Abstract
Civic engagement in U.S. political life has declined since the 1950s resulting in a deluge of studies that explore its causes and implications. Research to date has directed little attention to the institutional role of associations as the foundation for civic engagement in all of its forms. This article utilizes institutional theory as a lens to examine the ways in which community-based organizations (CBOs), in tandem with local government, foster civic engagement, and enhance representation in their communities. Through interview data obtained from stakeholders of 18 local education foundations (LEFs) in Florida, we examine the ways in which CBOs nurture civic health with client communities (generative role) and represent their interests in local policy arenas (mediating role). Based on the results of this initial study, we argue that greater attention should be directed to the relationships between CBOs and measures of civic health given their unique capacity to foster it. Results indicate the relationship between generative and mediating activities is such that CBOs’ engagement with client communities establishes the foundational knowledge necessary for representing their interests in the interorganizational arena. In addition, CBOs were found to establish both bridging and bonding capital in the interorganizational arena through their efforts to exert influence on behalf of client communities.
Introduction
An inexorable decline in civic engagement has marked U.S. political life since the 1950s, generating a plethora of studies into its causes and implications. Within public administration literature there is a steady but limited stream of scholarship that has regarded civic decline as a responsibility to be shouldered by the public sector given their unique position and responsibility for educating citizens and fostering democratic governance (Cooper, 1991; Denhardt & Denhardt, 2000; Nabatchi, 2010; Sirianni, 2010; Stivers, 1994). In nonprofit scholarship, waning civic engagement has been a central theme given that associations are regarded as a manifestation of civic life. Associations provide the locus, structure, and opportunities for individuals to develop their public identities as citizens and become involved in the decisions of their communities (de Tocqueville, 1836/1956; Eliasoph, 2009; Meyer & Hyde, 2004; Putnam, 1993, 2000; Schambra & Shaffer, 2011; Skocpol, 2003). In response to civic decline, the U.S. Congress chartered a nonprofit to strengthen civic life in the United States, the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC; 2006). The NCoC advanced the concept of civic health, a “catch all” phrase that references three interrelated components, social capital, civic engagement, and political participation and generated a measure of it, a “civic health index.” The NCoC has published a series of reports that assess the civic health index for various cities and communities across the nation. These studies explore the extent to which citizens trust their neighbors, are active in their communities, and interact with their government (NCoC, 2017).
There are two ways in which we expand the exploration of civic health and, in turn, our understanding of what contributes to civic decline. First, empirical studies of civic health have sought to understand the decline by identifying and measuring individual activities as civic indicators. Notably, the NCoC draws on data from the U.S. census Current Population Survey (NCoC, 2006, 2009, 201). This study shifts the level of analysis from the individual to the organization in recognition of the fact that civic health occurs as a social behavior and institutions play an integral part in alternatively enabling or limiting social behaviors (Fernandez & Alexander, 2017). Institutional theory takes the position that social structures guide individual and community behaviors because they foster norms and routines that “become established as authoritative guidelines” (Scott, 2004, p. 464). Thus, an examination of civic health from an institutional lens assumes that particular organizational activities generate social capital, civic engagement, and political participation.
Second, the definition and discussions of civic health to date are limited to the generative role of nonprofit associations and their interaction with citizens. A missing element that is pivotal to the purpose of associational life and its role in democracy is the mediating role in which nonprofit associations take the knowledge of their client community into the interorganizational environment where they represent the needs of their client communities and seek to affect policy through their interactions with other nonprofit representatives and policy actors, including local government officials, politicians, foundations, and private sector actors.
This study focuses on a particular subset of nonprofits known as local education foundations (LEFs) and how they fulfill generative and mediating roles in the course of engaging parents, the community, local government, and business leaders to promote public school engagement, community awareness, and resource support for new and innovative ideas in the classroom (Brent, 2002; Raphael & Anderson, 2002). LEFs are a form of community-based organizations (CBOs) because they represent citizens in a specific community by providing educational awareness, information, and services (20 USCS § 7801(6)). The authors posit that LEFs as CBOs contribute to civic health at two levels of interaction: First, CBO’s provide the locus and purpose for citizens to engage with others around issues important in their lives, thereby fostering social capital, civic engagement, and political participation. Second, in their mediating role, CBOs engage members of the local policy community and represent their community’s needs and interests.
While LEFs vary extensively across the United States with regard to their organizational model and relationship to school districts (Brent & Pijanowski, 2003; Nelson & Gazley, 2014; Paarlberg & Gen, 2009), our study focuses on LEFs in the state of Florida. These organizations are distinct in that each institution embodies the demographics and cultural distinctiveness of their locale. Unlike Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) or school-level booster clubs intended to raise resources and support individual schools or school programs, each LEF serves an entire school district with its own distinct programming. As a result of their individual character and missions, LEFs are uniquely positioned to provide a rich context for exploring how associations foster civic health.
The following study analyzes interview data with executives from 18 different LEFs throughout Florida to determine whether and how organizational activities foster social capital, civic engagement, and political participation among community participants and stakeholders. We investigate both the generative capacities of CBOs in contact with citizens as well as their mediating roles in the interorganizational environment where LEFs seek to advance community interests. We then propose a conceptual framework that accounts for the ways in which CBOs foster civic health within communities through both their generative and mediating activities.
This article is exploratory research in that we are seeking to understand a largely ignored aspect of civic health: the institutional contribution of CBOs. As we consider the role of institutions in fostering or delimiting the civic health of communities, there are a number of pressing questions that surface. What can we learn about the relationship between measures of civic health and the presence and type of CBOs in the vicinity? Do CBOs require social capital, or bonds of trust, with other nonprofits to exercise influence on behalf of their client communities? How does the relationship between generative and mediating roles of CBOs sustain civic health? Clearly an in-depth treatment of these questions is beyond the scope of this article. But as we begin a line of research that demonstrates the ways in which LEFs contribute to civic health, we propose that in the search for answers as to why there is civic decline in certain communities and not in others, a deeper look into the institutional role of CBOs is warranted. This research is particularly salient to public administration because the field is developing an understanding of the contribution of nonprofits to public service and democracy (LeRoux, 2007; Nabatchi, 2010). From the lens of public administration, nonprofits are portrayed as low cost, alternative service providers. Their enduring contributions to public service and to democracy as generators of active citizenship, interpreters of policy through implementation, and mediating institutions that shape local policy with, and on behalf of, citizens remains an acknowledged lacunae in need of explication (Alexander, 2017; Box, 1998; Denhardt & Denhardt, 2000; Eikenberry & Kluver, 2004; King, Stivers & Box, 1998). This examination of how nonprofits generate citizen involvement and shape local policy provides a more complete picture of their contribution.
In the following section, we define civic health, its antecedents, and we review the ongoing dialogue occurring within public administration with regard to active citizenship and how it is fostered among a myriad of organizational actors. We further elaborate the contribution of institutional theory to civic health and the theoretical distinction between generative and mediating roles.
Literature Review: From Citizen Participation to Civic Health
Civic health is a term promulgated by policy analysts in the United States with the intention of creating a measure of the well-being of civic life and its salience for democracy (NCoC, 2006). Civic health encompasses three more commonly referenced and interrelated terms: social capital, civic engagement, and political participation. The idea of civic health is adopted from Greek democracy and their contention that the health of a political community and the quality of individual life are deeply interrelated. The Greeks regarded cities as “analogues to natural organisms that thrived in health, wailed in pain, became afflicted with disease and even suffered death” (Kalimtzis, 2000, p. 22, in Edyvane, unpublished). The more commonly referenced antecedent to civic health is civil society, a concept closely linked to liberal political theory wherein a civil society and a democratic state are construed as interdependent entities that sustain one another (Walzer, 1990; Yishai, 2002). Simply stated, civil society is separate from politics or the market; it is a communal space of uncoerced and unorganized interaction that encompasses a plurality of associations and “relational networks formed for the sake of family, faith, interest and ideology” (Walzer, 1990, p. 2). The state establishes the framework, or rules for engagement within civil society, and within this sphere, individuals are free to pursue a range of personal and community specific interests (Rosenblum & Post, 2002). As citizens engage with one another, they develop the capacities and skills necessary for active citizenship, an ability to engage with others about issues of public concern and a devotion to the public good, thereby fostering a healthy democracy.
The three dimensions of civic health are defined herein. Social capital refers to “social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them” (Putnam, 2000, p. 19). A central assumption to Putnam’s work is that norms of trust and civility at the level of communities and regions “foster the development of civic trust in political institutions” (Leonard, 2004, p. 928), although a number of scholars have demonstrated that the relationship among the three dimensions is not necessarily linear and is poorly understood. Putnam (2000) differentiated between bonding capital—an inclusive social capital of closely knit communities that allows people to “use networks to maintain access to resources they already have”—and bridging capital, which offers opportunity to move beyond the bonds of a homogeneous community, establish ties with others, and thereby gain access to resources (Putnam, 2000, p. 23). He regarded the latter as essential for economic and social progress.
Civic engagement is a dynamic phenomenon, referencing both individual and collective action directed to an issue of community concern, being informed on community issues, and engagement of political institutions (Schneider, 2007). Although there are authors who use social capital and civic engagement interchangeably, in a heterogeneous civil society, social capital may be more confined to communal enclaves. Political participation, the third dimension of civic health, references the extent to which citizens are active and engaged in political life, and it is measured by a variety of politically related activities. Taken together, civic health is an aggregate term for capturing active citizenship in a democracy.
The relevance of active citizenry to an effective administrative state has evolved considerably in public administration thought. Early roots of the field in the United States began with the bureaus of municipal reform during the Progressive era; municipal leaders eschewed citizen engagement, which they regarded as burdensome and corrupting. Conversely, the Settlement House reformers of the same era strongly supported active citizenship; they were the first to regard cooperative relationships between public administrators and citizens as integral to effective government (Stivers, 1998). Attention to the role of citizens lay dormant until the 1980s when members of the New Public Administration movement anchored the responsibilities of public administrators to their relationship with citizens and others followed suit (Cooper & Gulick, 1984; Frederickson, 1982; Stivers, 1994). Nearly all construed citizenship not as merely a legal status but as a practice that entails both privileges and responsibilities, including the obligation to be actively engaged in public life (Bryson, Crosby, & Bloomberg, 2014; Bryson, Crosby, & Stone, 2015; Cooper & Gulick, 1984; Denhardt & Denhardt, 2000; King & Stivers, 1998; Nabatchi, 2010). Accordingly, with the intention of fostering a stronger democracy, scholars exhorted administrators to create the conditions, processes, and structures necessary to foster opportunities for citizens to exercise a role in their communities, to make authoritative decisions about communal life, and to develop the skills and abilities necessary for citizenship (Bingham, Nabatchi, & O’Leary, 2005; Cooper & Gulick, 1984; King, Stivers, & Box, 1998; Stivers, 1990).
A new wave of scholarship asserting the importance of citizen engagement in public administration began a surge in 2000 in response to the impact of the New Public Management and the devolution of government services to nongovernmental actors. Denhardt and Denhardt’s (2001) concept of the New Public Service asserted that the task of public administration was to put citizens, not customers, at the fore and build institutions that serve and empower them. Bingham et al. (2005,) later contended that effective citizen engagement “involves not simply tools but also processes for people to participate in the work of government,” emphasizing the crucial role public managers must adopt to encourage citizen engagement (p. 548). Echoing the argument that local policy is now generated through the collaborative engagement of public and institutional actors (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2000), Yang (2016) demonstrated that institutional innovations at the community level occur when administrators, nonprofits, and politicians work together. Similarly, Weeks (2010) found that large-scale public deliberative processes are not only possible but also they enable “local government to take effective action on pressing community problems” (p. 371). An attendant stream of thought, the New Public Governance paradigm has acknowledged that governance is largely horizontal and collaborative, in that the administrative state is now heavily interdependent with external, nongovernmental actors and that citizen involvement is essential, policy is made among networks of actors, and effectiveness requires participation, inclusion, and responsiveness (Ansell & Gash, 2008; Bryson et al., 2014).
In the area of nonprofit scholarship, a host of scholars have provided evidence that particular nonprofits (CBOs) are uniquely positioned to represent communities, enable civic participation, and foster democratic governance (Alexander, 2011; Chaskin & Greenberg, 2013; LeRoux, 2007; Mosley & Grogan, 2013; Park, Mosley, & Grogan, 2018). CBOs are defined as public or private nonprofit organizations that are representative of a community or significant segments of the community and provide educational or related services to individuals in the community (20 USCS § 7801(6)). These organizations were identified as indispensable structures for providing citizens with a voice in community decisions, and particularly for counteracting the representational challenges of marginalized communities (Mosley & Grogan, 2013; Park et al., 2018). For example, a 10-year longitudinal study of a county human service agency’s partnerships with CBOs revealed that neighborhood organizations “fostered the generation of democratic knowledge that informed administrative decision making” and enhanced the public organization’s accountability to marginalized citizens (Alexander, 2011, p. 114). CBOs provided an institutional connection between the public sector agency and disenfranchised communities, enabling the public agency to achieve its mission (Alexander, 2011). In short, CBOs that have been identified as more representative of their communities in the literature are those that sustain a tangible link to their communities. They are characterized as small, locally focused, and where clients, volunteers, staff members, and neighborhood residents are included in the governing body (Guo & Musso, 2007). Accordingly, the following study focuses on CBOs that embody these particular characteristics.
The aforementioned examples underpin the argument that partnerships between the public sector and smaller, locally focused CBOs have the potential to generate a stronger civil society and address what Nabatchi (2010) refers to as a “citizenship deficit” and the attendant “democratic deficit in its institution of government” (p. 377). These deficits are multifactorial and are attributed to a number of realities, including changes in overall culture (Sirianni, 2010), the increasing distrust of government (Skocpol, 2003), administrators’ focus on managerialism and instrumental rationality (King & Stivers, 1998), and the inaccessibility of government to citizens (Nabatchi, 2010). In effect, the literature indicates that successful public–nonprofit partnerships of a variety of forms have enhanced citizen representation and government accountability to citizens. CBOs are credited with deepening democracy because they “enlarge opportunities for citizens to actively participate in their local communities, they bring the collective interests of citizens to the policy dialogue and they create a level of accountability between government and citizens” (Reid, 1999, p. 293).
Contribution of Institutional Theory
In the context of nonprofits, we take the position that CBOs can play a critical and largely overlooked institutional role in fostering and sustaining civic health. First, we distinguish institutions from organizations in their purpose and impact. Organizations are defined as rational, means-oriented systems directed toward the efficient achievement of ends (Selznick, 1957). By contrast, institutions are adaptive, cooperative systems that carry the needs and aspirations of a society (Barnard, 1938); they embody cultural values and moral commitments (Selznick, 1957). According to institutional theory, social structures within an environment foster the norms and routines that “become established as authoritative guidelines for social behavior” (Scott, 2004, p. 464). Moreover, institutional theory asserts that individuals and the social structures in their milieu are mutually constitutive in that each shapes the capacities of the other (Giddens, 1976). Social practices that are fostered by institutions may become patterns that then become structures over time (Giddens, 1976). This dynamic is manifest as community institutions create common frames of meaning that alternately constrain or provide opportunities to create social capital and generate networks of civic engagement and political participation. Hence, an examination of the components of civic health from an institutional lens enables us to discern whether and how particular CBOs engage citizens in activities that generate social capital, civic engagement, and political participation.
In this research effort, we explore how CBOs contribute to civic health at two levels of interaction. First, within the CBO’s organizational ambit of activities, meetings, and programs, CBOs fulfill a generative role as they provide the space within which citizens engage around issues important in their lives and thereby foster social capital, civic engagement, and political participation. Second, in their mediating role, CBOs can function as an institutional representation of the community. This occurs in the interorganizational arena where they articulate the concerns and needs of people who are clients, translating them into the language of policy. Their contribution to civic health is twofold: They create opportunity for citizenship and citizen engagement and they generate a more democratic balance of interests operating in the policy arena, most particularly as they represent citizen groups that lack access to political institutions and/or who lack the requisite knowledge and skills to participate on their own (Berry & Arons, 2003; Levine, 2016; Park et al., 2018). In short, the contributions of CBOs to civic health include both generative and mediating roles that take place as a component of organizational programming, community engagement, policy agendas, and the promotion of organizational values with other organizations and institutions (Fernandez & Alexander, 2017). The role of nonprofits as mediating institutions is widely established and valued for strengthening democracy by generating a more democratic balance of interests (Berger & Neuhaus, 1977; Berry & Arons, 2003; Park et al., 2018), but it has not been construed as an element of civic health.
LEFs in Florida: Their Role as CBOs
LEFs are registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations that pursue philanthropic and community support for public schools. Currently, the National School Foundation Association estimates that there are 4,800 independent LEFs operating in the United States (Else, 2013). LEFs partner with public school districts where together they focus on specific issues facing schools in their region, providing local responses to educational needs of the community. They are most often not directly engaged in service provision, but instead “serve to provide an organizing structure for groups of citizens” (LeRoux, 2007, p. 414) around public education. LEFs are relatively small organizations and readily accessible to immediate stakeholders as well as the broader community. Although organizations vary based on community characteristics and needs in public schools, they share an emphasis on promoting the value of public schools, supporting and recognizing teachers in their work, and addressing the needs of students within the county they serve.
There are some variations on this nonprofit model that have been accounted for in existing research (Nelson & Gazley, 2014; Nisbet, 2018; Paarlberg & Gen, 2009). However, LEFs are distinct from PTAs or booster clubs in a number of ways. PTAs operate within individual schools for the purpose of fundraising support from parents of students in that particular school. In Florida, local PTAs are affiliates of the larger Florida PTA network and exist within a single school as a way to generate parental support and resources that are then controlled by a volunteer parent and board for that individual school. The fundraising campaigns tend to come from the state leadership of the Florida PTA network and may not always be specific to the needs of the school. LEFs, on the contrary, exist to serve all schools and especially those in lower resourced areas of the district. As one executive director stated, Our number one target group that we want to make a change for are the children in our district, especially children who are in need, because we have so many with the high percentage of free and reduced lunch and homeless and all that. Trying to make sure that we’re trying to make a difference for them and make sure that they can stay in school and that kind of thing.
In addition to having endowments, their fundraising is targeted at community-wide donors including the business community made up of corporate donors and local business owners, local community and private foundations, and prominent individual donors or alumni of the school district. Likewise, their board members comprised a combination of community members, including strategic volunteers from the private sector or other local institutions, members of the community, and representatives from the school board, school district, and local PTA. While their resources are designed to compliment the work of the school district, they do so through “above and beyond” programs or efforts to support teachers and equip students.
In the State of Florida, LEFs were established by the legislature in 1984 (Consortium of Florida Education Foundations [CFEF], 2011) as “independent, community-based school reform organizations that seek to improve student achievement for all children through partnerships with local school districts” (Raphael & Anderson, 2001, p. 8). The State enabled each of the 67 county-wide school districts to establish a single nonprofit organization that would be responsible for supporting the school district, similar to university foundations in higher education (Direct-Support Organizations, FSS 1001.453). In turn, LEFs were recognized as the county school district’s official foundation partner. They first began by attracting funding “to support and recognize students, teachers, and schools where budgets fall short and tax dollars don’t allow” (Director, CFEF). Seeking a way to boost their fundraising efforts in 1992, LEFs collaborated to establish a CFEF to encourage sharing of ideas, the organization of annual conferences, and support for lobbying. In 2000, a matching grant program was established by the Florida legislature to match donations up to a specified amount for programs developed by LEFs to support “low performing students” within school districts (Florida School Improvement & Academic Achievement Fund, FSS 236.1229). Legislators initially approved a US$800,000 budget for the Matching Grant Program that has varied year-to-year but has risen to as much as US$7 million (CFEF, 2014).
LEFs serve a diverse cross section of community members. Foremost among clients are students, teachers, and principals who are served by their programs and fundraising efforts. LEF programs support teachers through activities such as classroom grants and school supply stores, whereas students receive support through scholarships, and mentoring, reading, and college advising programs. Clients also include district administrators, parents, and members of the broader community who are among their external stakeholders. One executive director captured a common distinction among LEF leaders: I see two roles, internally and externally. Internally, within the district, I see us supporting the teachers and the students in ways that the district is not able to do. And then I guess externally, bringing forth issues, or being that conduit to the community and helping them understand the importance of having a highly-rated school district. (Interviewee 4)
Because the work of LEFs in Florida runs the gamut from programs that are school specific to those that address broader community issues that affect student well-being, the entire community is regarded as a “constituent” benefiting from the presence of the organization. As we analyze the role of LEFs in contributing to the civic health of the community, we demonstrate their commitment to addressing issues affecting clients and stakeholders.
Method and Data
This study examines the role of LEFs in working with public school systems to elevate public education in the communities they serve. We give particular attention to the types of activities they undertake with regard to the three dimensions of civic health—social capital, civic engagement, and political participation—and whether they serve generative or mediating roles in the community.
The focus of the case selection was on the application of a multiple-case narrative design, where a purposeful selection of cases were identified from which to primarily conduct interviews, gather observations, and review relevant documents and other written or printed materials (Shkedi, 2005). Drawing on interviews with executive directors, board members, school district representatives, and community members from 18 different LEFs, we examine their activities from the perspective of how they may foster or delimit civic health. Table 1 summarizes the organizations that were included in this study by revenue, size, school district size, and location. In parenthesis are the state averages for reporting LEF organizations.
LEF Characteristics.
Note. LEF = local education foundation.
Semi-structured, open-ended, in-depth interviews with 31 interviewees were conducted focusing on questions about community engagement, interorganizational work with the school district, and advocacy or policy work at the local or state level (Fernandez, 2014). Interviews took place with all 18 executive directors, 10 board and community members associated with the foundations, one superintendent, and two school board members intended to provide some perspective on the foundations’ work in the community. One of the limitations of this approach is that interviewees are not able to represent views of all of the diverse stakeholders engaged with the education foundation. However, they are closest to understanding the details of the programs and activities carried out by the foundation. Interviews lasted between 50 and 60 min; the longest interview was approximately 130 min, whereas the shortest was 24 min. When interviews could not be scheduled in person, phone interviews were conducted (a total of eight phone interviews were conducted).
The focus of interview questions was to understand the overall work of LEFs and their relationship with the county school district. Interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed, and coded in the software program Dedoose (www.dedoose.com). In the first round of coding (Saldaña, 2013), the three dimensions of civic health were applied to their respective activities as organizational participants described their work. Interviews were blindly coded twice in the first round for intercoder reliability, allowing our research team to discuss coding discrepancies in applying the framework. The second round of interview coding included a thematic analysis, derived iteratively (Miles & Huberman, 1994) leading to the propositions in the following section. What follows are the results of the interview analysis and coding and a proposed model for the institutional role of CBOs in promoting civic health.
Findings
Our analysis of the interviews yielded six propositions using the coding process presented in Table 2. These propositions are based on a qualitative description of the work of LEFs in their community as the dimensions of civic health were applied. There are three generative (A) and three mediating propositions (B) that we identified to characterize civic health among CBOs.
Interview Coding Process.
In a generative role, LEFs fostered trust among clients and stakeholders, while bridging broader constituents in the community. LEFs fulfilled an institutional purpose by fostering common frames of meaning in their work with stakeholders and developing a shared perspective of the needs in the community as it relates to public education. Our analysis of the mediating role of CBOs confirmed that organizations represented their clients in the larger interorganizational environment through networks of collaborative partners and by pushing beyond the boundaries of their work to address larger community issues that affect public education. The “super delegate” role of representing clients within an interorganizational context pertained specifically to CBOs that regard setting the direction for public education as a vital component of their work. What follows is an exploration of these themes based on the three components of civic health.
Social Capital
CBOs build social capital or bonds of trust and cooperation with clients and stakeholders for the purpose of garnering the resources and fostering the participation necessary to fulfill the organizational mission (Lesser, 2000; Schneider, 2007). In their generative role, CBO engagement with the community may take the form of bridging or bonding capital, depending on intentions and the client population the CBO is seeking to reach. In their mediating role, CBOs seek bonds of trust and cooperation with other organizations and interorganizational actors necessary for fulfilling the organizational mission. In short, social capital is generated among community members as a by-product of organizational activity and it is also a CBO commodity generated for resource acquisition and influence.
H1a: In Their Generative Role, CBOs Engage Clients and Other Stakeholders to Build Understanding and Commitment Toward the Organizational Mission
In an environment plagued by distrust of public schools, LEFs connected the community to the schools by providing support for teachers and helping the community understand the challenges of public education institutions. One way that this occurred is through the school supply stores instituted by several LEFs where teachers shop for supplies without charge. These stores are stocked with items donated from various organizations and individuals in the community. Community members supported store operations as volunteers, where they had the opportunity to interact with each other and with teachers—bonds of trust and cooperation are a by-product of these exchanges. In this example, LEFs engaged various community organizations as well as individuals in the service of stocking and operating school supply stores.
Mini-grants are another means of strengthening public education by providing support to teachers, the by-product of which is greater social capital between the LEFs and teachers, and between teachers and the community. LEFs solicited funding from individual donors, community foundations, and other outside organizations for mini-grants (approximately US$1,500 each). While the LEF’s primary intention is to provide recognition to teachers and encourage innovation, the financial support enabled teachers to share their experience and techniques with other teachers, and enhances community awareness of educational improvements. One board member of an LEF described how this program has built trust: At the school level we’re becoming quite well known and quite well appreciated, because we really do fund so many new classroom grants. We really do put quite a bit of resources in the schools, and teachers are really grateful for it and happy to have those resources. (Interviewee 19C)
The mini-grant programs offered a way for the community to support public education through their LEF, to recognize and celebrate innovation on the part of teachers, and indirectly, bridging and bonding social capital are generated.
H1b: As Mediating Institutions, CBOs Generate Bridging Social Capital With Organizations and Individuals Outside of Their Immediate Clients in the Interest of Serving Their Mission
Interview data indicated that LEFs extend their reach beyond the immediate school district in the course of mission fulfillment and thereby generate bridging capital. One specific example demonstrates this proposition. An LEF established a lecture series focused on issues of public education and invited nationally recognized authors to discuss their book. They organized a series of community events to showcase the visiting authors and to encourage attendance from all parts of the community. The board chair of the LEF recalled the process of developing the lecture series: The planning meetings for the lecture series involved how are we going to get all of the elements of the community that we want to get at this lecture? We want teachers, but we want parents as well and other members of the community. We decided to hold it in a high school that would have fairly easy access to the interstate and to whatever direction people were coming traffic wise. We went to the superintendent’s office and talked about all of the ways we could get the word out. The superintendent was incredibly supportive and responsive and helpful and sent out many email messages and pop-ups reminding people of this first lecture, which was held in April. Posters went up all over town, and I took posters to different places in the community and talked to educators. And so, as a result, there were 600 people that showed up on a Wednesday night at 6-o’clock for a lecture. (Interviewee, 19E)
Formal events hosted by LEFs are often intended to bridge segments of the broader community not involved in education with teachers to foster a shared understanding of the challenges of public education. The lecture series that was well attended by different cross sections of the community included open discussions that were intended to accomplish this purpose. Another LEF leader described their efforts to work with other organizations by hosting community discussions meant to create connections between community members not traditionally connected to public education and teachers: Well, the community foundations, regionally and locally, have worked with us. On our website we have a ton- almost every not-for profit that works with teachers. Any of the conservancies, the gardens, all those, we have very strong working relationships with. We host events. We do round tables where the community comes and, you know, we have done one or two a year. They’re free. We just get them sponsored, and teachers are at the tables with businesses and community organizations. So, we’re known for having, you know, making those connections for people. (Interviewee 14)
This example illustrates how LEFs created new network connections that generated bridging capital in the course of addressing the educational needs of the community. Bridging capital occurred interorganizationally as they established ties through organizational partners with segments of the community less connected to public education. It was also through fostering networks within education but across the spectrum of education providers that LEFs built credibility among partner organizations. Another executive described a program called “Got College” where they brought 150 people together from the community: They were business people, parents, guidance counselors, and people that worked at the colleges. We brought all of them together to find out why do we think kids are not going on to college in the district and what can be done to help.
This type of collaboration enabled the foundation and its partners to develop 23 strategies to focus on supporting students into college. By bringing organizations together in the work of supporting public schools, foundations were able to create awareness of issues and needs in the community.
Civic Engagement
As previously defined, civic engagement is a dynamic phenomenon and it involves being informed about an issue of community concern, including having the opportunity to define the issue, and being actively involved in addressing it. Action may be individual or collective. LEFs foster civic engagement in their generative capacity by informing community members and facilitating discussions. As mediating institutions, LEFs work with other organizations to address broader issues that are ancillary to the public schools but relevant to education, overall.
H2a: In a Generative Role, CBOs Build Awareness and Engagement of Mission-Related Issues Among Community Members and Stakeholders
LEFs are in a unique position to foster civic engagement regarding public schools and issues that pertain to them by informing community members and by facilitating dialogue. Unlike the school district that discusses “dollars and political agendas,” LEFs engaged the community at a practical level of “these are the good things that are going on in the schools,” and “this is how you can support those things that are going on” (Interviewee 1). LEFs also varied their engagement to target specific stakeholders and organizations. Parents, for example, were a critical community group invested in the success of public schools. LEFs recognized the importance of parents acting as both individual advocates for their students and collective advocates within parental associations. LEFs reinforced that role through programs like “Parent University” or “Parent Academy,” and through the creation of a parent handbook. An LEF board member recalled that their parent program was intended to foster parental engagement with public schools and the school district by not only providing information to parents but also through fostering interaction and dialogue among schools, parents, and the school district at events: We have something called Parent University, which works with the school district and the PTA to get the word out about all kinds of issues, everything from security and safety after the recent incident in Connecticut; common core is certainly one, or whatever the issues are. We try to bring together and tap into other community resources and groups and organizations to be part of the conversation to not only deliver the messages but also provide input and feedback from the community to help us better understand what people are thinking, feeling and wanting. (Interviewee 19D)
LEFs engaged key stakeholders such as teachers unions, parent groups, and the business community through a variety of communication mediums, including email blasts, newsletters, and formal events. For example, business leaders have a stake in the quality of the schools as they hire students who are products of the local educational system. They also have a stake in public education for additional reasons that pertain to how schools affect housing values and a local economy. Hence, LEFs promoted a variety of events that engaged business leaders including breakfast meetings, formal luncheons, targeted seminars with the superintendent of schools, and other fundraising activities (e.g., awards banquets, Fun Runs, back to school drives). Through focused interactions with local business leaders, LEFs were able to share information and engaged in meaningful dialogue around educational issues and how they affect the business community. By engaging with this segment of the community, LEFs raised resources, fostered awareness among business leaders, and promoted client and other stakeholder interactions.
H2b: As Mediating Institutions, CBOs Engage Other Actors in the Interorganizational Environment for the Purpose of Addressing Community Issues That May Be Either Directly Related or Ancillary to the Organizational Mission
In coordination with other local organizations, LEFs carried out their mediating role by focusing on broader community issues that affected public education directly or indirectly. One executive director described the collaborative efforts undertaken with other local nonprofit organizations to promote graduation rates in high needs areas: Our Graduation Pathways Program was combined with AmeriCorp, which is a shared thing, and then with Vista as well in conjunction with the YMCA, a local foundation, Boys and Girls Club, and folks from really tough areas. These are really tough clusters of schools. We’re trying to be a part of this in some way. (Interviewee 19A)
Another LEF executive director described working with local food banks, homeless shelters, and health care organizations to address issues that affect students outside of school: This is one area that has grown for us actually since I’ve been here, is helping the needy kids. Because of the economic downturn, there has been much more attention placed on the rising percentage of kids on free and reduced lunch, and there are more people in the community who want to help if they can . . . We’ve got a cadre of people who are fundraising to help the homeless . . . Because they are coming in with less to start, and it’s harder to get kids on an even playing field when they come in with—when they don’t come in with what they need. (Interviewee 5)
In yet another example, an LEF promoted careers for students in the medical field through a partnership with a local hospital and a college of medicine. An executive director described their targeted partnership with various organizations in the community: We started a program called the Medical Pipeline. It has job shadowing days for kids in the summer. Middle and high school kids go out to the hospitals and see what it’s like to work in a hospital. We also have a two-week camp in partnership with the [local] College of Medicine that is for kids that want to be doctors . . . I mean, we have a collaborative partnership that includes about 30 people, and it’s the community college people, university people, business people, doctors, and people at our high schools—they want to expand this. There’s a group of nurses that want to start doing job fairs about medical careers at the elementary level, so all of this—I think we’re going to be putting a lot of effort into this, because it’s become such a hot topic. (Interviewee 8)
Political Participation
Political participation is defined as any activity intended to shape policy. LEFs generate political participation by involving community members in the organizational activities of defining mission, vision, and organizational objectives, the development of programs that align with a community’s definition of a problem and its solution, as well as political activities that community members may engage in as a result of their contact with the organization that include calling representatives, engaging in social media, participation in community-related activities that pertain to policy formulation around the topic (e.g., attendance at school board or other public forum), and voting. When LEFs act on behalf of community members in the interorganizational environment by articulating their community’s understanding of the issues facing public education or by seeking to shape local policy responses, they are engaged in political participation as mediating institutions.
H3a: In a Generative Role, CBOs Use Client Input to Shape Programming and Encourage Client Participation in Representing Their Needs
LEFs encouraged political participation and used stakeholder input from teachers, principals, and other school district administrators to shape programming. One executive director described the organizational process for engaging stakeholders in shaping the goals for the organization: We went about surveying all of our different stakeholder groups. We surveyed electronically last year’s teachers of the year, all of the principals, all of our nonprofit board members, and then we did personal interviews with school board members, the superintendent, the deputies and the directors, the executive committee of the nonprofit board and a few of our highest individual and corporate donors. (Interviewee 3)
LEFs determined organizational direction by soliciting input from internal as well as external stakeholders and community members. Their intention was to engage the community in defining issues facing education (e.g., school building consolidations or mergers, shrinking resources for schools, changes in special education services). One LEF board member described the process of carrying out “listening parties” with the community: We had persons approaching 2,000 . . . They were well facilitated [listening parties] asking several pertinent questions regarding the current status of our school system and how it could be made better. We did that for a period of about four or five months, and what that built up to was us taking the common themes from those listening parties, and we went back to the community, and we held regional meetings about these major themes that had come about . . . Then we took the next step in the campaign of convening a community convention, and in that community convention we boiled down those things that we came up with in the regional meetings . . . From that, we presented them to our incoming superintendent and school board, and the end goal, or the end result rather, it was a goal back then, but the end result was that the superintendent in his strategic plan pretty much identified these four areas that the community had come up with, and they are very much so a part of his current strategic plan. They approved the strategic plan. (Interviewee 20F)
In addition to eliciting client and community input around organizational direction, LEFs encouraged clients to be active political participants. LEFs encouraged individuals to actively engage elected state representatives, county governments and elected commissioners, elected school board officials, members of the business community, and other nonprofit organizations. LEFs encouraged parents, teachers, and the broader community to vote in local tax referendums and school board elections, attend and participate in community meetings held by the school district, and reinforce state funding support for public education in general and LEF programming specifically. LEFs saw themselves as mediating institutions for their students, teachers, parents, and schools. One board member characterized this perspective as follows: Having an outside view of and for the public to hear a different voice about how important it is to have a strong educational institution that provides prepared and ready students for the workplace and the college and connect kind of thing. I think when you have someone talking about it that’s not involved internally in the school district it adds another dimension, so I think that’s the asset, that’s the benefit . . . a way for the [LEF] to be a voice for some of those things, for those policy changes. (Interviewee 19D)
In their mediating role, LEFs drew on their community’s understanding of the issues as they advocated for particular community issues and subsequent policy responses.
H3b: As Mediating Institutions, CBOs Seek to Influence Local Policy by Representing Community Concerns Among Other Institutions
LEFs are uniquely positioned to understand the issues facing the community related to public education. One example of how LEFs advocated for their community occurred in a county where much of the public education workforce lived well outside the school district. To enable teachers to live in the community, an LEF attempted to create apartment housing for teachers. The LEF coordinated their efforts with local housing organizations and received a large state grant to help fund the construction of housing specifically for public employees, including the district’s schoolteachers. Unfortunately, a local housing association lobbied residents to resist the building of the apartments. After a long political battle that played out among organizations across the community, the LEF was forced to abandon their initiative to sponsor housing for public service employees. But the case illustrates how LEFs advocated for the needs of teachers and worked with other organizations to meet those needs.
In their mediating role, LEFs work to craft local policy responses to issues facing schools. One example involved the LEFs’ response to the need for greater awareness of healthy food choices among students. The executive director of the LEF described how they helped implement a change to the district’s wellness policy at the elementary school level: We have a program that helps schools learn how to use edible gardens as outdoor laboratories integrated into every subject area in order to teach nutrition in an interdisciplinary manner . . . so the wellness policy for the district has changed to include a recommendation to have edible garden programming at every elementary school, or every school actually . . . Not only did the wellness policy change, but because we worked so closely with the head of food and nutrition for the district, we also, and she’s a big advocate, and she was part of the design team that designed the program—procedures for cafeteria managers have changed, and they are now allowed and given procedures for using produce from the garden in their cafeteria, so they can serve it raw. They can incorporate it into meals, which is actually a huge win. (Interviewee 9)
Another example involved the problem of low-income youth being unable to participate in extracurricular activities because of the bus schedules and the long distances that they were transported during after-school hours. The foundation successfully lobbied the bus company to change pick-up times, enabling students to benefit from after-school sports, clubs, and other activities. These examples demonstrate the efforts of LEFs to shape local policy responses to clients’ issues by working with other organizations.
Model of Generative and Mediating Components of Civic Health
The examples of generative activities described herein provide insights into the ways CBOs fulfill their institutional role of fostering civic health. We have demonstrated that LEFs are actively engaged with clients and stakeholders in the process of carrying out their organizational missions. In doing so, they generated social capital among their clients and stakeholders, establishing bonds of trust and shared understanding. At times, their work facilitated bridging capital as they engage segments of the community that are peripheral to K-12 education and schools. By generating greater awareness of the issues related to public education, LEFs augmented the community’s capacity to respond to the needs of public education. In Figure 1, we illustrate the generative role of CBOs as they fostered the three components of civic health among their clients and stakeholders, and how their client interaction reinforced the organization’s understanding of client interests and community needs.
Generative role of CBOs.
Our analysis supports the observation that in carrying out their generative work, organizations enhanced their mediating roles because they were more able to represent client interests and needs. Moreover, as they operated in an interorganizational environment representing the community’s educational needs, CBOs were institutional actors that operationalized all three components of civic health in their interactions. We illustrate the mediating role in Figure 2 wherein CBOs act with, and on behalf of their client community.
Mediating role of CBOs.
Discussion and Conclusion
In this article, we offer a look into the institutional role of CBOs in fostering civic health. The generative roles of CBOs were occurring within the ambit of the public school system and had limited reach beyond immediate stakeholders. Mediating roles and activities were found to be more expansive, drawing knowledge generated by the organization out into the interorganizational environment where leaders fostered bridging capital with other leaders and organizational policy actors in their efforts to shape policy outcomes. In our research, LEFs constituted a locus, the normative framework and resource base that drew communities together. Through activities that enable civic health, CBOs created a shared knowledge base of client and community interests, facilitated opportunities to develop bonds of trust and cooperation, promoted a greater level of civic awareness, and shaped local policy responses.
Based on our analysis, we draw some preliminary conclusions and contributions. The literature has long suggested that the relationship among the three associative roles of civic health is poorly understood which this research project would confirm. This research suggests that organizational activities may contribute to all three components of civic health. For example, a community discussion that follows a lecture series may generate social capital among people who attend, it may foster civic engagement as they take an interest in the health of their educational system, and it may lead to someone attending a city council or school board meeting. In addition, we found that the relationship between generative and mediating activities was synergistic in that the capacity of LEFs to legitimately represent community interests in the policy arena was enhanced by their generative role. This intraorganizational generation of community knowledge was significant for the institutional legitimacy of nonprofits to act as representatives of a public.
In addition, civic health is fostered as a by-product of organizational activities necessary for accomplishing the mission. For example, in the process of addressing educational needs and challenges with citizens, LEFs offer citizens an opportunity to influence public education, an institution central to their communities. We note that in their institutional capacity CBOs contribute to the repair of both citizenship and democratic deficits (Nabatchi, 2010); they are “important vehicles for creating and maintaining a strong civil society” (Eikenberry & Kluver, 2004, p. 138). As noted earlier, the interdependence of the administrative state and CBOs is a widely acclaimed but inadequately explored element of public administration, and this study offers a modest contribution.
While this research was exploratory and the findings cannot be generalized, we look to future studies to elaborate the ways in which CBOs contribute to civic health at both the generative and mediating levels of activity. Results of this study would suggest that rather than seeking to understand the specific activities that contribute to social capital, civic engagement, or political participation, it may be more productive to address them in the aggregate of generative and mediating activities. This study contributes to our nascent understanding of how CBOs influence civic health. In addition, we return to the quandary of discerning how and why civic health has been in decline and the ignored contribution of CBOs. Early NCoC (2006) studies of civic health led to the inference that individual measures of civic health are essentially proxies for socioeconomic status given the demographics of respondents. This correlation between socioeconomic status and high measures of civic health draws us to question more deeply the unacknowledged contribution of CBOs to civic health. What is the relationship between the presence and type of CBOs and aggregate measures of individual civic health in communities? As we delve into their institutional contribution, we may better comprehend the mysteries of civic decline.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
