we are living in one of the most
politically polarized times in US
history trust in government is at its
lowest level in 50 years and there’s
actually evidence that shows that fewer
and fewer of our youth believe that
democracy is the best form of government
in 1995 the number of people who thought
it would be best for the military to
rule was 1 in 16 today that number is
one in six and while I certainly don’t
agree I can see why people are grasping
for some kind of order accountability is
one of our most fundamental political
institutions and it’s incredibly hard to
get these days we know that resources
are being taken from us in the form of
taxes and yet we still see problems out
in our communities like homelessness
potholes and polluted water we’ve become
so disillusioned with government these
days and yet governing shared resources
is something that human beings have
always done ever since the beginning of
time we were going out on the hunt where
we were going out into the bush and
coming back with a basket of berries and
we were making decisions about how to
share those resources but think about
how we govern shared resources now let’s
look at something simple like sheltering
the homeless no wonder we are cynical
and frustrated this is a simplified
diagram I made of the homelessness
service delivery system in the 4th
largest city in Ohio
Toledo as citizens we don’t know how
this all works and we don’t know who to
hold accountable when it’s not working
democracy has become an insider’s game
but not just for the reasons you think
like political crime
and money in politics it’s also because
of this kind of incredible complexity
that makes the workings of our
communities incomprehensible to the
average citizen it’s not like you can
turn on your local news or walk into
your local library and come out with a
comprehensive understanding of your
community’s service delivery landscape
and we certainly don’t learn about it in
school and it’s complicated by now we’re
talking about thousands of government
agencies and millions of nonprofits we
are facing a condition that I call civic
sprawl and we don’t have anyone helping
citizens untangle at all and figure out
how to influence change around what
matters to them those who say that
things have got to change are right but
how did it get to be like this in the
first place well those founding fathers
made it pretty difficult for us
they designed our system of government
so that power would be difficult to
concentrate in a hierarchical way they
created a decentralized distribution of
power and resources at the state federal
and local levels and the truth is it
works a lot more like this than like
this and there’s something else unique
about this country that adds to the
Civic complexity we rely much less on
taxation and direct government services
and much more on private charity for our
social safety net according to this data
from the Heritage Foundation the u.s.
collects a lot less in taxes as a
percentage of its GDP that’s Denmark way
up at the top at fifty point nine
percent and all the way down here in
blue between Bulgaria and Mozambique is
the u.s. at 26 percent and despite this
relatively low taxation we still enjoy a
very high quality of life in the United
States a big part of that has to do with
the fact that we have the most robust
profit sector in the world there are
nearly two million nonprofit
organizations in the United States and
while there are some great things about
this
there are also some real challenges in
Toledo Ohio where I focus my work we
have nearly 3,000 nonprofit
organizations and they appear here at a
rate that’s 15 percent higher than the
national average without a growing
population it’s hard for me to
understand how we’re going to sustain
all of them dr. Joel arose a longtime
staffer at the Kellogg Foundation and
professor of philanthropy at the Johnson
center says that the great glory of the
nonprofit sector is that anyone can look
at a problem and say I’m gonna fix that
after all he says it’s how we got
incredible organizations like Habitat
but he says that the great curse at the
he says one of these days people might
sit down and say now wait a minute why
are there six organizations in my
community all dedicated to homelessness
relief and yet people are still homeless
if six didn’t solve it seven won’t
either and we see a parallel phenomenon
in government around proliferation there
are 90,000 units of state and local
government in the United States American
preferences for local control states
rights and Home Rule means that we get
to do things our own way in our own
places in Ohio we have nearly 4,000
units of government and that number
includes 611 public school districts
each with their own superintendent
treasurer HR director and so on we say
we want efficiency in government but how
many of us would be willing to give up
the local control we have over our own
school districts in favor of creating a
single statewide district even if it
would save us a lot of money we’ve
designed our system of government to
allow for maximum freedom creativity and
local control but those values produce
the very same conditions were often
railing against like bureaucracy
inefficiency and red tape this civic
sprawl and the confusion that goes along
with it also creates real obstacles to
community change because we see so many
nonprofits out in our community we may
think we’re really taking care of our
community’s needs well but we’re often
tricking ourselves for example in Toledo
Ohio we have nearly 170 different
organizations that say they provide some
form of tutoring mentoring or
after-school programming and yet only
12% of students in our largest urban
district are able to access services we
are failing to solve this challenge at
the true scale at which it exists and
when we do see problems out in our
communities and become activated at as
citizens we often go for solutions that
treat the symptoms and not the root
cause for example we create xx
organization and talent providing
shelter to the homeless or we satisfy
ourselves with service thinking that
service is the highest and best thing
you can do for your community as opposed
to real transformation and community
change the truth is it’s a lot easier to
go downtown on a Saturday morning and
hand out sandwiches to the homeless than
it is to engage the democratic process
figure out why people are homeless to
begin with and begin to grapple with it
on that level but what would happen if
all those people handing out sandwiches
learned about the times when key
decisions were being made at the local
level about the investment of millions
of dollars in homelessness relief and
they actually participated in the
democratic process just think what we
might be able to change this disconnect
means that we’re also experiencing a
widespread collective failure of
imagination in Toledo Ohio we
collectively invest about 19 million
dollars a year in homelessness relief an
amount that isn’t that different from
other mid-sized cities do we really
think that we couldn’t end homelessness
if we really want
– it’s just that it’s so much money
coming out of so many different pipes
that it can seem impossible to mobilize
it all in one direction so we often
don’t even try those who say that things
have got to change our right democracy
has become an insider’s game often times
the only person who knows how all of
these puzzle pieces fit together is some
mid-level administrator sitting in the
back of an office somewhere in City Hall
in the face of conditions like these and
our daunting national politics is it
even possible to change our communities
for the better well there are actually
stories or transformation unfolding all
the time it’s just that the place where
you can find them is on the local level
for example since 2014 one Midwestern
city has reduced its rate of chronic
homelessness by 85 percent and I’m
convinced that it’s in these stories of
local people coming together to create
change where we’re gonna find our way
out of this mess we have created around
governance in America I’ve noticed that
there are three simple steps at the core
of any successful community change
initiative in these steps help us to
more clearly see the solutions available
to us they help us to excavate greater
potential for our communities out of a
solid understanding of what it is we
have to work with the first step is to
know your Civic ecosystem let’s imagine
that you’re interested to impact
homelessness and you’re thinking about
opening up a shelter in your hometown
well you must understand that by now in
the year 2018 every metro area in the
country has evolved a dense
interconnected network of nonprofit
agencies government agencies foundations
businesses and other institutions who
are also deploying resources in that
same direction if you really want to
create change around some issue that
matters to you in your community you’ve
got to learn what your community is
already doing about that issue and find
out why it’s not working you’ve got to
meet people in the Civic ecosystem
around homelessness and you’ve got to
ask them a lot of questions
how many shelters are there how many
people are they serving
and in what ways what if you find out
that there are actually plenty of beds
and shelters are actually 50% empty each
night what if the real need is for
outreach or for mental health care
whatever it is once you begin to engage
with your Civic ecosystem you will begin
to find the gaps where you can add real
value as opposed to creating yet another
temporary fix for a handful of people
the second step in any successful
community change initiative is to learn
your civic wallet I probably don’t have
to tell you this but money is one of
those things that we have a hard time
talking about whether we’re talking
about our household finances or our
communities what does it cost to have
and maintain our roads or our schools or
to have a strong homelessness response
system no offense to my friends in
government but making public finances
understandable has just not been a top
priority and yet to achieve change in
any area you’ve got to have some idea
about how the money works this is
because we’re often talking about
transforming the use of existing
resources securing new resources or
maybe even eliminating some resources
and the dollars point us to the
decision-makers who may be elected
officials we need to hold accountable or
they can point us to the larger funding
bodies we may need to influence like the
state legislature the dollars can also
point us to the strategies we can use
what if it turns out that the shelters
in your town are 80 percent government
funded and recent cuts have meant that
they’re struggling well maybe that’s an
opportunity for you to engage in a
campaign to help bring back those funds
or maybe you can help the shelters get
better at private fundraising and it’s
also important for citizens to become
activated and to intervene when we are
not maximizing what we currently have in
the Civic wallet
what if there’s actually evidence out
there that shows what works to eliminate
chronic homelessness that model just
isn’t being used locally well maybe
that’s an opportunity for you to put
pressure on local leaders to make
evidence-based funding decisions
a whole world of possibilities begins to
open up when you understand the Civic
wallet and it’s about time that more of
us got a lot more curious about how it
works the last step in any successful
community change initiative is to ask
questions ero Herman Leonard a professor
at Harvard Business School has this
concept called question zero it’s the
key question it’s a fundamental question
it asks what exactly are we trying to
accomplish here anyway in the case of
homelessness is the question how can I
help out these homeless people I see
downtown or is it how can we eliminate
homelessness to begin with that second
question is a much harder question
because it brings us into a conversation
with everyone else in the Civic
ecosystem but it’s a great question
because it forces us to grapple with the
challenge at the true scale at which it
exists
and it’s a powerful question it’s a
question that has the power to unite a
decentralized network of players who are
simply not subject to any top-down
authority that can mandate their
participation so one city did have the
courage to ask that second question and
that city is Milwaukee so what did they
do
well first they elected a new county
executive who was bright and wanted to
innovate and he empowered his housing
official Jim Massey to get to work and
to be creative next they got
crystal-clear
on their numbers they figured out
exactly how many chronically homeless
individuals there were in Milwaukee and
then they got crystal-clear on what
works they looked around the country and
found that there were dramatic results
being accomplished with a model called
housing first the gist is get
chronically homeless people into housing
first no questions asked no hoops to
jump through they crunched the numbers
in their civic wallet they figured out
just how much money they were spending
on policing jail court costs and ER
visits for the homeless and they figured
out that simply how
people was a much lower public cost they
figured out where they had resource gaps
and they went about closing them they
built more permanent supportive housing
it really activated their whole Civic
ecosystem here and brought together a
collaboration that included downtown
businesses police social services
agencies housing developers nonprofits
government and and other organizations
and they were relentless in reviewing
their numbers they kept at work until
they saw them drop as a result Milwaukee
has reduced its rate of chronic
homelessness by eighty five percent
since 2014 and it’s on track to
completely eliminate it I share all of
this because I think that more of us
need to understand how stories have
changed like this unfold in our
communities it’s not someone coming from
on high who’s going to help our
communities do better it’s up to all of
us to get up on higher vantage point and
really look at these structures we have
built from managing the common good see
if we can get them working in smarter
ways and if we ever want this democracy
to work we’re gonna have to work at
making it less of an insider’s game
yes we’re certainly going to have to
address money and corruption and
politics but even more than that we’re
going to have to address this huge civic
knowledge gap we have created so that
the people have more of a place in how
we govern and we can better harness this
tremendous urge I see working in
philanthropy that people have to make
their communities a better place yes I
know this talk isn’t for everyone there
are some people who don’t care to know
how the electricity works they just want
the lights to come on when you flip the
switch but the government we have in a
democratic republic is at some level a
reflection of ourselves if we ever want
it to work better more of us are going
to have to become activated and those of
us who are activated are going to have
to become more effective those of us at
the grass tops they’re going to have to
make the workings of our communities
understand
all citizens who deeply care and want to
make a difference and those at the
grassroots are going to have to take the
time to learn we’re going to need to
build different kinds of institutions to
help us grab gravel with this Civic
knowledge gap so that the citizens can
get access to the right information at
the right times and in ways that they
can digest we’re going to need better
civic education that arm students with
the full breadth of knowledge about how
government and the nonprofit sector work
together to create the common good and
we’re going to have to build big tables
at the local level we’re more often than
not you will find that people across the
political spectrum have a common
interest in things like children being
fed and housed education that is high
remember at the beginning when I said
that one in six people think that it
would be a great idea for the army to
rule well I have a confession to make
I’m actually one of them I just believe
in a different kind of army we the
people are the army the core of a strong
democracy lies in the community and it’s
going to take an army of civic
evangelists working to rebuild our
communities and our country from the
ground up and I invite you to join thank
you [Applause]
politically polarized times in US
history trust in government is at its
lowest level in 50 years and there’s
actually evidence that shows that fewer
and fewer of our youth believe that
democracy is the best form of government
in 1995 the number of people who thought
it would be best for the military to
rule was 1 in 16 today that number is
one in six and while I certainly don’t
agree I can see why people are grasping
for some kind of order accountability is
one of our most fundamental political
institutions and it’s incredibly hard to
get these days we know that resources
are being taken from us in the form of
taxes and yet we still see problems out
in our communities like homelessness
potholes and polluted water we’ve become
so disillusioned with government these
days and yet governing shared resources
is something that human beings have
always done ever since the beginning of
time we were going out on the hunt where
we were going out into the bush and
coming back with a basket of berries and
we were making decisions about how to
share those resources but think about
how we govern shared resources now let’s
look at something simple like sheltering
the homeless no wonder we are cynical
and frustrated this is a simplified
diagram I made of the homelessness
service delivery system in the 4th
largest city in Ohio
Toledo as citizens we don’t know how
this all works and we don’t know who to
hold accountable when it’s not working
democracy has become an insider’s game
but not just for the reasons you think
like political crime
and money in politics it’s also because
of this kind of incredible complexity
that makes the workings of our
communities incomprehensible to the
average citizen it’s not like you can
turn on your local news or walk into
your local library and come out with a
comprehensive understanding of your
community’s service delivery landscape
and we certainly don’t learn about it in
school and it’s complicated by now we’re
talking about thousands of government
agencies and millions of nonprofits we
are facing a condition that I call civic
sprawl and we don’t have anyone helping
citizens untangle at all and figure out
how to influence change around what
matters to them those who say that
things have got to change are right but
how did it get to be like this in the
first place well those founding fathers
made it pretty difficult for us
they designed our system of government
so that power would be difficult to
concentrate in a hierarchical way they
created a decentralized distribution of
power and resources at the state federal
and local levels and the truth is it
works a lot more like this than like
this and there’s something else unique
about this country that adds to the
Civic complexity we rely much less on
taxation and direct government services
and much more on private charity for our
social safety net according to this data
from the Heritage Foundation the u.s.
collects a lot less in taxes as a
percentage of its GDP that’s Denmark way
up at the top at fifty point nine
percent and all the way down here in
blue between Bulgaria and Mozambique is
the u.s. at 26 percent and despite this
relatively low taxation we still enjoy a
very high quality of life in the United
States a big part of that has to do with
the fact that we have the most robust
profit sector in the world there are
nearly two million nonprofit
organizations in the United States and
while there are some great things about
this
there are also some real challenges in
Toledo Ohio where I focus my work we
have nearly 3,000 nonprofit
organizations and they appear here at a
rate that’s 15 percent higher than the
national average without a growing
population it’s hard for me to
understand how we’re going to sustain
all of them dr. Joel arose a longtime
staffer at the Kellogg Foundation and
professor of philanthropy at the Johnson
center says that the great glory of the
nonprofit sector is that anyone can look
at a problem and say I’m gonna fix that
after all he says it’s how we got
incredible organizations like Habitat
but he says that the great curse at the
he says one of these days people might
sit down and say now wait a minute why
are there six organizations in my
community all dedicated to homelessness
relief and yet people are still homeless
if six didn’t solve it seven won’t
either and we see a parallel phenomenon
in government around proliferation there
are 90,000 units of state and local
government in the United States American
preferences for local control states
rights and Home Rule means that we get
to do things our own way in our own
places in Ohio we have nearly 4,000
units of government and that number
includes 611 public school districts
each with their own superintendent
treasurer HR director and so on we say
we want efficiency in government but how
many of us would be willing to give up
the local control we have over our own
school districts in favor of creating a
single statewide district even if it
would save us a lot of money we’ve
designed our system of government to
allow for maximum freedom creativity and
local control but those values produce
the very same conditions were often
railing against like bureaucracy
inefficiency and red tape this civic
sprawl and the confusion that goes along
with it also creates real obstacles to
community change because we see so many
nonprofits out in our community we may
think we’re really taking care of our
community’s needs well but we’re often
tricking ourselves for example in Toledo
Ohio we have nearly 170 different
organizations that say they provide some
form of tutoring mentoring or
after-school programming and yet only
12% of students in our largest urban
district are able to access services we
are failing to solve this challenge at
the true scale at which it exists and
when we do see problems out in our
communities and become activated at as
citizens we often go for solutions that
treat the symptoms and not the root
cause for example we create xx
organization and talent providing
shelter to the homeless or we satisfy
ourselves with service thinking that
service is the highest and best thing
you can do for your community as opposed
to real transformation and community
change the truth is it’s a lot easier to
go downtown on a Saturday morning and
hand out sandwiches to the homeless than
it is to engage the democratic process
figure out why people are homeless to
begin with and begin to grapple with it
on that level but what would happen if
all those people handing out sandwiches
learned about the times when key
decisions were being made at the local
level about the investment of millions
of dollars in homelessness relief and
they actually participated in the
democratic process just think what we
might be able to change this disconnect
means that we’re also experiencing a
widespread collective failure of
imagination in Toledo Ohio we
collectively invest about 19 million
dollars a year in homelessness relief an
amount that isn’t that different from
other mid-sized cities do we really
think that we couldn’t end homelessness
if we really want
– it’s just that it’s so much money
coming out of so many different pipes
that it can seem impossible to mobilize
it all in one direction so we often
don’t even try those who say that things
have got to change our right democracy
has become an insider’s game often times
the only person who knows how all of
these puzzle pieces fit together is some
mid-level administrator sitting in the
back of an office somewhere in City Hall
in the face of conditions like these and
our daunting national politics is it
even possible to change our communities
for the better well there are actually
stories or transformation unfolding all
the time it’s just that the place where
you can find them is on the local level
for example since 2014 one Midwestern
city has reduced its rate of chronic
homelessness by 85 percent and I’m
convinced that it’s in these stories of
local people coming together to create
change where we’re gonna find our way
out of this mess we have created around
governance in America I’ve noticed that
there are three simple steps at the core
of any successful community change
initiative in these steps help us to
more clearly see the solutions available
to us they help us to excavate greater
potential for our communities out of a
solid understanding of what it is we
have to work with the first step is to
know your Civic ecosystem let’s imagine
that you’re interested to impact
homelessness and you’re thinking about
opening up a shelter in your hometown
well you must understand that by now in
the year 2018 every metro area in the
country has evolved a dense
interconnected network of nonprofit
agencies government agencies foundations
businesses and other institutions who
are also deploying resources in that
same direction if you really want to
create change around some issue that
matters to you in your community you’ve
got to learn what your community is
already doing about that issue and find
out why it’s not working you’ve got to
meet people in the Civic ecosystem
around homelessness and you’ve got to
ask them a lot of questions
how many shelters are there how many
people are they serving
and in what ways what if you find out
that there are actually plenty of beds
and shelters are actually 50% empty each
night what if the real need is for
outreach or for mental health care
whatever it is once you begin to engage
with your Civic ecosystem you will begin
to find the gaps where you can add real
value as opposed to creating yet another
temporary fix for a handful of people
the second step in any successful
community change initiative is to learn
your civic wallet I probably don’t have
to tell you this but money is one of
those things that we have a hard time
talking about whether we’re talking
about our household finances or our
communities what does it cost to have
and maintain our roads or our schools or
to have a strong homelessness response
system no offense to my friends in
government but making public finances
understandable has just not been a top
priority and yet to achieve change in
any area you’ve got to have some idea
about how the money works this is
because we’re often talking about
transforming the use of existing
resources securing new resources or
maybe even eliminating some resources
and the dollars point us to the
decision-makers who may be elected
officials we need to hold accountable or
they can point us to the larger funding
bodies we may need to influence like the
state legislature the dollars can also
point us to the strategies we can use
what if it turns out that the shelters
in your town are 80 percent government
funded and recent cuts have meant that
they’re struggling well maybe that’s an
opportunity for you to engage in a
campaign to help bring back those funds
or maybe you can help the shelters get
better at private fundraising and it’s
also important for citizens to become
activated and to intervene when we are
not maximizing what we currently have in
the Civic wallet
what if there’s actually evidence out
there that shows what works to eliminate
chronic homelessness that model just
isn’t being used locally well maybe
that’s an opportunity for you to put
pressure on local leaders to make
evidence-based funding decisions
a whole world of possibilities begins to
open up when you understand the Civic
wallet and it’s about time that more of
us got a lot more curious about how it
works the last step in any successful
community change initiative is to ask
questions ero Herman Leonard a professor
at Harvard Business School has this
concept called question zero it’s the
key question it’s a fundamental question
it asks what exactly are we trying to
accomplish here anyway in the case of
homelessness is the question how can I
help out these homeless people I see
downtown or is it how can we eliminate
homelessness to begin with that second
question is a much harder question
because it brings us into a conversation
with everyone else in the Civic
ecosystem but it’s a great question
because it forces us to grapple with the
challenge at the true scale at which it
exists
and it’s a powerful question it’s a
question that has the power to unite a
decentralized network of players who are
simply not subject to any top-down
authority that can mandate their
participation so one city did have the
courage to ask that second question and
that city is Milwaukee so what did they
do
well first they elected a new county
executive who was bright and wanted to
innovate and he empowered his housing
official Jim Massey to get to work and
to be creative next they got
crystal-clear
on their numbers they figured out
exactly how many chronically homeless
individuals there were in Milwaukee and
then they got crystal-clear on what
works they looked around the country and
found that there were dramatic results
being accomplished with a model called
housing first the gist is get
chronically homeless people into housing
first no questions asked no hoops to
jump through they crunched the numbers
in their civic wallet they figured out
just how much money they were spending
on policing jail court costs and ER
visits for the homeless and they figured
out that simply how
people was a much lower public cost they
figured out where they had resource gaps
and they went about closing them they
built more permanent supportive housing
it really activated their whole Civic
ecosystem here and brought together a
collaboration that included downtown
businesses police social services
agencies housing developers nonprofits
government and and other organizations
and they were relentless in reviewing
their numbers they kept at work until
they saw them drop as a result Milwaukee
has reduced its rate of chronic
homelessness by eighty five percent
since 2014 and it’s on track to
completely eliminate it I share all of
this because I think that more of us
need to understand how stories have
changed like this unfold in our
communities it’s not someone coming from
on high who’s going to help our
communities do better it’s up to all of
us to get up on higher vantage point and
really look at these structures we have
built from managing the common good see
if we can get them working in smarter
ways and if we ever want this democracy
to work we’re gonna have to work at
making it less of an insider’s game
yes we’re certainly going to have to
address money and corruption and
politics but even more than that we’re
going to have to address this huge civic
knowledge gap we have created so that
the people have more of a place in how
we govern and we can better harness this
tremendous urge I see working in
philanthropy that people have to make
their communities a better place yes I
know this talk isn’t for everyone there
are some people who don’t care to know
how the electricity works they just want
the lights to come on when you flip the
switch but the government we have in a
democratic republic is at some level a
reflection of ourselves if we ever want
it to work better more of us are going
to have to become activated and those of
us who are activated are going to have
to become more effective those of us at
the grass tops they’re going to have to
make the workings of our communities
understand
all citizens who deeply care and want to
make a difference and those at the
grassroots are going to have to take the
time to learn we’re going to need to
build different kinds of institutions to
help us grab gravel with this Civic
knowledge gap so that the citizens can
get access to the right information at
the right times and in ways that they
can digest we’re going to need better
civic education that arm students with
the full breadth of knowledge about how
government and the nonprofit sector work
together to create the common good and
we’re going to have to build big tables
at the local level we’re more often than
not you will find that people across the
political spectrum have a common
interest in things like children being
fed and housed education that is high
remember at the beginning when I said
that one in six people think that it
would be a great idea for the army to
rule well I have a confession to make
I’m actually one of them I just believe
in a different kind of army we the
people are the army the core of a strong
democracy lies in the community and it’s
going to take an army of civic
evangelists working to rebuild our
communities and our country from the
ground up and I invite you to join thank
you [Applause]
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