Bring Field Mediation to Your Community
Grant-Funded Technical Assistance for Cities and Counties
Dignity Best Practices is excited to share an opportunity for local governments to bring field mediation to their communities. With generous support from the AAA-ICDR Foundation, we’re offering 15 months of grant-funded technical assistance to two cities or counties ready to launch mediation-trained, unarmed responders for nonviolent 911 calls.
The value of this free 15 months of technical assistance is estimated at $200,000. Dignity will offer cross-agency convening, and support with protocol design, training, CAD call review, dispatch design, KPIs, community engagement, and more.
The opportunity can take one of two forms:
- Build a dedicated Field Mediation team (similar to Dayton’s MRU), or
- Cross-train your existing mobile crisis/ community response team to help them navigate interpersonal dispute calls
Either approach enables the transfer of a broad subset of 911 calls to this professional unarmed mediation response, including neighbor complaints, business owner/ unhoused person disputes, and family and roommate disputes. Learn more from our Field Mediation Toolkit!
Assistance begins January 2026.
Key Dates & How to Learn More
- Applications Open: August 4, 2025
- Webinars: Learn about the TA opportunity and Toolkit.
- 7/29 with the NYU Policing Project (Pre-Register)
- Stay tuned for more!
- Info Sessions: Q&A session focused on the TA opportunity.
- Office Hours: 1:1 meeting to ask any questions you’d like about the TA opportunity.
- Mondays, 3:00–4:00 PM ET
- Thursdays, 11:30 AM–12:00 PM ET
- Register
- Applications Close: October 1
- Applications received before September 19 may receive feedback.
Who Should Apply?
City or county leaders, emergency response agencies, behavioral health teams, community mediation centers, or community partnerships that want to:
- Build a more sustainable and human-centered response to distress
- Free up police for calls that require their presence
- Strengthen cross-agency collaboration in crisis response
What Will I Need?
- Statements of intent to launch a mediation-enabled field capacity by 2027
- Resources to cover operational costs (beyond our TA support, which is grant funded)
- Letter(s) of support from your city/county executive’s office, your local 911 call center and/or the organization to host the field team (we can help you make the case with your internal partners as part of your application process!)
Interested? Have questions?
Reach out to us at contact@dignitybestpractices.org or attend one of our info sessions.