Category: civic engagement
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The Apparatus
There is a memorable scene in Aaron Sorkin’s HBO series The Newsroom. It is the culmination of an ongoing argument between Jim Harper and Hallie Shea: Harper is a national network TV news producer and Shea is a correspondent-turned-blogger. In the 3rd season episode “Contempt,” Harper and Shea are arguing over whether Shea was right…
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Machinebrain, Gardenbrain, Forestbrain
Some of my friends may have heard me refer to “machinebrain” and “gardenbrain” in conversation over the past few months. This idea is taken from Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer’s The Gardens of Democracy, in which they argue that a new way of thinking about social systems needs to be developed. Liu and Hanauer contrast a…
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Neighborhood Community Politics and #Blizzard2016
I study democratic politics and I mean both of those terms in the most fundamental way possible. I understand “politics” to mean “the way people who live in a place make choices and address shared problems and opportunities, where there are disagreements about what should be done.” And by “democracy” I mean “people collectively deciding…
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Shared Problems and Public Deliberation
I recently began thinking about different ways to convey the nature of problems that are suited to public deliberation, and I had an insight that I could draw a picture of those two different dimensions. I scrawled this down on a scrap of paper, but more recently I’ve tried to make it clearer. This is…
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Join Me for a Conversation: Philanthropy's Role in Free Speech, Press, and Religion
One terrific benefit of working in the philanthropic sector is the opportunity to attend the Council on Foundations’ annual meeting. This major event invariably brings together significant thinkers who share their learning and insights with foundations, which are a key part of the social sector and arguably one of the most important leverage points. This year…
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A Guide to Framing Issues for Public Deliberation
People often talk about issue framing as some kind of specialized skill that only certain people can do — or that takes huge amounts of money, people, time, and other resources. But we’ve learned that it is relatively straightforward and really just takes a careful attentiveness to a few principles and key ideas.
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New Report: Philanthropy and the Limits of Accountability
I’m delighted to announce the publication of a new report, a joint effort by the Kettering Foundation and Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE), of which I am the author. Philanthropy and the Limits of Accountability: A Relationship of Respect and Clarity explores how the field of organized philanthropy might think about responding to a growing movement for…
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New Article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy: The Accountability Movement and Philanthropy
In partnership with Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE), the Kettering Foundation has been working for the past year or so on a report looking at the civic dimensions of the “accountability movement” as it relates to organized philanthropy. I have been the main researcher in this work, which has involved a series of conversations…
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New at Inside Public Judgment: Starting Where the Public Starts
Friends know that at the Kettering Foundation we recently started a new blog called Inside Public Judgment, devoted to sharing what we are learning about framing issues for public deliberation — a behind-the-scenes look at various aspects of developing issue guides. My latest piece is posted, which outlines some of the false starts we made…
Brad Rourke 