A Region
Rebuilds Its
Economic Future

21,000 people from across Northeast Ohio came together to set an action agenda to revitalize the region’s ailing economy. This massive public deliberation, called Voices & Choices, was the result of an unprecedented partnership between AmericaSpeaks and a coalition of 80 local foundations. One of the largest public deliberations ever convened, Voices & Choices combined a variety of approaches for mobilizing the region’s citizenry, including one-on-one interviews, online forums and large-scale town meetings.

Thousands of residents learned about and weighed in on regional challenges through online Choicebooks, designed by Ascentum. For each of six regional challenges, participants could learn about the issues, weigh the trade offs and vote on how to deploy the region’s resources by spending “NEO Bucks.” A local host for each Choicebook personalized the experience. At the conclusion of the Choicebook experience, participants received a report that compared their priorities with the views of others across the region who had participated in the process.

Once the regional agenda had been formed, participants were invited back online to take part in small group dialogues about how to implement the regional priorities. As participants shared their ideas for action with each other, they were able to rate others’ submissions and use emoticons to quickly signal attitudes that they wished to convey.

The Fund for Our Economic Future took the priorities that came out of Voices & Choices and created a set of action steps called Advancing Northeast Ohio. Each action step will be implemented by a collaboration of partners responsible for a specific initiative of the plan. The Fund for Our Economic Future and Advance Northeast Ohio, the engine for implementation, issues regular reports regarding the results of specific initiatives and the overall performance of the region’s economy.