Volunteers

The Magicians of Main Street

August 20, 2014 By Otis White

If you know nothing else about cities, know this: City governments don’t really run them. They police, regulate, and plan cities; they facilitate their growth and tend their needs; they supply some services. But run cities? No more than the National Park Service “runs” national parks. The parks run themselves. Park rangers make sure humans don’t do anything so bad that it interferes with nature’s order.

So who runs cities? Well, they run themselves. But their direction is set by a multitude of interests working together, from neighborhood groups and nonprofits to local businesses and foundations—with governments playing an important but not exclusive role. This has always been true, but as I’ve written, it is growing even more so today. Some of the interests that have a say in a city’s direction are relatively new, like neighborhood groups and business improvement districts, but others have been around a long, long time.

One that has endured is the local chamber of commerce. Chambers have been so central to civic leadership for so long, it’s amazing that a serious history of these organizations hasn’t been written. Until now.

Chris Mead, senior vice president of the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives, is the author of “The Magicians of Main Street: America and its Chambers of Commerce, 1768-1945.” I found the book fascinating—and you may too. (Full disclosure: Chris sent me an early draft, and I made some small suggestions. He was wise enough not to follow all of them.)

Among the things I learned from reading “The Magicians of Main Street”:

Where chambers of commerce came from and why they’re called chambers as opposed to, say, associations. Answer: The first chamber was organized in France in 1599, where it was called a chamber de commerce. The idea and name jumped the English Channel to Great Britain, then the Atlantic to North America, where chambers caught on almost immediately among the sociable, business-minded Americans.
How far back in American history they go, and how resilient they are. By the time of the American Revolution, there were fully functioning chambers in cities like New York and Charleston. Alas, these two chose the wrong side in the war, which caused them to fold after independence—only to be revived almost immediately, this time with business people in charge whose loyalty was unquestioned.
How the focus of chambers shifted in the mid-1800s. In the early years, chambers were focused on, well, commerce—specifically, international trade. But in time, they moved toward the things we associate with chambers today: improving and promoting their cities and regions.

And here’s where I found Chris’ book especially interesting: Turns out that nearly every important civic improvement of the 19th and early 20th centuries (canal-building, railroads, highway construction, air travel, industrial development, tourism, anti-corruption efforts, city planning) were either helped along by chambers or outright invented by them.

Along the way chambers did surprising things. Charles Lindbergh’s history-making flight across the Atlantic? St. Louis’ chamber of commerce raised money for it and got an early version of naming rights in return. (That’s why Lindbergh’s plane was called “The Spirit of St. Louis.”) Al Capone, the gangster who terrorized Chicago in the 1920s? The Chicago chamber played a role in putting him in prison. (That Eliot Ness guy got the credit, of course.) The Miss America Pageant? That was a chamber of commerce invention, along with a string of world’s fairs and college bowl games. Even Punxsutawney Phil, the star of Groundhog Day, was created by a chamber of commerce.

This is not to say chambers were always on the right side of history. Some were supportive of segregation and unconcerned about bigotry. Chris points these things out, too.

But there’s much to learn from studying these enduring civic organizations. One thing is how consistent they’ve been over the years. After the Civil War, chambers everywhere created a kind of civic agenda around transportation, education, good government (or, at least, a business person’s definition of good government), economic development, and community image. They’re still focused on these things.

Another is how effective they’ve been—sometimes spectacularly so. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was in the news not long ago for a bridge scandal. But all the attention made me wonder: Who thought up this government agency, which owns and operates airports, seaports, bridges, tunnels, and transit in the New York area, and then sold the idea to two governors, two state legislatures, and Congress? Chris’ book gave me the answer: A chamber did.

Finally, “The Magicians of Main Street” left me with an even deeper appreciation for civic volunteerism. You would think if there were a group that would be indifferent to civic work, it would be business owners and executives. After all, they celebrate competition and individual accomplishment, not collective action, and an executive’s time is so valuable, why should you expect her to give it away? But, it turns out, business people are among the easiest to organize in most cities, as chambers have shown us time and again.

I’m not sure why that is so, but it is. And, as I learned from reading “The Magicians of Main Street,” it has been this way since businessmen wore tricorne hats.

Footnote: You can buy the book on Amazon by going here.

Photo by Adam Fagen licensed under Creative Commons.

The Seedbed of Civic Involvement

February 26, 2013 By Otis White

Everything works better in cities with high levels of citizen involvement. Social scientists tell us that politics are kinder when more people pay attention to government and vote, and social problems are diminished when people are close to their neighbors. Quality of life improves when people support festivals and attend local concerts and shows. Cities look better if people turn out for neighborhood cleanups and park conservancy projects. And when trouble comes—a big local industry closes or a natural disaster strikes—people are far more likely to see things through when they’re involved and invested in the place they live.

If civic involvement can do all these things, then there’s really only one big question: Where do you begin? Assuming yours is not a place where people vote in high numbers, check up on their neighbors, and turn out in large numbers for cleanup projects, what can governments and civic organizations do to get it started?

Answer: They can help people find one another and get organized for any legitimate purpose: recreation, self-improvement, religious, family betterment, education. And then be patient.

This won’t satisfy impatient leaders who want people involved in high-level civic work . . . now! How about calling some town-hall meetings or starting a citizens commission? You can do that, and if you do it well, you might see some improvement in community involvement. But if you want deeper, long-term change—big shifts in how citizens relate to one another and to the community—you need to work on the seedbed of civic involvement, which is self-interest plus connection plus organization. Then trust that these seeds will grow into a more involved citizenry.

Why begin with the seedbed? Because most people who are leaders in their communities didn’t start out as involved citizens; they grew into the role. A few had jobs that took them into local politics or civic causes, but the vast majority came up through volunteer work. And their first experiences with volunteering were usually about things in their immediate areas of interest (family, home, recreation, etc.). Go through the biographies of your city’s elected officials and you’ll find many started out volunteering for the PTA and got drawn into school district issues, or were on a neighborhood association board and got interested in local politics, or were active in a bicycling club and got caught up in a campaign for bike lanes. Once they figured out how things worked in their community, they were hooked.

This, then, is one reason you start with the seedbed: Multiply the number of opportunities for volunteer leadership, and in time you’ll multiply the number of deeply involved civic leaders. It won’t happen quickly. And not all the seedlings will grow into city leaders; many will be happy to serve in the PTA for years, or organize neighborhood cookouts, or teach safety classes to generations of young cyclists.

And that brings us to the second reason for tending the seedbed: Just as healthy forests don’t need all trees to be tall, we don’t need only highly involved civic leaders. We need moderately involved citizens, too: People who vote, serve on PTA committees, volunteer as Scout leaders and soccer coaches, turn out for neighborhood projects, and make small donations to good causes. Just as leaders do, these people strengthen their communities.

I can see this in my own life. My mother belonged to a business women’s club that, as far as I could tell, functioned as a social organization that, on the side, gave out college scholarships. Mostly, though, it just met, listened to speakers, and socialized. The scholarships were a good thing for the community, helping a few deserving students along the way. But an even better thing may have been the connections that these women forged as they helped one another in their careers. Who knows how many of them stayed in my hometown because of this network, enriching the community’s human capital?

We’ve known about this link between social networks and healthy communities for more than a decade, since Harvard Professor Robert Putnam wrote his book “Bowling Alone.” It was a convincing look at the decline of what Putnam called “social capital,” the connections that people have with one another. Where Americans once played bridge in foursomes, bowled in leagues, and joined Kiwanis Clubs to meet other business people, we now spend time in cars commuting long distances or in front of TVs or home computers. Putnam learned that people still do bowl; they just don’t do so in leagues. Rather, most bowl alone or as couples. Without the leagues, the bridge parties, the Kiwanis Clubs, and all the other group activities, modern Americans don’t form relationships and work for common purposes as easily as they once did. And this, he warned, threatens healthy communities and democracy itself.

Putnam’s book was a brilliant but depressing analysis of the problem that didn’t give us many starting points for changing things. But a new book and a think-tank report from the U.K. do. They point us to simple ways for connecting people around shared interests, by using a few incentives and a little help.

The book is “Unanticipated Gains” by Mario Luis Small, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago. As the title suggests, it was about something surprising: the rich networks of support that some families in New York developed when their children were young.

His study focused on mothers from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds who had children in day care centers. Parents turn to centers, of course, for economic or professional reasons: They have to work or want to work, and they need a safe, nurturing place for their children for a portion of the day. You’d think that the interactions of mothers and fathers dropping off and picking up small children would be hurried and, therefore, not great for creating connections. But some centers, Small found, had very effective ways of bringing parents together and connecting them with the city around them.

The keys were that some centers required parents to do something in addition to leaving and picking up their children: organize a field trip, serve on a parents’ advisory committee, raise money, and so on. And some were good at connecting parents with needs with resources elsewhere in the community. As a result, through these centers, some parents got a lot more than child care; they gained lifelong friends, new resources, and much closer connections with the community.

What was important, Small said, were the activities the parents were asked to do. If the work was organized by the parents themselves, which required understanding, and the interactions were repeated, which built trust, friendships grew even among parents who were not much alike. This is particularly important in multi-cultural communities where people often don’t recognize themselves in their neighbors.

And some of the centers were more than good facilitators, Small found. They were good brokers of information. That is, they could help parents find information and get help outside their neighborhoods, by showing them how to navigate the public school system, get help in domestic abuse cases, find doctors and hospitals, even get family tickets to museums and circuses.

What does this have to do with civic work? As my mother’s business women’s network did in my hometown, it made it far more likely these families would stay in New York and be successful there. It meant their children would also be more likely to succeed. And simply having a network of friends—and a stake in the city—meant for many that they would take greater ownership in and care of the community. People with friends are less likely to litter, deface property with graffiti, or ignore criminal activity. And they are more likely to vote, volunteer for good causes, and care about their neighbors.

And something else. This kind of self-interested volunteering teaches people the basics of leadership: organizing meetings, managing projects, finding resources, handling disputes, negotiating with other interests. Some will take these skills to larger venues.

With the New York day care centers, government had a hand in getting the parents connected. Centers that served low-income families and received state aid were required to have parent advisory committees. That incentive alone got some centers started in involving parents, although the smart ones went well beyond that.

Governments can’t require other forms of volunteerism, of course. All they can do is encourage and facilitate it. But that can be a powerful tool, as a report from a British think tank argues. The report is called “Clubbing Together: The Hidden Wealth of Communities,” and it argues that “casual connections” among citizens can be generated with little effort and cities can play a big role in doing so by making it easier for people to meet.

What are “casual connections?” They could be anything from people playing bingo to weekend sports leagues (think of softball leagues here, soccer there). These connections introduce people to one another, promote ethnic understanding, create “sentiments of trust, reciprocity, and purpose,” and in time “spur members into social actions, such as voluntary work or charitable giving,” the report says. In other words, they act as seedbeds.

This brings me to the great opportunity for communities. They have lots of places for people to meet, from playgrounds and softball fields to libraries and community centers. And with a little imagination, they could multiply the number of meeting places tenfold: school cafeterias, museum lobbies, concert halls, city hall meeting rooms, college classrooms, YMCAs. There are private spaces too, such as coffee shops, apartment clubhouses, and (yes!) bowling alleys that could be induced to open their doors to citizens—and potential customers—if there were property tax breaks involved. We could also make it easy for groups to find these spaces, with online reservations. (Attention, community hackathons!)

But what about security and cleanup? Organizers could sign forms assuming responsibility for hauling out trash and locking the doors. Would it work? I’ve been involved in scores of public meetings in schools, churches, and recreation centers over the years. I’ve never seen a volunteer group—even an informal one—refuse to take these responsibilities seriously.

But there’s a lesson here too. Much like mulch in a real seedbed, trust is the ingredient that enriches civic seedbeds. Yes, once in a while, you will be disappointed when a group doesn’t clean up the school cafeteria as it promised. But as you’re obsessing about the few, be sure to look about you and see all the healthy trees that are growing up.

Photo by Pictoscribe licensed under Creative Commons.

Civic Work and the Importance of Relationships

June 21, 2012 By Otis White

In early 2008, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made an all-out effort to deal with his city’s traffic problems by proposing that the city charge drivers who entered the most congested areas. Mayors don’t have that kind of authority, so he asked the New York State Legislature to give it to him. Over a week’s time, Bloomberg turned on the charm, with dinners for legislators at the mayor’s residence, a team of lobbyists working in Albany, and elaborate presentations showing lawmakers how their districts would be affected by the changes.

Didn’t work. Legislators barely considered Bloomberg’s proposal, and some seemed to enjoy snubbing the mayor. Why? One reason was the hurry-up nature of Bloomberg request; legislators thought the mayor was being disrespectful by asking for a quick vote. But another reason was Bloomberg himself. As one legislator, generally considered a friend of the mayor’s, told the New York Times, “All politics is relationships, and if he hasn’t built the relationships over time, he can’t suddenly create those relationships with 48 hours to go in the process. It just shows that six and a half years into his term, the mayor just does not know how to approach the legislature.”

Ouch. And, yet, unquestionably true—both about Bloomberg, who clearly isn’t comfortable rubbing elbows with politicians, and politics in general. All politics are relationships, but then again so are most human endeavors. And nowhere is that more true than in civic work, as I’ll explain shortly.

But, first, a word about relationships in general. It goes almost without saying that we need other people to have productive and meaningful lives, but we sometimes don’t appreciate how much. Here’s a hint: Academics who’ve studied natural disasters, like hurricanes along the Gulf Coast, earthquakes in Italy, and tsunamis in Asia, have found that the people most likely to survive and later restore their lives are those with the greatest number of relationships. Partly it’s because they have support systems that others don’t, and in times of great trauma, being surrounded by those who care about you makes you want to go on. But it’s not just psychological, researchers have learned; the well-connected have access to a storehouse of knowledge about getting things done. One researcher who had studied a tsunami’s aftermath in India explained it this way: “Those individuals who had been more involved in local festivals, funerals, and weddings, those were the individuals who were tied into the community. They knew who to go to, they knew how to find someone who could help them get aid.”

And it’s not just during disasters. Researchers who’ve studied corporate CEOs have consistently found that those promoted from within companies do better, on average, than those hired from outside. This isn’t true in every case, of course, but it’s true in the aggregate: Those hired from within last longer in their jobs than those recruited from other companies. There are many explanations for this, but one that researchers point to again and again is that home-grown executives know from day one how the company really works—what academics call “private knowledge” (unlike information you could get about the company from looking at its financial statements and organizational charts or looking things up on Google). And private knowledge—about how decisions are made, who is reliable, where and why initiatives have failed in the past—can be decisive in a CEO’s career.

Or in a civic leader’s career. Why is it so important to have a big and diverse network in civic work? Two reasons:

Power and resources are diffuse in cities. You can’t make major changes in cities by having one or two people, or even a small group, say yes; you have to get large groups to agree. The only way to do that is by knowing the decision makers well enough to win their commitments at the right time. And that takes long-established relationships. (Are you listening, Mayor Bloomberg?)
Communities are incredibly diverse: economically, politically, religiously, ethnically, in educational attainment, in years spent in the community, and on and on. As a result, you have to work harder at building relationships in communities than in companies or most other human activities, for the simple reason that the people whose help you’ll need won’t always run in your circles. The first task of community relationship building, then, is to consciously seek out people who aren’t like you.

But on the other side of these obstacles is a big reward for those who overcome them: Because communities are so diverse and power so diffuse, there’s a great deal of private knowledge in cities—basically, information about getting things done that isn’t widely known. The result is that the person with the best relationships—deep in trust and broad in diversity—is the one best positioned to accomplish things. If a project is stalled, she’ll know how to get it back on track. If a crisis blows up, she’ll know the critical constituencies who’ll need to be reassured and how to do it. If there’s financing problem in an important project, she’ll know those most likely to step in with resources.

This leads us to the next big question: If relationships are so important to civic work and the benefits so great, how do you form them? How do you meet people and turn acquaintances into friends? And once you’ve deepened your relationships, how do you use them to benefit your civic work and the city?

Sociologists who’ve studied the connections between people say there are four things that strengthen relationships: the time people spend together, their sense of identification with one another, the trust that’s formed between the two (especially how free they feel in sharing confidences), and how they reciprocate, which is an academic’s way of saying trading favors.

When you look at this list, you can see how things work pretty much in that order: First, people spend time together, then they see things in the other person they identify with (even if, on the surface, the other person seems different), they begin confiding in one another, and finally they help each other out. By the time you get to that final stage, trading favors, you have a deep relationship.

As a side note, don’t let the term “trading favors” turn you off. It’s one of the oldest and most beneficial human instincts. If someone helped you move from a dorm room to an apartment in college, and you later helped him move, you’ve traded favors. If you swapped turns driving the carpool to soccer practice, you’ve traded favors. If a civic leader helped you raise money for your project and you did the same for hers, you’ve traded favors. Trading favors becomes a bad thing only when it involves trading things you don’t actually own, such as government resources.

Still, I haven’t actually answered the question. It’s important to understand the stages of relationships, but knowing them doesn’t explain how to move through them. Here’s where civic work becomes the answer to its own problem: You do it through volunteering. It’s the best way—maybe the only sure way—of meeting large numbers of people and working alongside them. Want to know who’s reliable? Work on a Habitat for Humanity project. Want to know who’s wise? Serve on a nonprofit board. Want to know who truly knows their parts of the community? Raise money with them.

And this brings us, finally, to the reasons for the relationships. For friendship, sure. To be a more civically engaged and culturally aware person, of course. But the reason you set out to build those civic relationships was to get things done in your community. And for that you have to ask people to do things: to serve on a committee, donate money, or turn out their friends for an important event.

I understand why some are reluctant to ask; they fear it makes them seem pushy. In fact, just the opposite. It makes you look like a leader. Rather than thinking less of you, people will think more of you when you ask for their help. And when they agree, they’ve invested in your success. And that may be the ultimate stage of a relationship.

Chris Matthews, the television commentator, wrote not long ago that this was something John F. Kennedy learned early in his political career: You have to ask. Matthews says it’s what has been missing from President Obama’s administration. Yes, he raised enormous hopes (and donations) among his followers in 2008. But once in office Obama didn’t ask them to do anything other than cheer for him. (Unlike, say, the Tea Party, which has continuously asked its followers to do things in opposition to President Obama.) “There are certain basics to becoming a leader,”Matthews wrote in an essay for Time magazine. “The first is asking people to follow you. Kennedy asked. Obama used people to get elected.” As an Obama supporter, Matthews added, “He needs to start asking.”

So do you. If you want to create loyalty, which is the deepest level of relationship you can have in public or private life, you need to ask people to do things for you. But first, be prepared to spend time with people who aren’t much like you. And be quick to help them with their projects.

Photo by United Way of Greater St. Louis licensed under Creative Commons.

Smart Citizen Engagement . . . and Dumb, Dumb, Dumb

March 29, 2012 By Otis White

I am a fan of governments reaching out to citizens for ideas and participation for two reasons. It’s good for government officials to work side by side with citizens, and it’s good for citizens to work side by side with governments. But there are smart ways of doing this, and there are dumb, dumb, dumb ways.

I’ll talk about the smart and the dumb in a moment, but first a few words about why citizen involvement is important. Start with the basics: Citizens know some things better than government officials, and government officials know some things better than citizens. Citizens know things that begin with the word “what”—what the problems are (particularly in their own neighborhoods), what they want their city or neighborhood to be, and what they are personally willing to contribute in time and taxes to make these things happen. In other words, citizens are good at vision and judgment. Government officials are good at the “how” parts—how to deliver the things the citizens want, how they can be paid for, and how to be sure things work as planned when they’re in place.

When you put these competencies together, with the citizens taking the lead—but not having exclusive say—in the “what” parts, and government officials taking the lead—but not having exclusive say—in the “how” parts, you get a strong partnership . . . with a little creative tension. The tension comes from not totally ceding either part. On the contrary, it helps if the parties look over each other’s shoulder. Citizens sometimes have great ideas about getting things done. And public officials can often suggest things the citizens ought to be thinking about but, for some reason, aren’t. How do you let one side take the lead without ceding control? You act with respect for what the other party does best, the way you would toward any valued colleague or partner.

Here’s another principle of citizen engagement: The goal shouldn’t be a new set of ideas or goals but a long-term sharing of responsibilities. Alas, that’s not the political reflex. The reflex, upon hearing a complaint or an idea, is to take the problem away from the person who’s complaining. I understand why this happens—many elected officials believe the path to re-election is paved with credit for getting things done, and most appointed officials think it’s important to appear in control—but by taking problems away from people you diminish them and limit a government’s effectiveness. The best way to deal with community problems and opportunities is through partnerships, where everyone does his part: government, businesses, nonprofits, and citizens.

By taking the time to plan and act as partners, two wonderful things happen. First, resources multiply—not just financial resources but human labor and creativity. Second, solutions become virtuous cycles, where each partner’s contribution rewards the others’ efforts, increasing the rewards and making the effort easier with each turn of the cycle.

You see this most clearly in business improvement districts, where landowners tax themselves to make commercial areas safer and more attractive. The virtuous cycle for BIDs works in two ways. As they make improvements, property values rise and revenues to the BID increase, enabling it to do more, which makes property values rise even more . . . and on and on. But the real secret to BIDs isn’t the money they raise and spend on their own. It’s the partnerships they forge with governments. Over time, smart and focused BIDs learn how to ask intelligently for things, and governments like working with them. The money they raise, then, becomes not replacements for government services but enhancements, which helps everybody. The commercial district looks good, citizens are happy, businesses prosper, property owners see their investments rise in value, tax revenues grow for government and the BID, and the cycle goes round and round.

This, then, is the power of partnership, and it ought to be the aim of every government—not to coddle citizens or push them out of the way, but to plan and work with them as respected equals.

OK, then what’s a smart way of doing this? You start by asking citizens what they want, plan the “how” parts together—so citizens learn the cost of public goods and can decide if they truly want them—and then you ask those working alongside you to lend a hand in making them happen.

I have two examples of smart citizen engagement, both from older cities dealing with major crime problems. First is from Philadelphia where Mayor Michael Nutter has created a small agency called PhillyRising. It’s a handful of government workers who are good at talking with citizens and enlisting them as partners. Not long ago, a newspaper reporter sat in on a PhillyRising meeting in a Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood plagued by crime. The meeting began with a top city official saying something you don’t hear enough from government leaders. “The city doesn’t have all the answers,” he said. “We know you guys,” referring to neighborhood residents, “know the problems in the community better than anybody else.”

And that was pretty much the end of the speeches. For the rest of the meeting, the PhillyRising staff facilitated the 35 or so who came in talking about the neighborhood’s issues—not just the crime problems, but things like neighborhood schools and adult literacy problems—as others took notes on large flip charts. At the end, staffers invited the residents to come back in two weeks to work on plans for changing the things they had identified—with the city playing a supporting role. As the PhillyRising director told the reporter who was there, “The idea behind it is, instead of doing things for people, we’re trying to do things with them and teach them.” Precisely.

The second example is from Detroit, and it’s not about government doing smart things with citizens but citizens doing smart things with government. (Remember, it’s a partnership.) I don’t have to explain much about Detroit’s problems—they begin with a horrifying homicide rate and go from there. But not every part of Detroit suffers equally. There are a few neighborhoods that have kept crime at bay.

How did they do it? By organizing, watching things carefully, and working seamlessly with the police. These aren’t vigilantes. In one of the neighborhoods, North Rosedale, neighborhood volunteers don’t chase criminals; they photograph things that look suspicious and call the cops. They are so close to the police that, as neighborhood watch volunteers start their evening rounds, they check in with a nearby precinct to find out who’s on duty and what to keep an eye on.

As the Detroit Free Press reported, police and other city officials love these smart, organized, involved volunteers. “The cooperative effort that you have shown with the police department has just been super,” a police commander told one of the neighborhood groups at its regular monthly planning meeting with police and city officials last year. “The arrests that are being made are all with interaction with the community. A lot of other communities don’t offer that. It is a big tribute to you, and it’s very much appreciated.” The appreciation is mutual. One of the volunteers told the newspaper: “We believe it is important to work very closely with the police department.”

Let’s pause for a moment and review what’s right about these efforts. They create partnerships, not dependence. In each case, government knows its limitations. It appreciates what the citizens can do and stands ready to help but not direct. In one case, the government is reaching out to the citizens, in the other the citizens are reaching out to the government. The results of both will be smarter government (specifically, more effective policing) and smarter, more involved citizens.

So if these are examples of smart citizen engagement, what does dumb engagement look like?Â I have two examples of this, as well. The first involves the Pittsburgh police department, but instead of being partners of the citizens, the police have cast themselves as adversaries. The problem in Pittsburgh is a familiar one for urban police departments. Ethnically the police force doesn’t look much like the city today; it’s overwhelmingly white in a diverse city. The suspicion among African-American leaders is that the hiring process is rigged against black candidates, so they lobbied the mayor to open up the hiring process by allowing some community members to sit in on interviews.

Reluctantly, the police agreed. An organization called the Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network offered the names of some volunteer interviewers to the police department, which forwarded them to other city departments for screening and training. In time, the interview panels including civilians were assembled . . . until someone noticed that one woman who was asking questions was wearing an electronic monitoring device on her ankle. Turns out, one of the police interviewers was a convicted felon who had pleaded guilty a year before to felony firearms charges.

The panels were abruptly cancelled. The police chief blamed city bureaucrats for fouling things up by not running background checks. Everyone was embarrassed and angry. But take away the embarrassing revelation—the woman with the ankle monitor—and you see this for what it was: a shallow and ineffective substitute for citizen engagement. It was shallow because it substituted a handful of people on city hall interview panels for genuine partnerships with citizens in their neighborhoods. And it was ineffective because it asked this handful of citizens to do something they weren’t equipped to do—judge what makes a good police officer. Actually, the citizen member who might know something about effective policing was the woman with the ankle monitor. At least she could claim experience with the criminal justice system.

What would have been better? It would have been much, much better if the department had taken the time to engage citizens in discussions about what they wanted from officers in their neighborhoods. If they had listened carefully and worked collaboratively to find better ways of recruiting, training, and retaining officers who fit the new profile. Afterwards, if some involved in the planning process wanted to serve on the interview teams, they should have been welcomed and would have come to the panels in a completely different way—with knowledge of what police officers do and an understanding of how the hiring process was changing. In short, they would have been seen as partners in making a better police department—and not as intruders or nuisances.

But it isn’t only local governments that make a mess of citizen engagement. Sometimes citizens do, too. This brings me to the worst citizen engagement process I’ve ever heard of, designed by a group in Pinellas County, Florida called FAST, which stands for Faith and Action for Standing Together. As the name suggests, it’s an interfaith group, and its heart seems to be in the right place. Founded in 2004, FAST wants to improve low-income parts of the county, which includes St. Petersburg and Clearwater, and has taken on important issues from crime and drugs to transportation and education.

But if its intentions are good, its methods are atrocious. After FAST members (who number in the low thousands) settle on an issue and decide—on their own, with no government officials involved—what the correct solutions are, they haul public officials before them, force them stand on a stage and say only “yes” or “no” to FAST’s agenda. As a final indignity, elected officials are not allowed to touch the microphone, for fear they might . . . you know, try to explain something. A FAST member stands with the microphone in hand, ready to snatch it away.

By this point, most responsible elected or appointed officials will not participate what amounts to one of FAST’s public shaming sessions. Not long ago, though, several Pinellas County school board members came to one of the meetings, where they were told that the best way to instruct children was by using something called “direct instruction.” Would the school board members, on the spot, commit to changing the school system’s entire instructional approach? Yes or no? The answer, thankfully, was no. “I will not yield to pressure,” one board member told the group . . . presumably just before the microphone was snatched away.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be hectoring or patronizing. It doesn’t even have to be adversarial. In my experience, most government officials are perfectly willing to work alongside citizens; they just don’t know how to get started. And most citizens are far more interested in practical solutions than in venting their spleens and would welcome the opportunity to learn more about how government works.

There’s a marriage to be made here between governments and citizens, but like all good marriages it must come with some values. The two most important: respect for each other’s contributions and a belief in the power of partnerships.

Photo by Bytemarks licensed under Creative Commons.

What I’ve Learned about Leadership from Reading Obituaries

January 11, 2012 By Otis White

This may sound a little odd, but for several years I’ve been collecting newspaper obituaries from around the country. Not just any ones, but obits about highly regarded civic leaders, a group I call “super-civic leaders.” My aim is to find out what they did to be so highly respected, and how they did it. I’ve come to some conclusions.

I’ll tell you my conclusions in a moment, but let me tell you first how I choose these people and introduce you to a few from my collection. To begin, I’m not looking for elected officials—mayors, city council members, county commissioners—or for executives of major community nonprofits, such as chamber of commerce presidents or community foundation executives. I’m looking for people who, at least initially, started as volunteers and found something intoxicating about civic work.

I’m also looking for people who’ve made such a difference in their communities that their obits appeared on the newspaper’s front page or the first page of the metro section. The kind of people whose funerals attract mayors, governors, and other prominent folks. These super-civic leaders could have been successes in any field (and some, in fact, were highly successful in other ways), but at a point in their lives, they chose to devote themselves to the places they lived.

Why? Well, unfortunately, obituaries aren’t good at answering that question. And my own experience with super-civic leaders is that they aren’t good at explaining their motivations either. My theory is that they simply tried civic work, found it deeply satisfying, and, like most of us, stuck with something they did well.

What’s interesting about the 50 or so obituaries I’ve collected is that, in almost every other respect, these people have little or nothing in common. They were business executives and neighborhood activists. Lawyers, entrepreneurs, retirees, and activists. Republicans, Democrats, or completely nonpartisan. Male, female, black, white, Latino. Several were born in other countries. Some were Forbes 400 wealthy. Others seemed never to have had two nickels to rub together.

Let me introduce you to five from my collection. There’s Warren Hellman, the quirky investment banker from San Francisco who loved politics, bluegrass music, civic causes, and nearly everything about his city. (The things he didn’t like he worked hard to change.) On the other side of the country was Rob Stuart of Philadelphia whose occupation was unclear to most who met him. (The Philadelphia Inquirer described him as a communications consultant.) What is clear is that he was a passionate advocate for civic improvements and effective lobbyist at city hall. “He was like the 18th member of city council,” one council member said of him.

There was Noel Cunningham, a charismatic Irishman who turned his restaurant into Denver’s unofficial civic club, where mayors, governors, and do-gooders met and planned projects—always with Cunningham at the center of things. “Forget paying for the meal,” one nonprofit leader said. “You’d walk out of there with a checklist of things he wanted you to do.”

Seattle’s Kent Kammerer didn’t have a place for meetings, but he had a talent for creating serious discussions. He started a monthly forum called the Seattle Neighborhood Coalition at which political and civic leaders appeared for fair-minded but tough grillings. A retired teacher with gray hair and a bushy beard, Kammerer used these discussions to write about how to make Seattle better. He was so knowledgeable of the city and its neighborhoods that one journalist called him a “mossback Yoda,” after the wise and wizened Star Wars character.

Finally, there’s Eleanor Josaitis, a saintly Detroit woman about whom a book should be written. In 1968, as Detroit was experiencing a tidal wave of white flight, Josaitis, her husband, and five children went the opposite way, moving from the suburbs to the city so she could work with the poor. Over the next 43 years, Josaitis’ nonprofit became the place presidents visited to learn about Detroit’s needs. At her funeral, 900 people, from former mayors, governors, and business leaders to the people she served, sat shoulder to shoulder in Detroit’s downtown Catholic cathedral.

Again, I can’t tell you why these people gave so much of their lives to their communities. I do know they are so rare that, when they died, people mourned them as irreplaceable.

Given their vastly different backgrounds, what did these leaders have in common? Two things, I’ve noticed: First, they brought something valuable to civic work. Sometimes it was money, more commonly it was people, energy, or ideas. In a few cases, as with Josaitis, it was simply her moral force. Second, they gave astonishing amounts of time to their civic work.

Let me go a little deeper with both of these qualities. The old saying is that nonprofits need one of three things from board members: their time, talent, or treasure (that is, money). That’s true of super-civic leaders as well, but it understates their contributions because not everyone’s time, talents or treasure are the same. The truly great leaders bring something unexpected and sometimes unique.

Hellman, the investment banker, gave money, of course—his own and that of other wealthy San Franciscans he solicited for causes. But he also had a rare talent for solving civic problems, from government finance to bolstering Golden Gate Park. So when a civic problem needed a creative solution as well as cash, Hellman was there. And he didn’t just solve other people’s problems. He created things for the city, including a music festival called Hardly Strictly Bluegrass that brings hundreds of thousands of people each year to Golden Gate Park. Not your typical millionaire, Hellman would sometimes join musicians like Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle on the stage, plucking away on his banjo.

Almost as quirky as Hellman, though not nearly as wealthy, was Rob Stuart of Philadelphia. Stuart combined a talent for research and enthusiasm for ideas (“he was like an idea merchant,” one neighborhood leader said) with almost superhuman persistence. Among his many initiatives, he battled the railroad company CSX for four years to create a public crossing of its land near a riverside park . . . and won. Said one civic leader of Stuart and his supporters, “They weren’t rabble-rousers. They weren’t suing. They just got a lot of people together, worked nights and weekends, and wore the railroad down, and we’re all going to benefit from it for the rest of our lives.”

Cunningham introduced people he met through his restaurant, connecting people with needs to those with resources. Kammerer did something similar in Seattle through his forums.

But having access to unusual resources was only part of it. These leaders also gave incredible amounts of their time. That was true even of Hellman, who had an investment firm to run. He spent hours negotiating with San Francisco politicians on city pension reform. And Josaitis, of course, gave 43 years of her life to rescuing a city that others had given up on.

There’s one other thing about these five super-civic leaders and most of the rest in my file: They come across in their obituaries as utterly sincere. Obituaries are almost always respectful of the dead, of course. But you can’t fake what people said of these leaders. “The world is a worse place without Noel,” one mourner said of Cunningham. His eulogist, a former governor, called him “the most persistent and selfless person I have ever met.” Said the cardinal of Detroit at Josaitis’ funeral mass: “She was one of those special people that comes along every 100 years. . . . She was able to do things most people weren’t able to do.”

And what do these rare people tell those of us who aren’t super-civic leaders? Three things: First, it pays to be strategic, to look around for things you—and only you—can bring to civic work. It could be a new set of ideas or contacts, or a new source of funding, such as grants or some kind of private funding. This is how you go from being a volunteer to a leader.

Second, to be effective in communities, you have to be willing to put in the time. Cities are complex environments that are devilishly difficult to change, and there’s no substitute for persistence and patience. (Think of Rob Stuart’s four-year crusade to convince CSX to let people cross its land to get to a park.)

Finally, authenticity is important. Because civic work is so long term, people will sort out the sincere from the insincere. So care about your causes. It’ll draw others to your work . . . and who knows? It might win you a wonderful obituary one day.

The Magicians of Main Street

Civic Work and the Importance of Relationships

Smart Citizen Engagement . . . and Dumb, Dumb, Dumb

What I’ve Learned about Leadership from Reading Obituaries

About Otis White

The Great Project

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