Understanding Civic Participation as Community Engagement
Methods of civic engagement are highly varied and can relate in multiple ways to your clients, communities, and funders. Understanding how people value and relate to civic engagement offers new ways to describe your mission. It’s time to ignite and harness the power of your stakeholders’ passion for civic engagement to improve their connection to your work and desire to help you achieve your goals.
Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
Most people understand civic participation as direct community service activities often related to CBOs
People desire to see and participate in big community and institutional change but struggle to connect their civic participation to those goals
Connecting civic participation to community engagement is largely about understanding both are representative of key acts of service on which the CBO model is built
Understanding Civic Participation as Community Engagement
In 2022 the nonprofit Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE) produced a report and developed a dashboard sharing 2021 survey and focus group findings from a nationwide project on Civic Language Perceptions. PACE aimed to “understand what perceptions and associations exist related to ‘civic and democracy work,’ and how these terms and concepts resonate (or don’t), so that we can work more inclusively, effectively, and constructively.”[1]
The takeaways from PACE’s nationally representative data offer compelling reasons for community benefit organizations (CBOs) to communicate their missions and need for support in relatable “civic engagement” terms. For readability, in this series I will refer to “civic engagement” as “civic participation,” when juxtaposed against the term “community engagement,” which will also be used frequently and is, arguably, its analog.
Taking Stock of Perception
Civic participation and democracy concepts are not often directly connected to the wide range of civic and democratic activities and behaviors most people understand, value, and find emotionally rewarding. This could be because the levels of familiarity people have with professional terms like “civic engagement” are linked to their levels of civic education. When further explored with respondents, civic engagement was perceived to denote democratic and social activities, such as those involving government and improving communities.[2]
The good news is that professionalization of the term does not have to limit the ways people understand the scope and utility of civic engagement. According to PACE’s March 2022 Analysis Memo describing the project’s early findings, about 54% of respondents defined civic engagement as “government/political involvement” AND as “voluntary/charitable associations.”[3] In an earlier report, PACE noted that 90% of survey responses considered acts of civic participation to be direct service activities related to addressing social issues.[4] In that same report, project respondents specifically considered civic participation to include good deeds, being neighborly, and serving others.[5]
Therefore, the data shows most respondents do not limit their understanding of civic engagement only to actions involving government, despite assumptions about the professionalization or group associations with the term. Instead, among persons with some level of civic education, 58% believed civic participation included actions involving government as well as actions that make communities better, compared to 40% of respondents who felt similarly but did not have a civic education.[6] Notably, more than more than 30% of respondents without a civics education defined civic participation solely as activities people engage in to make their communities better, compared to about 28% of those with a civics education who thought so.[7]
Those beliefs about civic engagement align perfectly with typical CBO activities. This means that people associate the type of work typically done and encouraged by CBOs (like individual acts of service) as civic engagement.
Understand, Then Bring the Value Add
But here's why this data really matters for CBOs: According to PACE’s early findings and subsequent analyses, project respondents largely defined civic engagement on the individual and person-to-person levels, as seen in respondent interpretations of other civic terms.[8] More importantly, according to PACE, respondents generally did not connect civic engagement to ideas of broader institutional change, nor did they connect those individual acts to things that could be collectively built.[9] Yet we know collective action is necessary to produce community benefits like good government and relevant, responsive, and accessible social support systems—all things respondents wanted.
This is extremely significant. CBOs very often accurately preach, teach, and offer big change and world size impacts as reasons for community support of their missions and organizations. To assert changing governing structures can create positive change locally is a fundamental tenet of many CBO engagement strategies. In fact, this idea is often central to or fueling the CBO’s mission and projects! CBOs, therefore, often function (and describe themselves) as engines of change at institutional, community, and interpersonal levels.
What this data suggests, however, is that there is a disconnect between what community members value and want to support (big collective change) and what they believe they can produce through civic participation (individual acts of service)—with or without CBOs.
This is quite the puzzle. What most CBOs know to be true, but do not regularly or convincingly message, is that individuals through their support of CBOs can create both small scale local change and big scale governmental change. Even more specifically, individual’s direct acts of service such as donating and volunteering are effective civic participation activities that help to bring about the big change people want to see on every level.
So why don’t community members understand this to be the case? And how can CBOs play a (literally) defining role in connecting people back to the local and governmental change people want to see and in which the CBOs are often already engaged?
Reclaiming Direct Acts of Service as the CBO Model
Civic participation should be understood as community engagement, particularly by CBOs. Such an understanding should be based on the premise that the change we want to see can be created by individuals participating in direct acts of service. In other words, connecting the civic participation concepts people understand and relate to, such as volunteering, making charitable gifts, and performing acts of service, with how CBOs operate locally and are doing work to influence how government and social action impacts the community.
Those commonly understood direct service activities represent the civic participation and democratic outcomes that most people value. More importantly, they are vital to the CBO’s work of making change on the ground and partnering with institutions to effectuate change.
This is neither art, nor science. This is ever evolving work and a challenge of relevance. As most CBOs are in business to make or inspire positive change in the world, the government, or the community, there was never actually a question of doing it alone or in the absence of impacting governance structures or policies.
Embracing the Definition of Community Engagement
Community members, end users, funders, and stakeholders were always part of the equation—either to help get to the end goal or as the end goal. PACE’s definition of civic participation aptly describes civic participation as “less about a specific activity for a specific objective, but rather about generating a sense of purpose and commitment—a belief in something larger than oneself that illuminates the many ways we can participate in making our communities better.”[10]
That definition reflects the purpose of most CBO community engagement strategies. It also emphasizes how community engagement is an analogous concept. At its core, community engagement is a collaborative process or strategy with and through affiliated groups to align, plan, implement, evaluate, improve, or achieve an objective for the community good—all things people readily accept as desirable for civic participation.
So, let’s get to walking that talk already.
Catch up with us next time as we discuss how creatively messaging CBO missions and goals using civic participation principles allows CBOs to lawfully and effectively facilitate civic power.
Endnotes [1] PACE Civic Language Perceptions Project, available here. [2] PACE Civic Language Perceptions Project America + Civic Language, pages 20-21, and graph 17 page 25, available here. [3] PACE Civic Language Perceptions Project Analysis Memo, page 8, available at here; PACE Data Dashboard, available here. [4] PACE Civic Language Perceptions Project Early Findings, May 2019, page 6, available here. [5] PACE Civic Language Perceptions Project Early Findings, May 2019, page 6, available here. [6] PACE Interactive Dashboard, available here; PACE Civic Language + Civic Education Infographic, available here. [7] PACE Interactive Dashboard, available here; PACE Civic Language + Civic Education Infographic, available here. [8] PACE Civic Language Perceptions Project America + Civic Language, page 20, available here. [9] PACE Civic Language Perceptions Project Focus Group Research Memo, page 2, available here. [10] PACE Civic Language Perceptions Project Early Findings, May 2019, page 6, available here.
What’s Next
Engage
Speak with your community, your board, and your development and communications teams.
How do they see your mission’s relationship to improving our democracy?
How do they think their own actions can help your organization achieve its mission and do its part for collective community and governmental change?
Stay Tuned
Watch this space for more on this series about how to Embrace the Mission of Civic Participation, including part 2 on Disentangling Civic Participation from Political Participation, and part 3 on Knowledge is Power: Language Use as Strategy.
Resources to Fill Your Toolbox
PACE’s Civic Language Perceptions Project Dashboard, available here.
PACE’s Civic Language Perceptions Project Analysis Memo, available here.
PACE’s Civic Language Perceptions Project Report “America + Civic Language”, available here.
PACE Civic Language Perceptions Project Focus Group Research Memo, available here.
PACE Civic Language Perceptions Project Early Findings, May 2019, available here.
This post is part of the series “Embrace the Mission of Civic Participation”. The series was made possible through a mini-grant from PACE. Many thanks to PACE for its support with this project! For more information about the project see the links above or visit the PACE Civic Language Perceptions Project here.
Need help thinking through this idea or bringing social change strategies into your organization? Reach out! I'm happy to explore options with you.
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