Is your NPO advancing civil society?
/In the not-so-distant past, nonprofit organizations (NPOs) were instrumental in promoting and even leading national progress in the U.S.. They made business and government cognizant that investments in projects like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Interstate Highway System, Head Start, subsidized railroads, land grant colleges, the Homestead Act, the GI Bill, etc., would in the long run be the rising tide that lifted all boats.
Internationally, they helped end apartheid in South Africa and the Cold War with the toppling of the Berlin Wall.
How do you think about your work as a nonprofit leader? Is it merely an opportunity for you to utilize your skills to solve an acute problem, or is it a process of behavioral impact where changes in people or conditions can be measurably assessed over time?
Do you feel like your efforts are just a finger in the crack of a dyke that will expand with the pressure of societal ills and diminishing resources, overwhelming your capacity to cope, or is your organization’s mission so consistently effective that achieving the vision is realistically in sight?
How often do you think about your work as a nonprofit leader and its potential to make seismic change in the world in which you operate?
Since 1963, Ambassador James A. Joseph has thought about and helped NPOs, as well as governments and corporations, achieve global impact in civil society. Reflecting on the current state of human rights in a world of changing demographics and challenging economics, he promoted a new approach during his presentation as featured speaker at the May 2013 Nonprofit Issues Forum, presented by Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Public Policy.
It was an approach that will restore NPOs as champions of civil society.
“Nonprofit organizations need to lead again,” said the ambassador to South Africa under President Bill Clinton. “We are a badly divided people (racially, socioeconomically, ethnically, etc.), with a free-floating anxiety. We need to rethink the role of civil society.”
I can be a big-picture analyst at times, needing to re-engage in the “why” of what I do and letting it inform the “what” and “how” of it, thus my attendance at this particular presentation to hear the reflections of a man voted one of 1979’s “100 Most Influential Black Americans” by Ebony magazine and one of “America’s Best Nonprofit Managers” by Fortune magazine.
In his voice, whose tenor and cadence subtlety reminded me of James Earl Jones, I heard the knowing temperance of a preacher (he is an ordained minister), the enlightened logic of corporate conscience (he is a former VP of Cummins Engine Company, a Fortune 500 company, and was also president of its foundation).
He was also a learned student of Nelson Mandela’s and espoused his leadership as “a way of being,” more than once during his presentation. In making his case for, “Rethinking Civil Society: Advancing Human Rights in an Era of New Demographics,” the title of his talk, Ambassador Joseph noted the need for the following three approaches:
Diversity and inclusion—Diversity has a role in strengthening democracy . . . and becomes a civic good when facilitated by inclusion; a sharing of communal space and power. Race still matters and we must develop messages to create a national will toward inclusion.
Redesigning democracy –We need to redesign democracy, creating a fourth sector that should serve as a “civic space” where NPOs, business and government can collaborate. “The private sector must shed its fear of public life. Compassion requires movement from private charity to public policy.” He then noted failings including job discrimination against the formerly incarcerated and the denial of their rights to vote and access public housing as well as the brewing political war between Medicare (the elderly) and college aid (the youth).
“Boundary-crossing leadership”, where next generation leaders bring their emotional, moral, social and spiritual intelligence to nonprofit work, dispensing with the old paradigm of elitist thinking in the field. “Today’s turbulence is due to us using yesterday’s logic,” to address our challenges.
Ambassador Joseph left an impression on me that day. I’m like a lot of people who complain about the way things are, do my bit to make it better and pray for the best. But it’s funny how a word or phrase can help you refocus or shift your paradigm to get you where you need to be for true engagement. The term “civil society” seems so reverent yet truly does speak to the achievable and necessary state our work should strive to create.
Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are the consciences of their communities. As such, they can be considered the checks and balances of business and government. They answer the questions and address the problems left unanswered and unsolved by those entities and, often as moral compasses, set new expectations of how we should behave, tell us what we should care about and why, and can teach us how to “play” well together.
Ambassador Joseph’s challenge to us is to start where we are, recognizing that every voice of every color, age, nationality, socio-economic class or ethnic origin has value and needs representing in our advocacy and policy-making as well as our services. We must find them if they’re not already engaged with our work and invite them in, be accepting of their past and tolerant of their views, and create a space for fourth-sector initiatives through open dialogue with corporate and government partners.
All this have you wondering what your NPO has done to advance human rights in our civil society lately?