The U.S. Semiquincentennial offers history organizations an important opportunity to help communities reflect on the past while considering the future they want to build together.

To support that work, the American Association for State and Local History and NxtLevel have developed Building the Next 250 Years: Hosting Community Conversations at Your History Organization, a free facilitation guide designed to help museums, historic sites, and other history organizations convene thoughtful, community-driven discussions.

The guide is terrific: clear, practical, and unusually easy to use. It grew out of a 2025 pilot project involving six history organizations and more than 120 community participants from nearly every region of the country. Turns out that people valued opportunities for deep, intentional conversation rooted in mutual respect and hosted by trusted local history institutions (that’s you!).

Rather than prescribing a single program, the guide provides a flexible framework that organizations can adapt to their mission, audience, resources, and community. It walks users through the entire process, including:

• choosing the date, location, audience, and format;
• inviting a representative mix of participants;
• preparing facilitators and note-takers;
• establishing ground rules;
• selecting discussion questions;
• managing confidentiality and disagreement; and
• following up with participants after the event.

The suggested formats range from intimate conversations of eight to fifteen people to larger roundtables and town halls. The guide also addresses practical matters that can make or break an event, including childcare, refreshments, accessibility, participant compensation, advance communication, and the need to create a welcoming setting.

At the center of the guide are open-ended questions about belonging, respect, opportunity, diversity, community values, historical memory, continuity, and change. Participants might be asked where their community lives up to its stated values, where gaps remain, how history has shaped local identity, or what they hope their community will become over the next 250 years.

Although developed for the nation’s 250th anniversary, the framework can be easily adapted for many other purposes. Museums could use it to explore neighborhood change, contested history, institutional priorities, community identity, public memory, future exhibitions, strategic planning, or relationships with historically excluded groups. By changing the central questions, the same structure could support almost any topic requiring careful listening and respectful dialogue.

An online information session will be held at 3:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, August 19. Participants will be able to ask questions of the NxtLevel team and hear from practitioners who have used the framework.

AASLH is also offering a $200 stipend to the first 25 selected organizations that sign up to host a community conversation using the guide.

Building the Next 250 Years is part of AASLH’s History & Democracy Initiative, which supports history organizations seeking to strengthen civic culture through historical knowledge, public dialogue, and community connection.

For organizations looking for a constructive way to participate in the Semiquincentennial—or simply searching for a sound model for community conversation—this guide offers an excellent place to begin. If you want to strengthen your facilitation skills, I recommend the Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making by Sam Kaner and The Secrets of Facilitation: The SMART Guide to Getting Results with Groups by Michael Wilkinson.