For More than 25 years, Helping People come Together to Discuss Issues of National Concern
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The following is an introduction to the history of the National Issues Forums. For more historical articles and documents please see the links following the introduction.
By Libby Kingseed
The National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI), then known as the Domestic Policy Association, was created in 1981 at a series of conferences held at the Johnson Foundation's Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wisconsin. Building on two years of discussions about ways to increase the role of citizens in the formation of public policy, the National Consortium for Public Policy Education (NCPPE) called together a wide variety of interested parties to plan a Domestic Policy Association (DPA). According to the NCPPE's winter 1981 newsletter, this new organization was "intended to establish a process for annual national dialogue on domestic policy issues...a process that will serve to increase citizen understanding of domestic policy issues and provide citizens with opportunities to express and convey informed opinions on the issues to the nation's decision makers."
The first conference included 25 leaders from national and local organizations interested in public policy education. This group determined that the DPA should exist as a grassroots nonadvocacy organization that would address the low level of civic literacy through a common agenda of issues of general concern, presented in local programs of national, regional, and local organizations. A second conference included leaders from community-based institutions with experience in developing issue education programs. This group identified problems that needed to be addressed, approaches that had worked in other programs, and possible resources that could create the necessary networks to support the program. They were very interested in establishing a new program, separate from any existing organization, for a series of conferences based on a common agenda of issues and supported by sound educational materials that would both inform and invite diverse groups of Americans to discover through deliberation what they have in common.
The third conference, which included only the members of the new Steering Committee, resulted in a list of seven possible issues for an inaugural year, issues chosen because they had daily impact on a broad spectrum of the population, would engage public attention and discussion without overwhelming negative emotionalism, and involved both value judgments and technical considerations. The issues were circulated among the interested institutions, and three—retirement and social security, inflation, and job and productivity— were chosen for the inaugural year of a new program call the National Issues Forums (NIF).
Reflecting the success of this new program the Domestic Policy Association (DPA) changed its name to the National Forums Institute in 1989.
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