Sample Materials

Below are examples of invitation letters, reading lists, discussion plans and texts used with a wide array of civic groups.

Invitation Letters

• Nonprofit Leaders in Northeast Florida
• Civic Leaders in Valparaiso Indiana

Reading Lists and Discussion Questions

Direct Service Providers

• Common Threads: Social Service Providers
• All in a Day's Work: Child Welfare Providers
• Stewardship & Clinical Practice: Mental Health Clinicians
• Health Promoters: Community Agency Staff

Nonprofit Boards of Trustees

• Neighborhood Organization Board Conversation
• Childcare Providers Board Conversation

Nonprofit & Civic Leaders

• Uplifting (Nonprofit) Leadership
• Immigrant Rights Advocacy Group
• The St. Louis Women Leaders Group
• Maine Community Leaders
• Changing Leaders, Leading Change

Donors & Philanthropic Organizations

• Association of Small Foundations
• Donors Forum of Chicago
• Giving in the American Experience
• Rotary 14: Reflective Philanthropy

Public Humanities Programs

• Humanities Council of Washington, D.C.
• New Hampshire Humanities Council
• Maryland Humanities Council

Service & Service-Learning Programs

• Illinois AmeriCorps: Justice Talking
• Oregon AmeriCorps: ASPIRE
• RSVP (Retired and Senior Volunteer Program)
• Norwich University Service-Learning

Youth Programs

• A Conversation with Gary Youth
• Free Street

Congregations

• Unitarian Church of Evanston Covenant Group

The Short List

• "On-the-Spot" Readings and Questions

The Spanish List: Readings in Spanish Translation

• The Lesson
  by Toni Cade Bambara
• The Eleventh
  by Henri Barbusse
• The Peace of Wild Things
  by Wendell Berry
• The Lovers of the Poor
  by Gwendolyn Brooks
• What We Don't Talk About When We Don't Talk About Service
  by Adam Davis
• They'll say, 'She must be from another country"
  by Imtiaz Dharker
• Self-Reliance (excerpt)
  by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Mending Wall
  by Robert Frost
• The Death of the Hired Man
  by Robert Frost
• Theme for English B
  by Langston Hughes
• The Helmsman
  by Franz Kafka
• The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
  by Ursula K. LeGuin
• Laws Concerning Gifts to the Poor
  by Moses Maimonides
• He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded
  by Alden Nowlan
• The Boy Without a Flag
  by Abraham Rodriguez, Jr.

Sample Discussion Plans

• A Bed for the Night
• The Bishop's Beggar
• The Four Traditions with Giving Autobiography
• Tocqueville's Democracy in America
• The Eleventh
• Mending Wall
• The Road Not Taken
• He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded
• Musee des Beaux Arts and Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Readings

• "Four Traditions of Philanthropy"
  by Elizabeth M. Lynn and D. Susan Wisely
• "Only Reflect: A Philanthropic Education for our Time"
  by Elizabeth M. Lynn and D. Susan Wisely
• "What We Don't Talk About When We Don't Talk About Service"
  by Adam Davis
• "What I Didn't Know Then"
  by Kelli Covey
• "Okay"
  by Lowell Jaeger