The New Hampshire Forum is a cross-partisan, statewide effort that empowers Granite Staters to set the agenda on the issues that matter most to us. We aim to mobilize thousands of our state's residents to share perspectives with each other on how New Hampshire should improve, and to create pathways for people-powered legislative change.
In 2026, using simple text, voice, and video tools, we will gather input from Granite Staters across the state. Using all these ideas, we will identify solutions that more than 70% of us support. We will then convene an in-person civic assembly with 50-100 Granite Staters to deliberate, generate, and publish recommended actions for change.
Throughout this process, The New Hampshire Forum is building relationships with bipartisan legislators who are inspired to draft, sponsor, and publicly champion enabling bills. Backed by plain-language briefs, district-level data, and resident testimony, we'll advocate to ensure our collective voice shapes real policy outcomes that reflect what Granite Staters across the state truly want and need.
We are building a better way to raise our voices, identify our shared priorities, and help our elected leaders understand and act on what matters most to the people of New Hampshire.
The goal is for The New Hampshire Forum to be New Hampshire funded as much as possible, to include small dollars from Granite Staters, philanthropic support, and/or public state funding. We aim for The New Hampshire Forum to be funded entirely by in-state dollars within three years.
For our development and launch, we’ve relied on some charitable funding from a diverse group of nonpartisan donors who care about the American experiment, not any specific policy initiatives. These early supporters include New Pluralists, Bloomberg Philanthropies, MacArthur Foundation, and Quadrivium. Donors have no influence whatsoever on the process or agenda setting. The citizens who contribute their voice drive the topic and proposals. Our initial funding has helped cover the cost of staffing, outreach, facilitation, technology, and a civic assembly.
We’re now receiving small dollar donations from people inspired by our work, for which we’re especially grateful. Our average small dollar donation is $35, and some are giving monthly.
The New Hampshire Forum does not accept funding tied to political parties, candidates, or special interest groups. Participation is free, and we never sell your data.
The New Hampshire Forum is led by a politically diverse state team, with guidance from a legislative advisory council, a civic advisory council, and regional ambassadors drawn from local faith, education, veteran, civic, rural, and business communities. A nonpartisan national team provides technical, marketing, and program support.
New Hampshire has the right mix of strong civic identity, diverse communities, and practical leadership—from rural towns to growing cities, from veterans to students—and is ready to show how residents can find common ground on tough issues.
We aim to spotlight New Hampshire as a leader among states in using accessible online and offline deliberative approaches to produce trusted, >70% majority-backed solutions across political, economic, racial, religious, and geographic lines of difference.
From beginning to end, The New Hampshire Forum is powered by people -- real humans who care about our state and want to fix what's broken together. To maximize and scale human participation, voice, and impact, we use technology, including some AI tooling, to assist our state and national teams in analyzing tens of thousands of participant contributions, uncovering areas where people agree and disagree, and pinpointing opportunities for collaboration and bipartisan legislative action.
AI "sensemaking" capabilities help us group related participant ideas into dozens of distinct thematic categories and then identify the issues with the greatest consensus among a broad diversity of citizens. AI helps us (1) generate summary descriptions of each issue, grounded in the words of human contributors; (2) compile exact quotes from citizens about how the issue affects them personally; (3) transcribe and organize solution ideas generated verbally during Community Conversations; and (4) quickly produce reports for our stakeholder audiences.
Our data analytics team and bipartisan state team review AI-based assistance at every step. AI is never used to make decisions or speak for individuals. Synthesized data is traceable and auditable back to original, quoted participant inputs. At the same time, no personally identifying information is included in the analytics process; all participant contributions are anonymized for purposes of synthesizing, reporting, and auditing data.
We want you involved! Become a Champion.
