May 26, 2009
It’s hard to turn around these days without hearing about nonprofits’ need to drive up their outcomes and impact. There’s relatively little mention, however, of one of the most important “outcomes” that nonprofits can and do generate: encouraging and enhancing democracy, public voice, and political participation. These have been all but forgotten or seen as tangential to attempts to move nonprofits toward greater impact. History, however, has demonstrated the danger of decoupling nonprofits in their role as democratic actors from the process of getting the results that investors and the public demand. During the past decade, several well-intentioned efforts to tackle difficult issues—from school reform to international development—imploded, despite jaw-dropping investments, imploded because constituents weren’t involved in planning and executing those efforts. Research indicates that had such participation been encouraged, it may have helped to achieve longer-term results, as well as saved millions of dollars. Civic engagement also tends to be seen as tangential to larger (and seemingly unending) discussions about nonprofit effectiveness, capacity, and impact. And amid growing calls for more collaboration among the three sectors—public, private, and nonprofit—to solve complex problems, there’s little awareness of the value added by the nonprofit sector: its ability to encourage and enhance democracy and civic participation. Nonprofits have long understood that without political will, policies, and public weigh-in and buy-in, the most well-intentioned initiatives open themselves up to criticism and disregard the political support needed to ensure that what’s proposed is feasible and successful beyond the pilot phase. So why don’t investors bite? Some see civic engagement as too nuanced and prefer to focus on specific issues and problems. Others are uncomfortable with institutions working with “real people” as partners rather than as beneficiaries of services. Still others view community-based problem solving as a thinly veiled political agenda they’re uneasy about supporting. Perhaps the most difficult hurdle for many investors is that the outcomes associated with civic engagement are amorphous and process oriented, making them difficult to measure. Their skepticism is understandable. What’s the incentive to invest in these kinds of things, especially in a sector that has been somewhat laissez-faire in assessing even its most basic activities? Nonprofits, therefore, need to move beyond the argument that civic engagement is part of their mission, which may sway some but not many, especially in the age of benchmarks and outcomes. Instead, they need to show how an expanded definition of outcomes—including communities’ ability to address issues beyond predetermined time frames and program foci—leads to longer-term results. In addition to using as a measure the number of homes that have been built for homeless families, for example, nonprofits could also assess whether and to what extent the larger community has the capacity to prevent homelessness and whether that fuels collective problem solving on other issues. In short, social efficacy becomes an important outcome—one that has the potential to leverage funders’ investments (and perhaps codify the ever-elusive notion of impact) but is admittedly more difficult to evaluate. That shouldn’t preclude nonprofits from trying—and, most important, funders from providing—the resources to do so more rigorously. Given the growing number of nonprofit-led efforts to embed a sense of social efficacy into communities nationwide, this task may become easier. Today, these groups convene people with wildly divergent views on everything from politics to religion and who are tired of the culture wars and political polarization. During these gatherings, people consider a range of views and policy options (rather than promoting a single cause) to find common ground on the issues that concern them most. They then take action on those issues at a range of levels: policy changes, organizational changes, small-group efforts, individual volunteerism, or all of the above. These actions, in turn, build local civic cultures that can lay the groundwork for a deeper ethic of civic engagement. Civic participation becomes part of everyday life rather than an episodic activity such as volunteering that is squeezed between the “higher priorities” of work, school, and family. The organizations that lead these efforts aren’t doing so because it’s a nice thing to do; they’re doing it because powerful institutions—including schools, businesses, and legislatures—have asked them to. Increasingly, leaders of these institutions recognize that they won’t be successful if they continue to ignore citizens’ desire to help solve problems that need fresh ideas. And who better to provide these ideas than the real people who face these issues every day? In short, those who’ve traditionally controlled decision-making processes now recognize that to have real impact, they need not only public buy-in but also public weigh-in. And nonprofits now serve as the go-to players in helping to make that happen. Dr. Gibson’s commentary is an excerpt from the article “Nonprofits: “The DNA of Democracy,” which originally appeared in the Winter 2008 edition of the Nonprofit Quarterly (www.npqmag.org)