Committing to Civic and Community Engagement is Critical to Philanthropic Transformation in the Democratic Process
Sterling Speirn, President and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, believes we have reached a ”constitutional moment” where people can reinvigorate our democratic practices in this country to draw upon civic and community engagement as part of an overall strategy to effect social change. Speirn addressed this topic as part of the Executive-to-Executive Speaker Series for Nonprofit Leaders.
Although innovation is prevalent in the business world within the technology, communications, and energy sectors, three basic systems in this country—our education system, our healthcare system, and our financial system—are in great need of reform because they’re ineffective, costly, and make communities vulnerable, according to Speirn.
Defining civic and community engagement
When Speirn joined the Kellogg Foundation in 2007, he felt teaching people about private acts of giving and volunteering were not sufficient when the wellspring of voluntary action lies in the public sector; that is, in the area of civic engagement. We live in a country where we have the freedom to participate, and yet, many don’t “say something,” according to Speirn. This is one of the central issues impeding the process of civic engagement.
Because the term civic engagement is broad in scope and has many connotations that intermingle and veer in various directions, the Kellogg Foundation explicitly added “community engagement” to its definition, capturing the neighbor-to-neighbor strands of community that are fundamental to the Kellogg Foundation’s approach. The Foundation’s concern is to support people who are involved in their own community in addition to those who participate in bigger spheres such as the state or national level.
Speirn said there’s a strain in American thinking about economic versus democratic ideals dividing the country today.
“Take the American dream. Usually when the American dream is brought up as a symbol of the good life in America, it has an economic connotation. The American dream is one of individuals having opportunity and getting ahead. And that’s a fabulous dream. But there’s the democratic and a community part of the American dream that people came to America not just to be free as individuals, but to engage in self-determination as communities and to make collective decisions for themselves,” he expounded.
The opportunity to self-determine as communities isn’t a question of liberty, according to Speirn, but is actually the responsibility and the “big win” of the American dream that sometimes gets undermined in today’s “rugged individualism,” which could test our American democratic system.
The challenge, Speirn says, is not freedom but responsibility; not liberty, but duty. People need to realize civic and community engagement are not just an obligation—they are the dimension where the reasons that free us as individuals reside because we’re being vigilant about the “community square.”
Why the Kellogg Foundation fosters civic and community engagement and why it’s essential to our work as a philanthropic organization
The “community square” is central to the Kellogg Foundation’s work, and its commitment to civic and community engagement is instilled in its DNA, according to Speirn. Founder Will Keith Kellogg, who gave most of his personal fortune to create the Kellogg Foundation in 1930, told his trustees to, “Do whatever you please so long as it promotes the health, happiness, and well-being of children”; but every generation had to figure out what that meant. Kellogg, like many other philanthropists, believed in helping people help themselves. Today, it’s not considered an either/or scenario; the Kellogg Foundation still helps people help themselves— though not strictly as individuals, but as groups, staying true to its fundamental roots and values of its founder.
The Foundation’s first initiative in 1930 was the Michigan Community Health Project, which increased health education in seven rural areas by going into the communities and talking to people, health professionals, dentists, and doctors to bring people together and foster civic and community engagement. The Foundation today focuses at least half of its philanthropic resources in three priority states (New Mexico, Mississippi, and Michigan), one metropolitan region (New Orleans) and Latin America/Caribbean regions in Mexico and Haiti. The Foundation doesn’t pick easy places to work and tends to come in at times of crisis or catastrophe, but it also stays for the long term, at least one generation or more.
Speirn’s experience has shown it takes time to know a community as far as understanding how things work and identifying the informal leaders. When many foundations’ initiatives are “sunsetting,” the fact is that’s when the process of building a relationship has really begun. Foundations are perceived as fickle, but if deep community transformation is going to be promoted, foundations need to be long-time partners. One of the Foundation’s goals is to establish a way to support, facilitate, and stimulate civic and community engagement through that time frame.
The Kellogg Foundation tracks community participation using a model of a circle divided in four quadrants. Each section, beginning with the letter “C,” identifies: the civic world, community world, corporate world, and the congregations. Initiatives on a project are place-based, so it’s necessary to develop a sense of how these quadrants are filled to build authentic relationships not based on status but instead focused on interest, commitment, ideas, and what’s going to be accomplished together, according to Speirn. The question is how to engage a community, not as a philanthropic organization representing millions of dollars, but as a community organizer to attract resources and accomplish shared goals.
Why should philanthropy care about civic engagement? Why should philanthropy care about democracy?
Foundations are now being seen as organizations that should look into what causes people to become involved in social reform — besides their traditional concentration on the need for charity, education, or training —but how can they stimulate civic and community engagement to do that?
This is an area of concern that involves the democratic process in the United States. Because people are unsure if their vote counts or voice matters, they become disengaged in democracy. Some of the issues in our field today are focused around electoral or democratic reform, such as how to reinvigorate democratic institutions—from political parties to rules in Congress to voting—to get more people back into the public square.
There is an asymmetrical polarization in this country that goes beyond traditional divisiveness, and it will not correct itself. The asymmetrical polarization made Speirn consider how the Kellogg Foundation could work to support nonprofits that are analyzing best practices in the electoral process such as voter registration, voter identification, voter process, and voter effectiveness.
There is a whole notion of innovation in the area of ordinary people having places to go to deliberate and dialogue about these critical issues that Speirn calls “public problem-solving mechanisms.” People would like to solve problems in the simplest, least costly way. Unfortunately, Speirn says, many elected officials play to that. If people get past their wishful thinking, Speirn found diverse groups can come to an agreement about 80 percent of the time if they have public problem-solving mechanisms. The process is a tool that can be used to re-invigorate and rejuvenate our communities, but the problem is there are no spaces to go or nonprofits being funded to support such dialogues. “We want democracy to work on the backs of volunteers,” but Speirn worries many people believe civic and community engagement is a luxury they can’t afford. “Civic engagement is not a luxury,” Speirn stressed.
Philanthropy and other sources need to be willing to invest in the front-line human services in addition to supporting real civic and community—real democratic—engagement. That’s what Speirn finds exciting about work in philanthropy and that’s the process the Kellogg Foundation is excited to be pursuing in its priority locales.
Speirn also noted when the focus is on a social reform, if the four “C’s” aren’t behind it, the reform won’t last. Also, while the Kellogg Foundation fundamentally believes community and civic engagement are essential for community transformation, there’s not much hard evidence to support that premise. As a result, the Foundation knows it must be very intentional and deliberate on how community engagement is building up to community transformation. The Foundation must figure out how the different strands of community connect in real places and what power is attained in connecting them, instead of working in individual silos.
Sterling Speirn’s address was given at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan, on January 22, 2013, as part of the Executive-to-Executive Speaker Series for current and future not-for-profit leaders and board members. The series provides affordable presentations featuring prominent leaders who are making a difference in the social sector, and is offered through a partnership of the United Way for Southeastern Michigan, Michigan Nonprofit Association, Plante Moran, Blender Consulting Group, the McGregor Fund, and the Center for Nonprofit Management at Lawrence Technological University. For more information about the speaker series, visit www.ltu.edu/nonprofit, and for more information about the Kellogg Foundation, please visit www.wkkf.org.
