The call is out to make Martin Luther King Day a National Day of Service--"a Day On, Not a Day Off." This year, why not make Martin Luther King Day the day you commit to helping people in your community use a different, more productive way to talk about difficult public issues? The National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) has recently released a new issue guide to help people talk about income inequality as part of a national conversation that will be reported to policymakers in Washington, DC.

This free issue guide was developed in 2014 by the David Mathews Center (DMC) for Civic Life (Montevallo, Alabama) and Alabama Public Television for Project C: Lessons from the American Civil Rights Movement. It is a 22-page guide that presents three approaches for deliberation. As described on the DMC website - "The resource encourages students to explore the difficult choices that citizens faced in Birmingham, Alabama on January 1, 1963.

This new issue guide titled Making Ends Meet: How Should We Spread Prosperity and Improve Opportunity? from the Kettering Foundation and the National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) is available as a free download.

William V. Muse, who has served as President of the National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) since 2008, announced his retirement at the NIFI Board of Directors meeting on December 3rd, 2015 in Dayton, Ohio. Including three years as a member of the Institute board, Muse provided ten years of leadership and support for the goals and programs of NIFI. Muse worked in higher education for forty years, including twenty years as president or chancellor of three universities--the University of Akron, Auburn University, and East Carolina University.