Smart Communities

Technology Help for Nonprofits

Do you work or volunteer for a nonprofit?  Are you frustrated by lack of technical expertise or the high price of becoming more technically proficient?  Or are you technically proficient but don’t have the resources to invest in software or web hosting?

If you have a technical problem and you’re a nonprofit then Techsoup may be for you.  Techsoup has a number of areas on their website which nonprofits will find useful including sections on which technologies are most appropriate and effective.  There are also discussion boards for interaction between techies and nonprofit lay people, a service directory of technology consultants and service providers and (best of all) a products section that includes technology products that have been discounted or donated for use by nonprofits.

A number of articles from Techsoup are interesting reads, one on evaluating the effectiveness of nonprofit websites is fairly straightforward but gives a concise checklist which anyone can use to measure efficacy.  Another, about a web campaign for a group interested in nutrition and public health, is a great case study on how to use the web as part of a public service campaign.

Civic Engagement After Retirement

For some people the word "retirement" brings bad connotations.  After a lifetime organized by one’s job and family commitments retirees are sometimes left looking for something to inject meaning, or just structure, to their lives.  It is at retirement age, then, that we see many people begin to give back to their communities by volunteering their time and skills.  There are benefits to volunteerism, as this story in the Ames Tribune points out, and these benefits go beyond the instrumental benefits gained from involvement in the community and extend to actual positive impacts on health.

A number of national groups encourage service by older Americans, not the least of which is the American Association for Retired People which has a segment of their website devoted to community service.  The same is true of Senior Corps, a branch of the Corporation for National and Community Service.  Experience Corps, founded by the late John Gardner, is an urban-based organization dedicated to solving social problems in 13 major cities.

For those interested in an overview of the issues surrounding retirement and community service try visiting the website of Civic Ventures.  This organization does an exceptionally good job of tracking the latest news stories and presenting them with a brief summary and link on their website.

Measuring the Impact of Community Development Block Grants

Back in early April we noted that the Bush Administration had proposed reorganizing the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program and reducing its funding.  Since that time articles have been published in the newspapers that serve many affected communities decrying the proposed cuts and attempting to justify the use of these funds.

Some research has already been done on this topic, though, and we hope it gets brought into the debate over the necessity of CDBG funds for American communities.  In 2004 the Fannie Mae Foundation published an article in its publication Housing Policy Debate entitled "Measuring the Impact of Community Development Block Grant Spending on Urban Neighborhoods".

According to the article there is evidence that CDBG funds can make a significant difference in low-income communities.  These results are subject to some caveats, specifically that neighborhood change was best evidenced when CDBG funding exceeded the national mean and when it was related to the number of poor residents in a particular community.  Further, effects varied depending on changes in the local economies and the projected community outlook prior to investment.

What's the bottom line?  The authors conclude that despite these caveats, "even in the least hospitable contexts – highly concentrated neighborhood poverty, preexisting declines in home values, weak city job growth … CDBG spending [above the national average] produces significant improvements … in multiple measures of neighborhood conditions."  This particular article ends, as all good research articles should, with recommendations and guiding questions for future research.

Listening and Learning from Citizens Worldwide

There is an interesting project sponsored by the Harvard Law School called "Global Voices Online".  This project grew from an international coming-together of bloggers in 2004 which attempted to highlight the most unique citizen voices worldwide and encourage the emergence of new voices on the world wide web.

The result is a blog (surprise, surprise!) that highlights the efforts of citizens trying to call attention to problems in their own nations and communities.  This is a truly remarkable project because it encourages us to read reactions from real citizens and not just major news sources and pundits.  Beyond this, the project provides information on how to blog anonymously for people who live in repressive regimes.

At this point the Global Voices project appears to be largely concerned with free expression and the accurate reporting of world events.  We’re hoping they do more work to build online communities as that sort of subject matter does appear on their website and in some of their blog posts.  Specifically, it would be of great help to anyone interested in community development to hear more about solutions to community problems from across the globe – just as we are doing here.

RSS Feed of Civic Renewal Blogs

Peter Levine at CIRCLE is a blogger who recently highlighted the Smart Communities blog in one of his many in-depth entries.  The week that he posted about our blog he wrote to us to say he was going to try and create a webpage that "presents the latest RSS feeds from several 'newsy' websites that concern civic renewal."

This is a great idea, although it may take a little while to complete such a project since tracking-down blogs that deal with civic renewal on a regular basis could probably be a full-time job.  Feel free to leave comments at our blog, or Peter's blog, about other blogs which handle issues of civic renewal.

To facilitate this project we have provided an RSS Feed on the bottom right-hand side of the Smart Communities blog.  Wondering what an RSS Feed is?  It’s fairly easy to understand.  If interested but intimidated, take a look at  this webpage that explains what an RSS Feed is and how you can use it.

Building Civic Engagement - Literally

There is lots of talk in higher education circles about the civic engagement of the new generation and how that best happens. We have written about some excellent models right here. However you will find no better example of connecting the campus to the community than the Rural Studio at Auburn University.

In 1993 two architecture professors, Dennis Ruth and the late Samuel Mockbee established the studio to "enable students to cross the threshold of misconceived opinions to create/design/build and to allow students to put their educational values to work as citizens of a community." Under the leadership of a professor, architecture students actually design and build houses, community buildings, etc. in rural Alabama’s Hale County. They involve their clients in their work, they use materials as diverse as windshields from cars, hay bales, and corrugated box clippings, and tires to create, insulate, and build. As they say it "the Rural Studio seek solutions to the needs of the community within the community’s own context."

The results so far are impressive: seven houses built, a community center, boys and girls club, and senior citizen center to name a few. Students take up residence in the university's branch in Newbern, Alabama during their Rural Studio semester. Now under the director of Professor Andrew Freear, Rural Studio is continuing to improve living conditions in Hale County but more importantly it is a lesson in community building at its best.

For further reading I recommend two books by Andrea Oppenheimer Dean and Timothy Hursley.  The first is Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency and their second and most recent offering, Proceed and Be Bold: Rural Studio After Sam Mockbee.

Civic Leadership Grows in Anchorage, Alaska

One of the first programmatic efforts by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change was the Pew Civic Entrepreneur Initiative (PCEI).  It was our intention to use PCEI to go broader and deeper to identify civic leaders in 10 mid-sized cities and give them the training they needed to create strong, lasting solutions to civic problems.  Almost 600 people completed the program.

Leadership Anchorage in Anchorage, Alaska is one of the PCEI programs to have found lasting success.  The Pew Partnership's investment yielded the first communitywide leadership program in the city's history.  Their ten-year success was recently recognized by a research project conducted by the Leadership Lab and the Center for the Study of the Individual and Society at the University of Minnesota.  The Anchorage Daily News reported that Leadership Anchorage was compared with 59 programs from across the country and "was one of five [programs] that excelled in each of the success areas measured by the survey: students' attachment to the community, knowledge of the community, leadership skills and confidence, motivation to lead, and involvement in the community and intentions for future involvement."

We encourage our readers to take a look at the Leadership Anchorage website which has a comprehensive listing of their program methods and expected outcomes.  These listings are so well thought-out that they can probably serve as a model for others interested in the same manner of leadership training. Congratulations to Leadership Anchorage on their continued success!

Congratulations to LeadershipPlenty Graduates

Congratulations to our friends in Lake Francis, South Dakota who graduate today from LeadershipPlenty® training according to the Lyman County Herald.  A special thanks to all the sponsors who made the training possible.

LeadershipPlenty® is a curriculum that teaches tangible civic leadership skills to people in communities across the U.S.  The course was developed by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, for more information visit the webpage of the LeadershipPlenty® Institute.

The Public Does Have a Voice

On Tuesday I attended a taping of a powerful presentation on how the public perceives the issue of immigration.

Sponsored by the National Issues Forum Institute, A Public Voice was a combination of clips from actual citizen discussions from around the country and the responses to the discussion by a panel of elected officials, representatives from the media, and opinion leaders. The topic, the local National Issue Forum Institute discussions, and the response from the panel were enlightening. In a nutshell, the public understands full well the complexity of the immigration issue. On the one hand, the participants in the forum acknowledged the many contributions of immigrants to our nation and the current economic implications of the demand for low-wage, low-skilled workers to work in agriculture, food processing plants, etc. At the same time people are concerned about how the immigration process and rules of enforcement work as well as concerns expressed about the assimilation of newcomers, the issues about safety, and need to protect our borders.

However at the end of the session, the participants in the community forums spoke out loud and clear for a more coherent and realistic approach to immigration by our policymakers. While the panelists, who included three members of Congress, leading journalists, and a former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, had different responses to the issue and different takes on remedies, they were clearly convinced that the public has to be a part of major policy discussions if we are to make headway in finding workable solutions.

I encourage you to watch for the time and listing of A Public Voice on your local PBS station.  ALso, check out the National Issues Forum website for more information on the events and issues being addressed.

More On NonProfit Regulation

On April 8th I posted some news and links with regard to federal regulation of the nonprofit industry.  If you're keeping abreast of this emerging issue then you might want to read commentary recently posted online by Ruth McCambridge, editor-in-chief at the Nonprofit Quarterly (NPQ).  What McCambridge does that’s important is make some necessary distinctions in this debate, for instance:

•    What sort of nonprofits are we talking about?  McCambridge writes, "A single descriptive sentence can mention food pantries and small neighborhood organizations in the same breath with very big numbers: 1.4 million organizations, 10.9 million employees, and $2 trillion in assets.  But is this a reasonable approach for designing regulatory policy?"

•    What groups are involved in the process?  While the list compiled by McCambridge may be daunting it has the benefit of being comprehensive and gives a great outline for who to follow in the coming months.

•    What proposals are on the table?  Which nonprofit groups support which proposals?  Some of these proposals may have little to no effect on your organization but some, like the proposed five year review of the tax-exempt status of charities or requiring charities to disclose performance goals, may have a substantial impact.

The rest of the website provides recommendations by NPQ, links to organizations directly involved in this process, and an opportunity to submit your opinions to the NPQ.  This website was generated as a prelude to a special edition of NPQ, available only to subscribers, devoted to the proposed changes in federal regulation.  Naturally, NPQ encourages you to subscribe (as we do!)