After six months of intensive deliberations and over 300 online survey responses from our participants and supporters, the E-Democracy.Org Board is proud to share our final strategic plan for 2007-2009 with you (also in PDF).
In summary, together with your help we will:
- Dramatically expand local Issues Forum as part of our growing
international network to at least 10 new communities - Increase the training and support we provide to local e-democracy committees
- Help local communities recruit more participants and raise new and diverse voices from people of different backgrounds and political views
- Continue and evaluate our election information and linking efforts
- Support the development of open source tools that strengthen our own efforts and can be shared with those who share our goals
- Get the next wave of democratic and citizen media innovation ready to share across our local democracy movement
- Grow our volunteer network and raise the necessary funds to accomplish these exciting goals
Over the next couple weeks we will blog sections of the strategic plan with additional comments.
Would you like to join us?
Volunteer – If you’d like to volunteer, reserve your place in our future “Volunteers” online group. This will be a highly active space for day to day collaboration among those volunteering an average of one hour a month.
Start an Issues Forum – Join our LiftOff group to connect with your peers interested in starting new forums and drop us an e-mail at team@e-democracy.org to let us know where your community is located.
Donate – We will be doing a full pledge drive in the near future, but today you can do your part by simply e-mailing us a pledge to: team@e-democracy.org
Sign-up for Project Blog Posts via E-mail – See the top right box and get an e-mail when we post a project update here.
Thank you everyone for passion and input about the future of community and democracy in the online era.
Steven Clift
Board Chair, E-Democracy.Org
Credit: Image used under Creative Commons by Tommy Ellis
P.S. Here are our mission, goals, and strategies (see the full document for the additional 50 tactics we’ve identified):
Mission – Expanded participation and stronger democracies and communities through the power of information and communication technologies and strategies.
Goal 1 – Engagement: Strengthen, expand, and diversify engagement through effective and meaningful online discussions and information exchange on public issues
Strategy 1.1 Expand number of Issues Forums dramatically
Strategy 1.2 Deepen support for existing Issues Forums
Goal 2 – Information and Civic Education: Increase the use and relevance of information resources about elections, governance, the media, and public affairs to help address public challenges
Strategy 2.1 Strengthen election information and voter education efforts
Strategy 2.2 Commission special review of non-partisan information and civic education activities and develop proposals for funding network-wide initiatives
Goal 3 – Best Practices and Tools: Develop and disseminate best practices and tools to promote community conversation and engagement, civic education, and information exchange
Strategy 3.1 Use open source tools to the greatest extent possible and work to ensure that major investments in our primary software platforms are released under common open source licenses
Strategy 3.2 Share knowledge and learn from others through participation in national/international conferences, online communities of practice, and national/international organizations supporting democracy and citizen engagement.
Goal 4 – Promote Active Citizenship: Empower participants with online skills and experiences to have an impact on their communities and governments
Strategy 4.1 Develop special and sustainable projects that support mission and goals
Strategy 4.2 Actively engage people from diverse and less represented communities to participate in Issues Forums and other e-democracy projects
Goal 5 – Organizational Capacity and Sustainability: Maintain an ethical, stable, and financially strong organization of volunteers and staff that effectively and efficiently responds to growing and changing expectations, opportunities, and responsibilities
Strategy 5.1 Build the organizational infrastructure to support goals
Strategy 5.2 Develop effective evaluation structures, tools, implementation, compilation, and reporting
Strategy 5.3 Fund the necessary organizational infrastructure to support goals
Strategy 5.4 Systematize public and media relations work on behalf of E-Democracy.Org
Strategy 5.5 Build global structure to support and reflect local needs and broad, continuous expansion