Grass-Roots Groups Must Admit Their Failures

To the Editor:

I have spent the past 10 years leading a small environmental organization, but I cannot agree with Mark Dowie’s simplistic “Robin Hood” strategy (“Support Grass-Roots Environmentalists,” April 20).

Mr. Dowie’s theory is that we need more aggressive local activism by small, ad hoc organizations. However, this sort of environmentalism has been widely practiced for decades. There is no evidence to support his assertion that this work can make “the biggest difference” or that simply funding more of it would achieve better environmental outcomes.

On the contrary, there is evidence that such grass-roots activism may in fact be more part of the problem than the solution.

In polling, some 80 percent of Americans say they are environmentalists, but they also regularly tell pollsters they dislike environmental activists. Most Americans feel environmental activists are self-righteous, elitist, divisive, politically motivated, and negative, and have little in common with the average person. Sadly, those stereotypes are often quite accurate.

Foundation grant-making decisions are not the cause of our problems. The much-discussed “death of environmentalism” is a suicide, not a murder.

What we should expect from foundations is what we should be demanding of ourselves: a rigorous, clear-eyed assessment of our situation and our strategies; a shift away from tactics that are no longer working; and a willingness to take risks and experiment with new ideas and approaches. We have failed to live up to these expectations as a community, and we should look in the mirror before pointing fingers.

The first step to saving ourselves is to understand our position. For decades, environmentalists saw ourselves as a voice in the wilderness, a small minority crying out to convince others that there were serious problems. That mental model is no longer accurate, and in fact it is doing us serious harm.

Think Dr. Seuss, as in the Lorax. Great story, very moving — and the Lorax loses. Nowadays, folks agree there are problems, and they want us to help them find answers. We need to be less like Dr. Seuss, and more like Dr. Phil.

Second, we need to get beyond politics. A recent poll found that two-thirds of Americans have no confidence in Republicans to solve our major problems, and two-thirds have no confidence in Democrats.

Studies show that portraying a problem as a “political” issue leads folks to believe that nobody involved can be trusted; that everyone is representing a special interest; and that it’s unlikely the problem can ever be solved.

Other studies show the average American spends only a few minutes each month thinking about political or policy issues.

We need to engage people in their everyday lives — not as political activists but as parents, homeowners, working people, and commuters. We need to help make it easier and cheaper for them to act on their values, and feel good about doing so. In other words, marketing is not “a waste of time,” as Mr. Dowie suggests, but rather should be one of our core strategies.

Third, we need to engage a dramatically wider network of stakeholders than would traditionally be considered “environmental.”

Solving major challenges like global warming or toxic pollution will require active participation from every corner of society. We need to listen — something we’re not known for. We need to understand different perspectives in order to develop strategies that will have broad ownership and lasting impact. Some of the most exciting environmental progress will come from businesses, farmers, health providers, and even more unpredictable sources. We need to be open to that.

We certainly do need changes in law and policy. No amount of “random acts of kindness” or individual actions will, by themselves, get us where we need to go. But we need to see these changes as tools to facilitate things that our newfound allies, or individual consumers, are trying to do. We should view policy as a way to empower and support them, rather than as a bludgeon to force them to act against their will.

Finally, we need to be realistic about the scope of our problems, and the time it will take to solve them. We have decades of work ahead of us, and we need to build organizations that are up to that challenge. We need to keep asking hard questions about our effectiveness, measuring our impact, testing our assumptions, trying new things, and looking for new partners. We need to worry less about who constitutes “the movement” and more about how we can build a sustainable environment.

Jeff Allen
Former Executive Director
Oregon Environmental Council
Portland, Ore.

To the Editor:

Small local groups are the heart of the environmental movement, but not only for the reasons Mr. Dowie describes. Our national environmental laws are designed to give local citizens the legal standing necessary to preserve forests, conserve wildlife, protect rivers, and improve air and water quality. With local knowledge and legal standing, these groups are our environment’s best safeguard.

Local groups can often achieve environmental protections only when they receive assistance from regional resource organizations. As partners in providing vital legal services to grass-roots environmental groups, we are well-positioned to be of great service to environmental protection, but rarely have access to either the large grants afforded national environmental groups or to local sources of funding. We are neither well- positioned to raise money from individuals, due to the specialized nature of our work, nor from large foundations, as we engage with national issues, but on a local level.

Regional groups maximize the effectiveness of grass-roots groups without duplicating their efforts. They are one answer to bridging the divide between the mainstream environmental groups in Washington, D.C., and the thousands of disparate grass-roots groups spread across the country. Regional resource organizations can also assist foundations in maximizing their support for grassroots efforts. By working collaboratively with foundations and small groups to achieve a common goal, we can give local citizens the legal and financial tools necessary to achieve on-the-ground results on critical environmental issues.

Here in the West, we know that the vigor of the environmental movement resides in the grass-roots organizations working close to the ground. We are proud to serve them with free or low-cost legal services, but find it increasingly difficult to do so, as we are squeezed between their financial constraints and the distant but well-financed clout of national organizations.

Greg Costello
Executive Director
Western Environmental Law Center
Eugene, Ore.

To the Editor:

While I am sympathetic to Mark Dowie’s arguments about the importance of smaller, grass-roots groups, I would present the problem facing the environmental movement differently.

Most national environmental organizations lack a strong, local base of activists. At the same time, most local groups aren’t working toward an effective national strategy.

Our combined impact ends up being a fraction of what it could be.

The Sierra Club is unique. We have 750,000 members nationwide, but we also have 62 chapters and 380 local groups where our activists take action in their own backyards. In the fall of 2005, we completed a two-year study with Harvard University sociologist Marshall Ganz to determine how to make our local organizations more effective at recruiting leaders, engaging members, and asserting public influence not only locally, but also in ways that add up to national and global change. We are now in the process of putting those recommendations into practice.

Our membership surveys show that folks join the Sierra Club to participate in shaping environmental policy and civic engagement because they want to make a difference, not just make a donation. Studies have shown that the Sierra Club invests more in civic engagement than any other environmental organization. This unique characteristic for a national conservation group makes us more like the local groups that Mr. Dowie finds so effective, but at a much larger scale. Hopefully our experience can be used to inform the efforts of local grass-roots groups and larger national organizations and help bridge the gap between both.

Carl Pope
Executive Director
Sierra Club
San Francisco

To the Editor:

Mark Dowie’s essay appropriately argues for greater collaboration among foundations to help build a more effective environmental movement that embraces groups that are large and small, national and local. Unfortunately, it perpetuates a false distinction between “national groups” and “grass-roots” groups and advocates funding strategies that would further drive a wedge between potential allies.

Mr. Dowie ignores the fact that some national environmental groups are “grass-roots” in the most meaningful sense: effective control of governance.

Grass-roots governance of national organizations is evident to anyone familiar with the politics of decision-making in the Sierra Club or having witnessed delegates to the National Wildlife Federation’s annual meeting elect national board members and establish positions on issues.

As networks of clubs or affiliates, national groups like these mobilize expertise and resources on behalf of small local groups, often in concert with non-affiliated local groups. Superficial funding strategies that rely on artificial distinctions between “national” and “grass-roots” groups do not encourage this kind of collaboration; in fact, such strategies foster mistrust and miscommunication among like-minded groups.

Grant-making styles create powerful incentives or disincentives for effective cooperation among recipient organizations. Funders should craft creative funding strategies that encourage disparate groups to find their own common ground, build trust, and develop among themselves genuine ways of working together more effectively.

Mark Van Putten
President
Conservation Strategy
Reston, Va.