July 16, 1998 | Read Time: 7 minutes
Rebecca Anderson long had a hunch that western North Carolina’s history as a center of handmade crafts could be used as a catalyst to attract tourists, bolster the economy, and improve life in the region. But even when she worked at the Asheville Chamber of Commerce, she lacked the resources she needed to pursue her vision.
Ms. Anderson finally got her chance to act on her hunch in 1993, when the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, a charity here, sent around a request for proposals for projects that would encourage citizens in cities with populations of between 50,000 and 150,000 to work together around a common theme. Five years later, with the help of $450,000 from the partnership, HandMade in America, the non-profit group that grew out of Ms. Anderson’s idea, has significantly influenced the quality of life across a 22-county region of western North Carolina.
The HandMade project is just one of 14 efforts started four years ago by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change. The partnership, which is financed by Philadelphia’s Pew Charitable Trusts, is hoping not only to improve life in a few small cities by bringing people together, but also to create a real-world laboratory that can be used to figure out how non-profit groups can solve societal ills. Since its founding in 1992, the Pew Charitable Trusts has pledged $17.1-million to the partnership.
Among the other Pew projects, each of which received grants ranging in size from $325,000 to $450,000:
* The Community Council of Kanawha Valley, in Charleston, W.Va., has set up “family resource centers” in eight elementary schools that serve poor neighborhoods. Parents can go to the schools for services such as computer training, day-care referrals, or child-rearing classes.
* In Eugene, Ore., where the long-dominant timber industry has been decimated in recent years, Networking for Youth has set up 17 programs at churches, businesses, and other organizations to provide adult volunteers to work closely with young people. The goal is to establish connections that will lead to jobs in the future.
* In Fargo, N.D., the Cultural Diversity Project, among other services, provides interpreters in 12 different languages, such as Kurdish and Somalian, to hospitals and other organizations that deal with the large numbers of immigrants that have flocked to this formerly homogenous city.
Although many groups have been debating ways to reinvigorate community life, the Pew Partnership is one of only a handful of organizations that has sought to help neighborhoods actually put in place new projects to improve the quality of life for residents. The partnership’s work was cited last month in a new report on civic change that was released by a commission led by Sam Nunn, former Democratic Senator from Georgia, and William J. Bennett, who served as drug czar under President Bush.
Even so, the Pew Partnership projects have raised numerous questions that charities of all kinds have had to grapple with as they try to work more closely with governments, businesses, and others to produce widespread social change: How can the quality of civic life be measured? Can efforts to generate greater citizen participation be sustained after the original donors stop providing seed money? How can leadership be developed locally so that lasting change is possible?
Suzanne W. Morse, executive director of the Pew Partnership, acknowledges that “civic change” is a tough concept to get a handle on. “It’s hard to define; it’s hard to measure; it’s even hard to talk about,” she says.
In many cases, however, the Pew Partnership projects have achieved significant, measurable results.
In New Mexico, Neighborhood Housing Services of Santa Fe has attacked the growing lack of low- to moderate-cost housing amid a soaring real-estate market that has pushed out many long-time residents of the city. In the four years the Pew Partnership provided funds, Neighborhood Housing Services has been able to help 450 low-income families purchase their homes; an additional 150 houses have been renovated. Neighborhood Housing Services estimates that it has helped pump $40-million into the local economy in the last four years.
The family of Margaret M. Ulibarri, for example, has lived on the historic East Side of Santa Fe since her great-great-grandmother grew up there. “The big fancy people are moving in with a lot of money, and they’re buying out people who have lived here all their lives,” says Ms. Ulibarri.
With the help of low-interest loans from Neighborhood Housing Services, Ms. Ulibarri was able to make $38,000 in repairs to her house. She now has a new heating system and skylights, among other improvements. “This meant a lot to me,” she says. “I don’t think I could picture myself anywhere else.”
In Waco, Tex., the “Lighted Schools” project uses an array of non-profit groups, such as a local arts center and the Girl Scouts, to run an after-school program for middle-school kids with behavioral or academic problems. Since the Lighted Schools program began, attendance has increased by 77 per cent. What’s more, juvenile crime in the county has dropped by almost 10 per cent among youths ages 12 to 14. At least some of that drop, observers say, is attributable to the Lighted Schools program.
In some cities, however, even with the help of hundreds of thousands of dollars and the expertise of the Pew Partnership staff, the projects have met with less-than- spectacular results. One of the 15 original cities, Utica, N.Y., never even got off the ground. Utica residents had initially proposed to convert an abandoned schoolhouse into a neighborhood center where job training and other services could be offered. But because of staff turnover and other problems locally, the Pew Partnership ultimately decided that it would be a waste of money to award the grant.
The most significant problem that grantees have run into — even the demonstrably successful ones — is the difficulty of raising enough money to keep programs running once the money from a major donor has dried up.
In Rapid City, S.D., Rural America Initiatives used part of the Pew Partnership money to begin counseling programs for troubled American Indian teen-agers. The group was able to hire seven full-time employees to work in six schools and use American Indian traditions such as “talking circles” to help kids deal with problems that led to a high-school-dropout rate of 54 per cent. In the three years that the Pew Partnership provided funds, the group was able to work with about 200 kids each year, and the dropout rate for American Indians fell to 22 per cent, a decrease of almost 60 per cent.
Once the Pew Partnership money ran out, however, Rural America Initiatives had to cut the number of school advisers from seven to four. It is now serving only about 100 young men, or half as many as before.
Pew Partnership officials say they have had trouble deciding when to cut off the money. The cities were initially supposed to receive $400,000 over three years. But after finding that some of them, like Rapid City, were seeing significant results but were not yet ready to stand on their own, the Pew Partnership decided to award eight projects an additional $50,000.
“What we found was that three years was just not long enough,” says Ms. Morse.
As the 14 cities that received Pew Partnership money struggle to continue the process of civic change on their own, the partnership is now hoping to use what it has learned to implement new programs. One such effort is the “Pew Civic Entrepreneur Initiative,” an attempt to develop leadership in 10 cities with populations between 150,000 and 400,000. Ms. Morse says that this project grew out of the realization that no amount of money will make a difference if there are not committed leaders at the local level who can spearhead the efforts once the national grant maker has left town.
A second program, known as “Wanted: Solutions in America,” will create a storehouse of “best practices” so that programs that have been successful in battling systemic social problems can be adopted nationwide. Ms. Morse says she believes that those new projects will provide an economically feasible means to spread the lessons learned about civic change in the small cities.
“It’s moving the conversation forward without foundation grants,” Ms. Morse says. “There’s not enough foundation money combined to seed every community in the country.”
