My daughter is an animal person; has been ever since she discovered them. She loves farms, pet stores, the pound, and the zoo. So I have been closely following the sad spectacle at the National Zoo. Management has fallen victim to a classic nonprofit ethics trap, one to which all mission-driven organizations are prone: they…

Whether he has withdrawn or not (and it’s unclear what the answer is), Howard Dean is out of the race. Now his supporters are rallying around the idea of continuing the “movement” his campaign started. The unprecedented success of this pioneering campaign has got to be harnessed, they say. But what, if anything, is behind…

The field has winnowed and the retail politics of January has given way to the wholesale politics of the rest of the year. Turnout has been up, especially among younger people. Since Iowa, opinion pages have been awash with cautious optimism that civic engagement is on the rise. But forgive me if I don’t unwrap…

Certain signs of the season have arisen. For those who watch politics, they are as regular as clockwork and trumpet the start of a glorious time of political passion and intrapartisan fistfights. Iowa is behind us. There has been an upset. The election-year state of the union address has been articulated. Candidates have dropped out…

The highest court in the land late last year dealt a win to campaign finance reform, holding up most every major provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. This was news worth popping champagne corks over. But, it will not clean up politics in all of the ways its proponents have claimed. The reason? It…

America’s political leaders recently considered closing some regulatory loopholes and forcing private foundations to distribute more of their money. Survey after survey shows that Americans view public charities with increasing skepticism. The independent sector — foundations and charities — feels besieged. Yet, by many accounts volunteering and individual giving are up; the sector is growing.…

The other weekend I was at a meeting hosted by the National Civic League where we discussed the state of civic America. The question on the table was an open-ended: What are you seeing in America today? What civic trends are there? There were many community-building types at the meeting, and they had a lot…

On Wednesday, November 19, 2003, The Christian Science Monitor published this opinion piece by me.

The meeting still seems very vivid, even years later. I had traveled from Maine to our nation’s capital to be there. It was in the conference room of a national grassroots organization; one of the groups that everyone agrees is made up of good folks. We were designing a course to teach first-time political candidates…