Fund Puts Theories of ‘Bowling Alone’ Author to Work

By JENNIFER MOORE

The Winston-Salem Foundation has taken the lead among grant makers in trying to weave Harvard professor Robert Putnam’s theories into its work.

Mr. Putnam, who in June published Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,

has long held that many of the problems that threaten American cities and towns can be traced back to a breakdown of the personal connections that people once shared.

Leaders at the North Carolina foundation believe they can do something about that problem by finding new ways to bring people together — or, as Mr. Putnam puts it, by “building social capital.”

But even explaining what “social capital” is can be a big task, as the community foundation learned when it brought together groups of local leaders to talk about the concept. “They told us two things,” recalls Donna Germain Rader, the foundation’s vice president for grants and programs. “We were using cold language to describe a warm concept — and we needed help.”

The community foundation, which raises money from donors in Winston-Salem and distributes it to local causes, hired a graphic-design company to provide assistance. The Henderson Tyner Art Company produced a brochure with the theme “everyone can help out,” or ECHO. “When you call out to the world, and the world calls back, this reverberation is transformed and expanded by its journey,” the brochure reads.

$2.5-Million in Grants

The foundation has used the brochures to encourage grant seekers to think about new ways they can form connections between the city’s residents. To give charities a financial incentive, the foundation created a five-year, $2.5-million grant program, called the ECHO Fund.

The fund was announced six months before the foundation began accepting applications for it, to give nonprofit groups time to think through how they could build social capital.

The foundation also held meetings in advance of the application deadline to answer questions about the program.

“We would see organizations just struggling with this concept, and those are the organizations we love,” says Ms. Rader. “Their struggle is the same one that we’ve gone through.”

So far the ECHO Fund has awarded 13 grants.

The local Y.W.C.A. received $36,500 to pay for a new series of evening meetings on different topics, such as how to raise a non-racist child. One such series, Sisters Undivided, brings together about 40 women of different backgrounds for meetings over four months. Each woman is paired with a participant of a different race or ethnicity, and the pairs are given a list of events to attend and books to read between meetings.

Another grant, for $6,798, went to a local group called Kudzu to bring people together to explore ways to promote music indigenous to the region. The grant was a departure for the foundation, which usually does not pay for meetings.

“People came together across lines of race, age, and class for this meeting because they had indigenous music in common, whether it was blues or bluegrass or old-timey fiddle playing, or gospel,” says Ms. Rader. “Social capital was definitely being built.”

Struggle Over Church Van

The foundation board, however, struggled with and ultimately turned down an ECHO Fund application that challenged another foundation tradition: its policy of not making grants to churches. The policy grew out of a desire not to be seen as promoting any specific religion.

The application came from a church that sought money for a van to take children who participate in its Kids Cafe, which is part of a national after-school meal program, on field trips.

“We applied the screen: Are they building social capital?” says Ms. Rader. “And the answer was, absolutely, yes. So the question became, Do we buy a church a van? And that just threw us. We declined the grant the first time and ended up turning it down the second time. The board just wasn’t ready to set that kind of precedent.”

Ms. Rader says the foundation is now sending out materials to explain the ECHO grant program and the concept of social capital to donors.

“Our donors are in very influential sectors in the community, and so they can carry the word of social capital into the Chamber of Commerce, the business community, the boards of whatever organizations they sit on, the banks, and so on,” she says.

She adds: “We’re now asking, How can we get social capital on the agenda of everyone who’s making decisions in this community?”