Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Civic Assembly?

A Civic Assembly, also known as a Citizens' Assembly, is a group of residents—randomly selected to reflect the demographics of their community—that comes together over several weeks to learn, deliberate, and make recommendations on a pressing local issue.

Assemblies are designed to be representative of the broader population, ensuring diverse perspectives are considered. They provide a structured environment for informed discussion and decision-making, often involving expert testimony and facilitated dialogue. All over the world, communities are using Assemblies to make decisions that are informed, collaborative, and grounded in shared values.

How do you make sure the randomly-selected group truly reflects the community?

Unify Akron uses a well-tested process called stratified random selection. First, a huge pool of residents is invited to participate through mail, text, phone, and outreach in partnership with existing organizations and networks. Then, all of those responses are grouped by key characteristics like age, gender, race, income, education level, political affiliation, and/or neighborhood.

From each of these groups, participants are randomly selected (like a lottery) in proportions that match the broader community. This ensures that the final assembly isn’t just randomly selected—it’s representatively selected. The result is a group that reflects the full diversity of the community, including people who are often left out of public decision-making.

Participants also receive compensation, childcare, transportation, and other supports so that participation is accessible to everyone—not just those with time and resources.

How is the topic decided?

For the first Civic Assembly, members of the Unify Akron team reviewed existing community research on priority issues from the community and conducted months of conversations, including more than 300 interviews and listening sessions with residents and leaders from all across the city.

This first topic will be chosen based on urgency, potential for impact, community input, potential for funding, and the answers to these two questions:

• Does the topic actually need local, public deliberation? Some issues may be bigger than our local scope, and others may already have concrete, strategic plans in the works. We’re interested in the issues that can be addressed locally by a range of possible tactics.
  

• Are leaders willing to move on recommendations from the public? If the folks charged with working on that topic locally aren’t interested in the public’s take or aren’t open to changing policy, budget, or partnerships, an Assembly would waste everyone’s time. 

Ideas under consideration include housing and public safety. Both the community and City leaders are keenly interested in making progress on these challenges.

For future topics, Unify Akron will also be engaging the community more broadly for input and decision-making.

What should the result of a Civic Assembly look like?

A successful Civic Assembly produces thoughtful, actionable recommendations that reflect the complexity of the issue and the values of the community. These aren’t quick fixes or perfect answers—they’re the result of residents grappling with trade-offs, weighing competing priorities, and seeking common ground. Some ideas may require iteration or take time to show results, but the process itself builds trust, surfaces fresh thinking, and strengthens the community’s ability to navigate challenges together.

Are Civic Assembly recommendations binding?

Civic Assembly recommendations are typically not legally binding, but they are taken very seriously. From the start, City leaders help inform the assembly and sign a covenant or Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreeing to publicly and thoughtfully respond to each recommendation—not just with thanks, but with urgent timelines and clear reasoning on what’s adopted, adapted, or not pursued.

But this kind of good-faith response must also be paired with broad public storytelling and collective advocacy for public decision-making, which Unify Akron will also support.

How is a Civic Assembly different from voting, a ballot initiative, or existing advocacy work?

A Civic Assembly is not about campaigning or voting. It’s a collaborative, deliberative process where a representative group of residents learns about an issue, considers multiple perspectives and potential solutions, and reaches shared recommendations. Assemblies invite participants to wrestle with complexity and find common ground beyond yes/no outcomes.

Assemblies are just one piece in a vast civic puzzle that includes its important counterparts like voting and critical advocacy work.

How does this work with the government?

Civic Assemblies are designed to support existing local government and improve our sense of self-governance. From the start, leaders from the government (or another authority) are engaged as partners to help define the focus of each assembly, ensure it aligns with real policy decisions, and clarify how recommendations will be considered. Elected officials and staff also support the process by sharing their expertise, data, and context—helping participants understand trade-offs and real-world constraints. This collaboration ensures transparency, relevance, and mutual trust throughout.

Will Akronites really lead this process?

Unify Akron functions as a league of community members—led with, by, and for community members. Today, in its infancy, Unify Akron has three local staff members who are leading the work, a guiding team of 12 local advisors from different backgrounds and political parties, and over 100 additional advisors, leaders, donors, and volunteers committed to its success.

The team has engaged over 300 local community members, including City officials, in listening sessions and planning meetings, and will continue that outreach as the process evolves.

OK, but who’s behind Unify Akron?

Unify Akron is a locally-directed partnership between Akron residents and Unify America, a national cross-partisan nonprofit committed to better public problem solving. 

You can download a full list of the initial local guiding team (who dubbed themselves the Kitchen Table), global advisors, local staff, and the national team here.

Why Akron?

Akron was chosen for its civic energy, centrality, size, and momentum—and because the Rust Belt has something to teach the rest of the country. Akron also has a good deal of existing civic infrastructure and a strong history of innovation.

In a year-long nationwide search, Unify America identified Ohio as the ideal flagship and is considering local support and partnerships across the state. Chicago, Illinois, and cities and regions in Colorado are also potential upcoming locations of partnerships.

Morgan Lasher, Chief of U.S. Democracy Leagues for Unify America (and an Akronite), puts it this way: “To transform how democracy works in America, we need more examples of deliberative public decision-making and more proof that groups of neighbors are exceptionally good at solving tough problems together when given the time, resources, and power to do it. Mid-sized cities, and Akron, in particular, with loads of talent and existing civic infrastructure, are the ideal place to learn from and build the standard to scale to other places.”

How is this funded?

Unify Akron is supported by a mix of national and local private donations. Unify America is committing up to $1.5 million over three years, and over $100K+ has been raised from about 50 local donors. The Unify America team is exploring more national and public funding partnerships.

As an important note: Unless otherwise requested by the donor, any funds raised from Akron-based donors and foundations will go toward local efforts, including paying local staff and contractors; facilitating training opportunities to build local civic capacity, and hiring local venues and locally-owned catering.

What’s the plan to launch this?

Our goal is to launch an assembly in 2025. From there, we’ll build momentum, deepen community involvement, and build a sustainable, long-term civic infrastructure for Akron. Download the draft timeline for the assembly.

What does success look like in a year?

The vision for this next year is to host at least one full Civic Assembly and measure its impact, with the goal of earning the trust of a broad group of Akronites along the way. Unify Akron will also sponsor learning events throughout the community and use the assembly as a “learning lab” to build capacity for collaborative problem solving and test design features that work best for this community. Success means people becoming newly involved in civic life, building deeper community trust, and creating a shared sense of agency and belonging. 

How do I tell people about this?

Download this brief overview of Unify Akron to share with your friends and organizations you represent.