed the training program and can
be added for an additional fee.
Q: Can your students handle
complex, technical issues?
A: Often, yes. Before they are able to
facilitate, students complete an intensive,
hands-on training course that provides
them with the tools needed to navigate
difficult topics. Over the past ten years, our
students have facilitated conversations on
water resource management, housing
affordability, mental health, food systems,
regional infrastructure design, and more.
We have found that providing background
information to participants, briefing the
facilitators, and having experts on hand
can greatly improve the process.
Q: How long does the process
take from start to finish?
A: A project that follows the Project
Timeline takes around 3 months from the
initial brainstorm to the finished reporting.
Getting in touch with us at least 3-4
months in advance of an event will help us
to stay on track. We can complete smaller
projects on a shorter time frame, but our
schedule may already be full.
Q: Can I schedule an event
during the summer?
A: Unfortunately, we’re limited by student
schedules and cannot take on major
projects during university breaks. Our staff,
however, can work with you on the
planning stages of events during these
break periods, and we can schedule the
event for during the semester.
Q: Are you able to facilitate
events that aren’t in Northern
Colorado?
A: We try to focus our efforts locally. In
some cases, we have traveled across the
state for events when an opportunity
arises. In these scenarios, we need to
work with student schedules to prevent
them from missing too much class time.
We also ask that our partners cover our
travel costs.
Q: How much do your services
cost?
A: Part of our mission is to expand
collaborative decision making across the
region. We know that engagement
processes can be expensive and timeconsuming.
As long as we have the
capacity, we’ll provide facilitators for
events at no cost. Depending on the size
and scope of your project, there are costs
associated with process design and
reporting. Organizations that regularly use
our services may choose to contract with
us on retainer rather than on a project-byproject
basis. Fill out our Project Inquiry
Form, and we will provide you with a
quote.
18

ADDITIONAL
RESOURCES
19

Local Resources
Alumni Directory - linkedin.com/school/csucpd
If you’re just looking for a few facilitators for a smaller project, you can contact alumni of the
program directly through our LinkedIn page. Click employees to see our student associates.
ConverSketch - Karina Branson - conversketch.com
ConverSketch provides graphic facilitation services. While groups discuss, their comments are
captured in a mural-style image. While located in Fort Collins, CPD alumni, Karina Branson has
facilitated global projects. Groups are left with an image of where their conversation took them.
Creek Consulting - Logan Steppan - creekconsultingllc.com
Started in 2015 by CPD alumni, Logan Steppan and Kate Garcia, Creek Consulting provides a
variety of facilitation services, including strategic planning, panel moderation, and workshop
design.
Institute for the Built Environment (IBE) - ibe.colostate.edu
IBE uses an approach rooted in public health and sustainability as they help communities build
spaces that will allow them to thrive. They offer specialized facilitation services including team
formation & visioning, strategic planning, and interdisciplinary research team facilitation.
Learning Through Difference, LLC - Carrie Bennett - ltdifference.com
With a master’s degree in conflict and dispute resolution, Carrie Bennett specializes in mediation,
facilitation, and training.
Straayer Center - polisci.colostate.edu/straayer-center
The Center enhances class-based and service-learning projects by working directly with public
sector partners. Research and policy analysis with public sector and university partners is
coordinated and conducted through the Center.
Trebuchet Group - trebuchetgroup.com
The Trebuchet Group is a facilitation firm that specializes in helping teams to reach their full
potential. They work with companies to envision their future, leverage their team, and plan
strategically.
National Resources
Use these national and global tools to find additional resources.
International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) - iap2.org
National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) - ncdd.org
Participedia - participedia.net
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