BUILDING CIVIL SOCIETY

IMPACT OF NONPROFITS ON

CIVIL SOCIETY While nonprofits exist technicall in the private sector, their

voluntary character renders t 1 em the "most public" of

continuous renewa H of civil society. organizations, and thus the a ents of maintenance and

BRIAN O'CONNELL

o h Dewey, in "Ethics of Democracy," concluded that "democracy is not an alternative to other principles of asso- J ated life. It is the idea of community life

itself." Dewey's biographer, Robert Westbrook, notes that "Dewey was the most important advocate of participa- tory democracy, that is, of the belief that democracy as an ethical ideal calls upon men and women to build communities in which the necessary opportunities and resources are available for every indi- vidual to realize fully his or her particu- lar capacities and powers through par- ticipation in political, social and cultural life."'

In "American Philanthropy and the National Character," historian Merle Curti states, "Emphasis on voluntary ini- tiative ... has helped give America her

national character. . . .All these philan- thropic initiatives give support to the thesis that philanthropy has helped to shape thenational character.. . [by] imple- menting the idea that America is a pro- cess rather than a finished product.''2

In The Good Society, Robert Bellah et al. explain their title and thesis thusly: "It is central to our very notion of a good society that it is an open quest, actively involving all its members. ... Indeed, the great classic criteria of a good society - peace, prosperity, freedom, justice - all depend today on a new experiment in democracy, a newly extended and en- hanced set of democratic institutions, within which we citizens can better dis- cern what we really want and what we ought to want to sustain a good life on this planet for ourselves and the genera-

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BUILDING CIVIL SOCIETY

tions to come.”3 Robert Wuthnow‘s research, as

summarized in Acts of Compassion: Car- ingfor OthersandHelping Ourselves, makes the case that ”[Compassion] locates us as members of the diffuse networks of which our society is woven.’’ At another point, the author writes: ”Compassion stands for something larger than life itself. It reminds us of our humanity and there- fore of the deeper qualities that are essen- tial to our common human e~perience.”~

In ”A Parliament of the People,” Woodrow Wilson wrote: ”The whole purpose of democracy is that we may hold counsel with one another so as not to depend upon the understanding of one man, but to depend upon the counsel of all. For only as men are brought into counsel, and state their own needs and interests, can the general interests of a great people be compounded into a policy suitable to all. So, at this opening of a new age, in this, its day of unrest and discontent, it is our part to clear the air to bring about common counsel; to set up the parliament of the pe~ple.”~

In his keynote address to INDEPEN- DENT SECTOR’S 1987 Research Forum on ”The Constitution and the Independent Sector,” David Mathews argued that “the role of the sector in bringing together people, formally and informally, to deal with shared issues makes it the most ’public’ of the sectors in the context of ’public life as our shared life in all its forms.’ ” Mathews then suggested that we grossly underestimate what the less formal networks of our communities

mean to our interdependence, including influence on government.

Mathews provided this framework for the contributions of the sector:

1. To provide the infrastructure of our political environment.

2. To foster political socialization and develop public leadership.

3. To provide the quality of public talk, to increase our problem-solving ca- pacity, and to generate political will.

4. To supply public power. 5. To create the public itself. He concluded: ”We think how

dependent the public is on government -how much we need good government. But what we may lose sight of is how much good government needs a good public. . . .’r6

Robert D. Putnam, in ”What Makes Democracy Work?,” published in the NATIONAL CIVIC REVIEW and drawn from his book Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, writes: [Slome regions of Italy have a rich network of community associations. Their citizens are engaged by public issues and take an active role in politics. They trust one another to act fairly and obey the law. Social and political frameworks here are organized horizontally, not hierarchi- cally. At the other pole are the ‘un-civic’ regions, where the very concept of citi- zenship is stunted. Engagement in social and cultural associations is meager, and the social structure is hierarchical. Public affairs is someone else’s business, not mine. Laws are made to be broken, and people live in fear. Trapped by these

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BUILDING CIVIL SOCIETY

NONPROFITS AND CIVIL S~CIETY

vicious circles, nearly everyone feels ex- ploited and unhappy - and democracy fail^."^

* * *

hen Vaclav Have1 received the Onassis Prize for Man and W Mankind, he concluded his ac-

ceptance speech with these words: "The modem era is at its height, and if we are not to perish of our modernness we have to rehabilitate the human dimension of citizenship."8

When I became president of the National Council on Philanthropy, and later, after INDEPENDENTSECTOR was formed, I found I was called on regularly to pro- vide briefings, testimony, articles, and speeches about the role and impact of philanthropy and voluntary initiative. However, I found that there were rela- tively few wonderful, written examples that brought the generalizations to life. That's when Ann O'Connell and I set out to pull together specific tales of gifts and volunteers that seemed to us to have made a very great difference in many different fields.

For Philanthropy in Action, we amassed about 2,500 examples of gifts that struck us as being both good ex- amples and good tales of that helped bring philanthropy alive. From these, we chose approximately 300 within 13 dis- parate categories, including 1) To Dis- cover New Frontiers of Knowledge; 2) To Support and Encourage Excellence; 3) To Enable People to Exercise Their Poten-

tial; 4) To Relieve Human Misery; 5) To Preserve and Enhance Democratic Gov- ernment and Institutions; 6) To Make Communities a Better Place to Live; 7) To Nourish the Spirits; 8) To Create Toler- ance, Understanding and Peace Among People; and 9) to Remember the Dead.9

For Volunteers in Action, we col- lected about 4,000 different examples that we thought helped tell the story of the sector and sifted these to about 400 ex- amples in the following categories: 1) Serving Those Most in Need; 2) Lifting People Toward Self-Reliance; 3) Advo- cating and Empowering; 4) Cooperating in Mutual Dependence and Assistance; 5) Exercising Religious Belief; 6) Serving Many Other Causes and Places - From Arts to Zoos; and 7) Serving Many Other Causes and Places - From Kindergar- tens to Cemeteries.'O

In the introduction to Volunteers in Action, we wrote: "[Ilt is the work of millions of volunteers that adds up to the compassion, spirit and power that are the quintessential characteristics of vol- untary action in America. Everyone can make a difference, and many, many people do.

"Most of our examples are con- temporary, or at least recent. In some cases we have gone back in time to pro- vide chronology or to make a point, but generally we have sought to help the reader relate to these people. We also wanted to illustrate the point that volun- teering is alive and well.

"As with Philauthropy in Action, we don't pretend that this book is a defini-

128 SPRING 1995 NATIONAL CIVIC REVIEW

tive record of the subject. Both books are attempts to pull together random ex- amples that might be fun to know about and that might help tell the story of what philanthropy and voluntary action do. This book does not represent a scientific sampling, nor have we attempted toverify that all the people have done what some- one said they did. That kind of test will have to await scholarly studies. For now, these examples, however random and anecdotal, represent a very strong indi- cation that philanthropy and voluntary action have made and continue to make a large difference in almost every area of human endeavor.”

c “ R

NOTES IRobert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca,N.Y .: Cornell University Press, 1991).

2Merle E. Curti, ”American Philanthropy and the National Character,” American Quarterly, Winter 1954, pp. 420-437.

3Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsden, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, The Good Society (New

York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).

4Robert Wuthnow, Acts of Compassion: Curing for Others and HeZping Ourselves (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991).

5Woodrow Wilson, “A Parliament of the People,” 1912 campaign address, re- printed in Kettering Review, Fall 1988.

6David Mathews, ”The Independent Sec- tor and the Political Responsibilities of the Public,” Spring Research Forum, IN-

DEPENDENT SECTOR, Washington, D.C., 1988.

’Robert D. Putnam, “What Makes De- mocracy Work?,” NATIONAL CIVIC REVIEW, 82:2, Spring 1993, pp. 101-107.

Vaclav Havel, Acceptance Speech, Onassis Prize for Man and Mankind (Ath- ens, Greece, May 24,1993).

9Brian O’Connell, Philanthropy in Action (New York: The Foundation Center, 1987).

“Brian O’Connell, Voltiizteers in Action (New York: The Foundation Center, 1989). I

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