Peter Schirmer
Ryan Atkinson, Jeff Carroll and Michal Smith-Mello

Executive Summary

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Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Data and Methodology

Chapter 3: Kentucky's Civil Society

Chapter 4: Factors Affecting Civil Society

Chapter 5: Strengthening Kentucky's Civil Society

Appendices

In this report, we take stock of the Commonwealth’s social capital and civil society, examining Kentuckians’ trust of one another, civic pride, feelings of safety, volunteer activity, charitable giving, and community organizing. Then we attempt to answer three questions:

• What role does leadership development training play in civil society?
• How does government affect civil society?
• How important is funding to the success of civic projects?

In the final chapter we look at ways that individuals, businesses, communities, and government can strengthen civil society while respecting its distinction from both the public and private sectors.

Perhaps the best way to understand the concept of civil society is to see it in action. Appendix A of this report provides a unique, if incomplete, collection of civic projects in Kentucky. The numerous—156, to be exact—projects cited demonstrate that Kentucky’s communities have vibrant civil societies. The local projects address a wide range of issues, including but not limited to community safety, environmental cleanup, assistance for the needy, health care, and the arts. All rely on volunteers to do at least some of the work. All are group efforts. All are transferable to other communities.

With results from three statewide telephone surveys, a mail survey of trained leaders, and a collection of community projects, this report contains much new information about civil society in Kentucky. It suggests which factors can nurture and support civil society. And it provides a vital resource of ideas and contact information for policymakers, organizations, informal groups, and private citizens who want to strengthen civil society in their communities.

What Is Civil Society?

According to Jean Bethke Elshtain, civil society is about the responsibilities that accompany democratic life and culture, responsibilities to solve problems that cannot be solved by large movements or the federal government. William Schambra agrees that civil society is not about large national movements. Rather, it puts power in the hands of individuals. Nor is civil society about nostalgia, a return to America’s idealized past, writes Alan Wolfe. Americans retain their civic instincts, but must shape them to the realities of modern life. Wolfe adds that not only does civil society exist outside of government, it also exists outside of the market. Finally, the National Commission on Civic Renewal, co-chaired by William Bennett and Sam Nunn, holds that civil society is the linchpin of democracy: "[D]emocracy means not only discussing our differences, but also undertaking concrete projects with our fellow citizens to achieve common goals."

Perhaps the best-known scholars of civil society today, Harvard professor Robert Putnam and RAND scholar Francis Fukuyama, posit that the vitality of civil society comes from a community’s stock of "social capital." Social capital is another nebulous term, but it is generally understood to encompass the attitudes and social norms within a community. People’s community pride, their feelings of safety, and above all their trust of one another are among the attitudes that form the foundation for civic and economic cooperation.

Civil society and social capital no doubt have as many different definitions as there are people who study these issues. But conceptually, social capital generally refers to the attitudes people have about one another and their communities, while civil society is the expression of those attitudes through actions such as volunteering, charitable giving, leadership and community organizing.

The Importance of Civil Society

Studies have linked participation in civil society to higher levels of prosperity and higher achievement in schools. Brookings Institution researchers Jeffrey Berry, Kent Portney and Ken Thomson argue that increased citizen participation not only positively affects citizens’ perceptions of the communities they live in, but it also increases the legitimacy and enhances the status of governmental institutions. Civil society can also tackle problems such as poverty, illiteracy, and drug abuse that government and the market have failed to eradicate. Some research even suggests that members of communities with high levels of civic participation enjoy better health and live longer.

Data and Methodology

Our measures of the vitality of Kentucky’s civil society come from three general population telephone surveys conducted by the University of Kentucky Survey Research Center. To assess the effect of leadership development training at the individual level, we sent questionnaires to alumni of 20 leadership development programs across the Commonwealth. The alumni were asked several of the questions that were included on the general population telephone surveys. To assess the impact of leadership development training, government and funding at the organizational level, we found local civic projects across Kentucky and sent them questionnaires.

Kentucky's Civil Society

Kentuckians generally trust one another, take pride in their communities, feel safe, and believe they can rely on friends and neighbors in times of need:

• 93 percent always or usually feel safe in their communities
• 91 percent have at least one person other than relatives whom they can rely on for help in times of need
• 57 percent usually trust others
• 33 percent are extremely proud of their communities (60 percent say they are somewhat proud)

Kentucky’s volunteer activity is similar to the nation’s, both in terms of the percentage of the population that volunteers and the amount of time volunteers give. Sixty percent of Kentucky’s adults in the 1998 survey had volunteered for community activities in the past year. This figure was up slightly from the 56 percent who had volunteered in 1996. The average volunteer contributes about 12.5 hours a month. These findings are similar to those of a 1994 national survey conducted by the Roper Center.

Eighty percent of Kentuckians gave to charity in 1998, compared with 73 percent nationally who gave to charity in 1993, according to a survey conducted by Independent Sector, a national coalition of nonprofit and voluntary organizations.

In another telephone survey, we did not directly inquire about volunteering but instead asked, "Have you ever participated with a group of people (e.g. friends, neighbors or co-workers) to work together to solve a problem in your community (such as cleaning up public areas, neighborhood watch programs, etc.)?" If the person had, we then asked, "Were you the organizer or leader of that group effort?" Forty-five percent of adults have participated with a group to solve a problem in their community, and 10 percent helped organize such a group.

Factors Affecting Civil Society

Leadership development training supports civil society at both the individual and the organizational levels. People who have received such training are far more likely to participate in and lead community groups, to volunteer more hours, and to initiate civic projects.

Government plays an important supporting role for many projects, and it actually helped initiate approximately one fifth of the civic projects we surveyed. Projects use government facilities, training, and resources—financial and otherwise. All of these contributions help the projects. However, government assistance is hardly essential: many projects are started and run quite successfully with virtually no help from government. The appropriate role for government agencies can only be determined on a case-by-case basis, but in general it appears that projects that have many volunteers and require large sums of money most need government assistance, which usually comes in the form of dollars.

Even funding is not absolutely essential to the success of a project. About one quarter of the projects listed in Appendix A have an annual budget under $1,000; many have no budget at all. Yet money clearly does have some impact on the projects: budget size is highly correlated with the number of volunteers a project has and therefore probably does affect the scope of the projects.

Strengthening Kentucky's Civil Society

The results of the general population surveys suggest that Kentucky has a large stock of social capital. The numerous projects listed in Appendix A, projects that feed the homeless, educate children and adults, provide entertainment, protect the environment and do a hundred other things, further make the case that civil society is alive and well in Kentucky. Yet few would disagree that Kentuckians would benefit from making civil society even stronger. This section examines ways to use leadership development training, government, and financing as points of leverage for strengthening Kentucky’s civil society.

What can the public and private sectors do to strengthen civil society? One policy option is to do nothing at all. If civil society is, in fact, alive and well in Kentucky, then it might not need any help. If the most successful civic projects are ones that spontaneously grow from the desires and needs of individuals within a community, then perhaps there is little government or even the nonprofit sector should do to institutionalize programs or policies designed to strengthen civil society. Perhaps such programs would become more encumbrance than assistance. No doubt some people hold this view, and it does have some merit. Others, however, feel that the public and nonprofit sectors can and should play a more active role in civil society. For them, we offer the following policy options.

Leadership training programs clearly benefit civil society. Kentucky’s civil society would likely be enhanced if the state’s leadership development programs were to include more nontraditional leaders. This is not to say that the programs are purposely exclusive. But the considerable cost of some programs and their class schedule and structure might make it difficult for people with lower incomes and less flexible schedules to participate.

The Central Kentucky Community Leadership Program (CKCLP) is one example of a leadership training program that strives to include nontraditional leaders. The group of independent citizens and organizational representatives who helped start the CKCLP designed recruitment and application processes intended to "invite participation from persons of different walks of life, racial and ethnic backgrounds, socioeconomic circumstances, ages and civic experiences." During the initial rounds of the participant selection process, only applicant responses to essay questions were considered. Applicant identity and background sociodemographic information were considered only in the final round to achieve diverse representation. The first class (1997-98) included nine blacks, eight whites, one Indian, and one Hispanic; their ages ranged from 15 to 69.

Ewell Balltrip, executive director of the Kentucky Appalachian Commission, suggests that to attract more nontraditional leaders into the leadership pool (and thereby broaden the base of civil society), Kentucky needs a graduated system of leadership development and training—one that encourages upward mobility in the leadership structure.

Government may also have a role to play in strengthening civil society. Although organizations such as the CATO Institute call for a diminished role for government, others are more sanguine about government’s ability to strengthen civil society. Scholars emphasize the importance of educating people and allowing them to make decisions. How can government do this? One indirect way is by supporting high school and college courses in philanthropic activities and organizations. A 1991 study published by Independent Sector reported that colleges across the country have begun offering courses or inserting units in existing courses covering the topics of philanthropy and volunteerism.

Another way to encourage civic activism is to allow people to make choices about government services. For example, a comparison of parents in two similar, low-income New York school districts found "strong evidence" that participation in PTA membership and voluntary events at schools, communications with teachers, and trust of teachers were all higher in the district that allows parents to choose their children’s schools.

Some people have suggested that government must change policies that have negative consequences for civil society. Bruce Katz, director of the Brookings Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, criticizes federal and state policies that "continue to encourage exurban expansion—and with it the exodus of jobs and middle-class families from central cities and older suburbs." He specifically cites state spending on transportation, water, sewer and other infrastructure and state incentives for employers who locate to greenfields as contributing to urban sprawl and eroding community life within cities.

Finally, officials from government and other organizations might consider a social capital fund, which could finance Kentucky’s civic projects. We found two possible models, one from Seattle, Washington, and the other from the Brushy Fork Institute in Berea, Kentucky. Seattle’s Neighborhood Matching Fund Program provides "over $1 million each year to Seattle neighborhood groups and organizations for a broad array of neighborhood-initiated improvement, organizing or planning projects." For three years, the Brushy Fork Institute’s Teamwork for Tomorrow Program provided "mini-grants" of up to $2,000 to organizations within the Appalachian Regional Commission counties.

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