Giving Compass' Take:

• Kristen Cambell at Medium explores citizenship, civility, and philanthropy’s role in bridging divides around complex issues.

• How can donors and philanthropists help encourage, cultivate and support more civility in our society? 

• Here's how acts of civility build a better world. 

In early 2017, Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement announced a multi-year strategic exploration into three questions that would guide our work. One was: How can philanthropy create spaces for people to come together around complex and divisive issues? Inspired by his personal passion and experiences, as well as his professional background in the civic sector, we hired Decker Ngongang as a Fellow to lead the charge on this exploration.

At PACE, we have always believed in the power, potential, and responsibility of people to come together to discuss, address, and solve the problems they see around them. This is why part of our shared belief statement is that “the office of citizen should be treated as central to how democracy functions.” We believe that democracy will be stronger when all people are informed and engaged in the process of creating it; deliberative dialogue is one way to do that.

While this commitment and belief pre-dated the 2016 election, the tone, tenor, and divisions that were exacerbated during that process raised increasing concern for PACE on a number of levels, and started to make the proposition of deliberative dialogue and engagement increasingly difficult. Implicit in our question was the need to “bridge divides” and “come together across lines of difference” — the idea of coming together felt nearly impossible, much less working together toward something.

Read the full article about using philanthropy to build bridges by Kristen Cambell at Medium.