Civic Reflection News Update — December 2006

New Small Grants

New Project on Civic Reflection Small Grants have been awarded to the following recipients:

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Chicago, Illinois

The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will gather an ethnically diverse group of women philanthropists and civic leaders for a series of six meetings in 2007. Using a set of readings on philanthropy from the humanities and social sciences, including texts by Jane Addams and others associated with Hull-House, participants will reflect on the challenges of facilitating progressive social change. Meetings will take place in the historic Residents' Dining Hall at Hull-House, where Jane Addams, John Dewey, W.E.B. DuBois, Eleanor Roosevelt, and others grappled with similar issues.

Family Matters, Chicago, Illinois

In 2007 Family Matters will extend its previous civic reflection series, which included youth and adult representatives of its board of directors, to the full board. Drawing on stories and poems by Ursula K. Le Guin, William Carlos Willams and Imtiaz Dharker, Family Matters' board will reflect on the organization's Principles of Leadership. Series facilitators will include a youth member of the board. As Family Matters prepares to extend its mission beyond Chicago's North-of-Howard neighborhood, board members will take this opportunity to renew their commitment to the organization's core values and to working with one another.

Washington Courage & Renewal, Seattle, Washington

Washington Courage & Renewal, a local affiliate of the Center for Courage & Renewal, will convene and facilitate a civic reflection series designed to foster leadership capacity among members of the Social Justice Fund. A public foundation that supports grassroots organizations promoting democracy, human rights, and racial and economic justice in the Northwest, the Social Justice Fund includes two groups who hold a common commitment but sometimes different perspectives on the changes they wish to affect—philanthropic donors and grassroots community activists. In a series of retreats in spring 2007, participants will use a variety of literary texts as catalysts for reflection and discussion, with a focus on the shared goal of developing effective leadership for the progressive movement. Organizers hope that the series will allow SJF members to bridge their differences and strengthen their mutual commitment to social change.

Next deadline for civic reflection small grant applications: February 1, 2007

New on Our Website

…in the Resource Library

The Resource Library is an extensive collection of questions and readings designed to spur reflection on civic activity. Following are recent additions to the library along with a few questions they raise.

"The Attached Couple" by Melissa Fraterrigo

• What are our motives for giving to or serving others? Does it matter what our motives are?
• What enables us to connect with others? What limits connection?

"The Dance of Moshe-Leib" by Elie Wiesel

• What should I give?
• Can we ever really know what a gift achieves?

Everyday People, directed by Jim McKay

• How do we address race in our associations with others?
• What is conscience? How does it speak, and how do we hear it?

…in the Facilitators' Forum

The Facilitators' Forum provides an opportunity for leaders of civic reflection discussions to share their experiences and insights. Recent submissions include:

"The Lovers of the Poor" by Gwendolyn Brooks. A group of AmeriCorps volunteers used Brooks's poem, about members of "The Ladies' Betterment League" confronting the urban poor, to examine the motivations and implications of their own service.

"A Bed for the Night" by Bertolt Brecht. A diverse group of nonprofit staff members and volunteers discussed Brecht's portrayal of a man seeking beds for the homeless and explored what constitutes meaningful social change.

More Than Money Archive

The Project on Civic Reflection is pleased to announce that a complete archive of More Than Money Magazine is now available on our website. Published from 1993 to 2006, More Than Money offered a range of interviews, practical tips, and human interest stories meant to encourage purposeful, effective giving and thoughtful money managing. The work of More Than Money Institute, founded in 1990 to help Americans reflect on the relationship between their economic activity and their values, is being continued and further developed by The Marpa Center for Business and Economics at Naropa University.

Program Spotlight

Donors Forum of Chicago

How do we draw the line between helping others and imposing our will on others? What do we expect from those to whom we give? For the past two years, Donors Forum of Chicago has been helping its members explore these and other questions through civic reflection conversations organized around short readings. The Donors Forum, a regional association of grantmakers, began convening these sessions with its board of directors after being introduced to the practice of civic reflection by Project director Elizabeth Lynn, who was a featured speaker at a members' luncheon in 2004.

In 2005 and 2006, Donors Forum used a Project on Civic Reflection small grant to expand the new program, holding seven civic reflection luncheon sessions. Some were designed for affinity groups within the Donors Forum membership, such as family foundations or Funders for Lesbian and Gay issues (FLAG); others were directed to all members. Participants in the program received journals in which to record their thoughts at the end of each session. Among the facilitators were Adam Davis and Susannah Quern Pratt, both Project associate directors, and Mae Hong and Trish Gossard, Donors Forum members who attended the Project's January 2006 facilitation training workshop in Chicago.

According to Robin Berkson, Vice President of Member Relations at Donors Forum of Chicago and organizer of the civic reflection series, the facilitation workshop "really enhanced and built our capacity to run the programs." She described participants' openness to new ideas and their intellectual curiosity as crucial to the program's success, and each reading as "another participant around the table, vital in giving shape, life, and form to the conversation." In their own evaluations of the series, participants portrayed civic reflection as both a luxury and a necessity. Stepping back to take a broader view of their day-to-day work felt like an extravagance, yet doing so allowed them to perform that work more responsibly. In the words of one participant, "The act of reflecting in and with a community of peers is one of the most important acts that grantmakers can take to inform our work and worth, and yet it is the one responsibility that we fall short on many times."

Project News & Notes

• The Project on Civic Reflection assisted the Illinois Humanities Council in presenting "The Meaning of Service: A Workshop on Reading and Discussion Programs for Service Organizations," held in Chicago from October 18-20, 2006. Workshop sessions were held at Marwen, an art school for under-served youth located in downtown Chicago. Over forty participants from humanities councils, AmeriCorps groups, and other service organizations across the country took part in the workshop, which included an overview of The Meaning of Service program and civic reflection, state team meetings for planning new civic reflection programs, and breakout sessions co-facilitated by pairs of participants. Evaluations were enthusiastic, with participants expressing excitement about putting what they had learned into practice.

• The Project on Civic Reflection will hold its winter facilitation workshop in downtown Chicago from January 11-13, 2007. The program will include a mixed format of brief presentations, small group discussions, and, mostly, lots of hands-on facilitating. The workshop's purpose is to develop facilitation skills among people who are interested in leading text-based discussions for civic groups and organizations.

• The Civically Engaged Reader, co-edited by Elizabeth Lynn and Adam Davis (The Great Books Foundation, 2006) has been well received since its August publication. The anthology has been selected as the focus of the Great Books Discussion Series at the Bowling Green Public Library for the year 2007 and as a featured book by the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse. In a review in the Association Forum, President and CEO Gary LaBranche writes, "This is truly a profound book and will inspire both great discussions and thoughtful reflection." Actual sales of The Civically Engaged Reader are ten to twenty percent over projected sales, says the Great Books Foundation's J. A. Smith.

• In November civic reflection was the topic of an online presentation offered to the American Library Association's Fostering Civic Engagement Membership Initiative Group. Project director Elizabeth Lynn and Erik Jorgensen of the Maine Humanities Council presented an overview of civic reflection, described exemplary library-based civic reflection programs, and gave a tour of the Project website. Taylor Willingham of Texas Forums, which sponsored the discussion, served as moderator. The presentation is available in the OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries) archives.

• Elizabeth Lynn was a featured plenary speaker at the annual conference of Grantmakers of Oregon and Southwest Washington held in Eugene, Oregon on November 3. Lynn's presentation included participatory exercises from The Civically Engaged Reader.