Rockefeller Brothers Fund Leader Encourages Greater Involvement of Nonprofits
Read article below or download a pdf“We are facing a crisis that threatens the very fabric of our society and our ability for leadership in a troubled world,” Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) President Stephen B. Heintz told those attending the 2006 Alliance National Conference in St. Louis.
The “democracy crisis,” Heintz added, is the result of a confluence of factors which he then defined for his audience. Before doing so, however, he cautioned that all is not gloom and doom. And one of the tools he champions for resolving the crisis is a deeper commitment to civic engagement (see sidebar below).
“I remain convinced that we can regain our balance. We can reinvigorate our democracy, and revive the American dream.” But, he added, there is a lot of work that needs to be done.
“If barriers to voting discourage civic participation, the insidious and growing influence of money in politics devalues participation as it shifts political power from the many to the few.
“The pernicious power of money in politics undermines the standing of the citizen as it enhances the power of the donor. It creates space for undue influence over policy and, of course, for impropriety, scandal, and corruption.
“American democracy is also threatened by the politics of division. Campaigns today seem increasingly to focus on what divides us, rather than on what unites us.”
The Culture of Democracy
Heintz then suggested, “When the culture of democracy is nurtured, it equips and empowers citizens to participate effectively in civic life. When it is undermined—when the bonds of community weaken—democracy withers, and power accrues to the few.
“Barriers to participation, the pernicious influence of money in politics, the noncompetitiveness of elections, and the politics of division and falsehood have all contributed to a government that is unrepresentative of the people it is tasked to serve.
“Everyone in this room knows there is a longing in communities all across the country for greater common ground and a core belief that at some deeper level there is more that unites us as Americans than divides us.”
What Can and Should Be Done?
Heintz said, “I have no doubt that we can reinvigorate civic participation, reignite the American Dream, and nurture our sense of community if we work energetically together to clear and plow common ground.
“We need to restore a sense of shared national purpose in our democratic culture so that we are better able to meet the challenges we face: poverty, inequity, unequal access to health care, inadequate education, terrorism, and so on.
“Our work is not about a tactical effort to influence one election. It is the strategic work of mobilizing for deep and durable social change—of shaping a long-term vision for our society that inspires and unites our people.
“Our history reveals that electoral campaigns rarely advance the process of deep social change. More often than not, politicians follow social movements—they don’t lead them. Mobilizing social movements is the job of citizens and leaders and organizations of the nonprofit sector. It is the job of all of us in this room.
“I believe,” he continued, “there is much work to be done in four principle areas: fixing the basic flaws in our political system; re-energizing civic engagement; promoting policy reforms to strengthen the middle class; and nurturing the culture of our democracy from our communities up. Progress in any one of these areas will not be sufficient to overcome the democracy crisis I have described. We must make strides in all of them simultaneously.”
Re-energizing Civic Engagement
“As we work to remove barriers to participation we must also be open to new ways to invite meaningful civic engagement. I have been impressed by several new models of civic engagement that promote participatory democratic problem solving such as ‘deliberative polling’ and town hall meetings of the 21st century. In both of these experiments, representative groups of citizens are brought together for facilitated discussions of specific issues in their communities.
“We also need to pay particular attention to young people for they are truly the future of our democracy. Along with several other foundations, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund is supporting a new approach to encourage civic engagement among young people, particularly youth of color living in low-income communities. What has become known as ‘youth organizing’ combines youth development activities with community organizing techniques.
“In these projects, youth-led organizations work to engage people in their neighborhoods around priority concerns—like safety in the schools. Youth organizing helps young people develop and advance their own approaches to achieving policy changes while forming a sophisticated and durable constituency for community action and social change. Working with young people can encourage life-long civic habits—my own interest in politics was inspired by a creative third grade teacher in Glendale, Mo., just a few miles from here.”
Policy Reforms
Heintz also said that we need to revitalize our electoral process: “Repairing our worn-out electoral systems and supporting experiments in new forms of civic engagement can help boost participation in our political process. But perhaps even more importantly, we need to advance a set of fundamental policy reforms to strengthen the middle class and stimulate renewed social mobility. By doing so, we can help millions of American families who are now struggling to make ends meet. We can restore the American Dream, and we will reinforce ‘democracy’s center of gravity’ as author Norton Garfinkle puts it.”
The RBF leader then called attention to Garfinkle’s book, The American Dream vs. the Gospel of Wealth, where Garfinkle describes how, from the 1930s to the 1960s, political leaders of both parties “shaped policies to extend economic opportunity, protect against economic insecurity, and above all to make a middle-class standard of living accessible to most Americans.”
According to Heintz, these policies included a progressive income tax, Social Security, Medicare, tax deductions for home ownership, student loans for college education, Food Stamps, and public assistance. Together they formed the core of a social compact that served us well for most of the post-WWII era. Well, it’s clearly time we devised a new social compact for the conditions of the 21st century.
What are the necessary reforms? Heintz said, “The first and most critically important policy reform is to return fairness to our tax system. In recent decades, taxes on the incomes of the wealthiest Americans have been dramatically reduced based on a supply-side economic theory that holds that reducing taxes on people with very high incomes stimulates additional investment which in turn produces economic growth and job creation.
“Numerous economic studies have now shown that the reality is far different than the theory. Tax fairness, on the other hand, can generate additional revenues that can be put to work to reduce the deficit and invest in programs that serve families, promote economic opportunity, and strengthen the middle class.”
A second “critically important policy reform,” added Heintz, is to reinvest in education. He cited a Demos proposal for a “Contract for College” which he said would “unify all of the existing federal student financial aid programs into one guaranteed financial aid package for college students.”
Other policy reforms cited by Heintz include “merit” consideration as part of a new social compact that would include “raising the minimum wage, expanding the earned-income tax credit for the working poor, and making a concerted effort to devise a public-private partnership for universal health insurance.”
Nurturing the Culture of Democracy from our Communities Up
As he stated in his initial remarks, Heintz said again, “It is vitally important that we rekindle the culture of democracy in our communities.”
He then asked, “How can we empower individual citizens and collective action?
“In fact,” he continued, “I believe that without greater engagement by nonprofit agencies and the clients they serve, civic participation will continue to decline, our shared experience of community will continue to diminish, public policy will be inadequate to the needs of families, and the culture of our democracy will wither.” |
“How can we build community voices—as expressed in the title of this conference?”
In response, he said, “I look to the nonprofit sector, to the Alliance for Children and Families, and the kinds of organizations represented in this hall. At root, by providing essential services to our families, you are also building community.”
Next, he told the gathering of Alliance member senior staff and executives, “At the RBF we are keenly interested in what we call the ‘civic engagement of nonprofit organizations.’ One of our core strategies is strengthening the capacity of the nonprofit sector to foster civic engagement and democratic practice, with an emphasis on encouraging and assisting a broad range of civil society organizations to move toward a more explicit engagement with public policy related to constructive social change.
“I know from my own experience serving for six years as commissioner of public welfare in Connecticut that human services providers like all of you are truly on the frontlines of the struggle to maintain the social compact.
“You are serving the extraordinary diversity of American families and you know better than anyone the challenges our families face. You respond to a wide array of needs. You know the effects of reduced government funding coupled with increasing demands for services. You are working against the odds at community building.”
A Powerful Voice for Change
“As a direct result of the work you do, you have amassed a vast wealth of knowledge. And we are convinced that your knowledge can be a powerful force for change in our society—that you can amplify community voices and help to shape a new social compact for the 21st century.”
Heintz acknowledged that there were perceived barriers to civc engagement. “Adding a civic engagement dimension can seem like a distraction from your core mission. Advocacy is time consuming and may seem risky if the positions being advocated contradict government policies or challenge political orthodoxy.
“Boards often have little enthusiasm for policy work or advocacy and volunteers and staff have little time and perhaps not the right mix of skills for effective engagement in the policy arena. In a time when everyone from funders to boards of directors is looking for measurable impact, it is also hard to assess the results of policy work and advocacy, especially in the short term.
“All of these factors make this effort terribly difficult—but they don’t make it any less necessary.
“In fact,” he continued, “I believe that without greater engagement by nonprofit agencies and the clients they serve, civic participation will continue to decline, our shared experience of community will continue to diminish, public policy will be inadequate to the needs of families, and the culture of our democracy will wither.
“This must seem like a huge additional burden for all of you who work so hard under very challenging circumstances to meet very real needs of families every day. But this is a time when all of us must summon the strength to promote new thinking about and a new commitment to America’s families. It is essential for our families and their children, and it is critical to the vitality of our democracy.
“If we are to surmount the democracy crisis, we will need a new social compact. And all of you have much to contribute to this effort.
“We are now in a time when we need strong communities more than ever. We need them not only for their own sake, but also because it is the experience of community that sustains democracy. And we will surely need robust democracy to face the myriad domestic and global challenges that await us in this century.” 
