- Good afternoon. Welcome to the Bloomington Rotary Club's weekly celebration of service. I'm Steve Wicks.
- I'm honored to serve as president this year, having a couple of technical challenges this morning. I
- understand the speakers, it's louder on this side and softer on that side. So we'll try to make the
- best of it. Please silence your electronic devices. On this day in history, February 3rd, 1887,
- The U.S. Congress created the Electoral Count Act, which added to the procedures set out in the U.S.
- Constitution for the counting of electoral votes after a presidential election. This act was substantially
- amended by the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022, and elections
- and vote counting is in the news again this week.
- Jim Sands is online today and he will deliver today's reflection. Okay, thank you, President Wix. Can
- everyone hear me okay? Thank you. As you know, I would much prefer to be there in person with you all.
- But on last week, I had another foot surgery, so I am in recovery in a surgery boot and happy to join
- you all online.
- So my reflection today, obviously what I just said, today's reflection has nothing to do with me, but
- the title of the day's reflection is The History of Black History Month. Dr. Carter G. Woodson, known
- as the father of Black History Month, was born in 1875 and he passed in 1950. His education included
- undergrad work at Berea College,
- Masters at University of Chicago, and he earned a PhD from Harvard University. He was just the second
- African American to earn a PhD at Harvard after W.E.B. Du Bois. In September 1915, Dr. Woodson and five
- other African American scholars founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. The
- Association's mission institutionalized the teaching,
- the study, the dissemination and commemoration of Black history. In 1925, the Association for the African
- American Life and History created by Dr. Woodson had the first Black history week began in 1926. And
- there's been 100 years of celebration since that first one. There has always been a Black history theme
- with each year,
- And this year, the theme focuses on the transformative impact of commemorating Black life and history,
- acknowledging its role in shaping American identity and challenging systemic injustices, while also
- highlighting the ongoing work to integrate Black history into the national narrative. On February 10,
- 1976, and this was during the U.S. Bicentennial,
- President Gerald R. Ford became the first president to issue a message recognizing Black History Week.
- Then in 1986, Congress passed public law 99-244, designating February as Black History Month.
- Now this year, we also commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States independence.
- I feel it is vitally important to tell not only an inclusive history, but an accurate one. As many of
- you know, there is a national societal push to alter or eliminate elements of Black history, often by
- legislative means such as banning books, excising Black history programs through executive orders from
- our schools and our public culture.
- This includes the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusive policies and programs. Black history's
- value, which is also American history, I might add, is not only its factual contribution to mainstream
- historical narratives, but its resonance in the lives of Black people and its relevance to all people.
- Thank you very much for listening to me this afternoon.
- Thank you, Jim. We need to record and be aware of all our history so we can celebrate things we're happy
- about and learn from things that we're not happy about. Lynn Schwartzberg will introduce our guests
- today. Well, I shouldn't have had that last bite of chicken.
- I am welcoming one guest in person today, and that is Junya Jubburi, a guest of heart. Well, Mick, if
- you would please rise so we can greet you properly and celebrate you being here. Do we have any guests
- on Zoom today? As far as I know, we have no guests on Zoom, all Rotarians.
- Wonderful. If you have any questions or interest in learning more about Rotary, please feel free to
- speak with someone at your table. Thank you. Thank you, Lynn. With several birthdays to celebrate this
- week, Tim Riffle on the 5th, Peyton Flynn on the 6th, and Bill Murphy on the 7th. Rotary anniversaries,
- Martha Foster, 16 years on the 5th,
- Also on the fifth, her husband, past president Aaron Davis, 13 years. On the seventh, a number of people
- who all joined on the same day three years ago. Lexi Walters, Dakir Abdullah, Dee De La Rosa,
- Henry Leck, all three years. It was a big day for the club. And finally, on the ninth, Jeff McKim celebrates
- 16 years with Rotary.
- Announcements. Happy dollar proceeds from the months of January and February will be given to Teachers
- Warehouse. I want to thank our President-elect Sam Udak who covered for me the last two weeks. One planned
- and one kind of last minute. The Rotary Book Club. Please plan to join them following the regular celebration
- of service on Tuesday, February 17th at 1 p.m. and they'll have a brief meetup to field questions that
- Rotarians might have about the group and then also determining the next book and the date. So if you're
- interested in the Rotary Book Club and you have any questions, please plan to show up that meeting in
- a couple of weeks. The Rotary District Conference registration is now open. District Conference is scheduled
- for May 8th and 9th at the Gold House in Louisville. We'll be joining with a district from Kentucky
- and a district from Tennessee.
- I think there are lots of fun things planned for Friday night and then a full day of work stuff on Saturday.
- You can learn more and register at rotaryallstars.com and hopefully the link will be in the roundabout
- this week. Chamber of Commerce business after hours. It's on the 18th and unfortunately it's full. It's
- being held at the Posh Hotel and I think that was very popular.
- But Chris M.G. is sitting in the back there, says that if you want to email him, he can get you in.
- So if you're interested, it helps to know someone, email Chris and he'll get you included. And now we
- have a celebration of service. And this week I want to recognize
- Okay, the All Indiana Rotary Global Grant Scholarship. This is a $40,000 one-year scholarship that was
- announced in the last week. And we have two club members who are heavily involved in this process, Jim
- Bright and Jeff Richardson. And the money comes from the Rotary Foundation. And that money comes from
- Rotarians. In our case, we have 66 club members who contribute to the Rotary Foundation.
- through the every Rotarian every year. We have a handful of other club members who donate to the Rotary
- Foundation through other means. And last year, our club members donated over 24,000 to the Rotary Foundation.
- And this year, seven months to date, our club members have donated almost 15,000. So we have a very
- generous club and that money goes to lots of different things, including
- a one-year $40,000 scholarship. And here's a picture of this year's winner, Christian Gray. He's a native
- in Indianapolis. He's a graduate of Wabash College, been volunteering at the Martin Luther King Center
- in Indianapolis. And he plans to use his $40,000 to study in Amsterdam for a year. We did have a candidate
- that our club endorsed. Unfortunately, she didn't
- get it, but Christian appears to be a very qualified candidate, and I think he'll represent Rotary well.
- So congratulations to Christian Gray, and congratulations to all of you who support the Rotary Foundation.
- Rotary International, I've shown this slide before, the seven areas of focus. And February is Peace
- Building and Conflict Prevention Month.
- I had a three minute video to show. We're running a little bit behind schedule because the late start.
- So I'll show that next week. And I want to pivot to the Rotary Toast 2026. So we just finished the 2025
- toast and we need help. So it's been scheduled for November 6th and it's the most important single event
- for all three Bloomington Rotary Clubs.
- We raised almost $45,000 in 2025. Our club member Tracy Ivanovich led the effort last year. Brian Hain
- from the North Club is leading this year. And he's looking for planners, doers, leaders, helpers, would
- like to have more Rotarians involved. We want to have a deeper bench. Some of the people who have been
- involved for many years are getting ready to rotate off.
- Areas of need include selling tables, public relations, technical support, decorating, website design,
- meal planning, more. This year's recipient has been selected. It's not been announced. They're still
- working on the recipient's charity. But I think when the recipient is announced, it will be seen as
- a very positive choice. So if you're interested in serving, you want to learn more, contact Ron Barnes
- over there or me.
- Okay, membership, little bit of a change on the Mystery Rotarian. We're going to have a quiz today.
- So those of you in the room, raise your hands. And those of you online, raise your hands electronically.
- So the quiz is, one of these Rotarians is not a published author. And your choices are Natalie Blaze,
- Jim Capshaw, Aaron Davis, or me.
- So if you think that Natalie is not the published author, raise your hand. Okay, I see one or two. Okay.
- If you think Jim Capshaw is not the published author, raise your hand. All right. How about Aaron Davis?
- Do you think Erin is not the published author? Raise your hand. Uh-oh. If you think I am not a published
- author. Oh gosh. Well, Natalie Blase before her rotary days wrote a fantasy trilogy called the Prey
- of Rain trilogy. And here's a picture of Natalie on her last day with the club.
- Jim Capshaw, we heard from him a couple of months ago. He's written a lot of things, most recently,
- Making Indiana University, History, Landscape, and a Sense of Place. Aaron Davis, past president of
- the club, and he wrote two or three years ago a book, Exposing Systems of Anti-Jewishness. And finally,
- Your Overwhelming and Correct Choice,
- I have not written anything that's been published. I can read and I can write. Oh, but Tim, what's your
- comment? Your son-in-law is an author. Yes, I do have a son-in-law who's about to publish his second
- book. So thankfully, we have inherited an author into the family. So anyway, good job. I didn't expect
- that you would do so well on this. But here after seven months as president, I feel like you're getting
- to know me.
- I said this once before, once again, Happy Dollar proceeds in January and February will be given to
- Teachers' Warehouse. And now we have time for Happy Dollars. Is anyone happy today? Oh, we have two.
- Hank is going in your direction. Sorry. Oh, hi, it's both of us. Yes. Well, go ahead and you can start.
- Amy Osojima and I.
- Saligaskill are happy because we have a concert this weekend. It was originally on the, uh, snowpocalypse
- day of January 25th. It has been changed to February 8th, Sunday, three and five o'clock. This is Boches
- Novae, the wonderful choir that we sing in. And we're seeing a program about space and Gus Grissom,
- Gus Grissom native of Mitchell, Indiana, who perished in the Apollo one fire.
- Um, it's a really interesting program. If you've never been to a vote just night concert, they just
- said they're the best at the UU church. It's free. And it's less than an hour. I'm happy ish. Um, on
- that date, because of the stove.
- Hopple, Snow, whatever that thing is called. I can't talk. I am going to the Václav Snové concert,
- but I will have to miss the Bach Cantata project, which is Cantata number 63 at 2.30, also free at St.
- Thomas. A great experience. If you have never been to one of the live Bach Cantata concerts in Bloomington,
- it is not to be missed. Women are also playing basketball that day. So one for each activity I'm going
- to try to squeeze in.
- Anyone else happy today? Is there anyone happy because they got a really good parking space out front?
- I'm happy and I feel blessed because I was able to attend the game in person on the third row. That'll
- never happen again, but that was wonderful. That's it.
- We had a hard time hearing you over here. Was it that Steve attended the national championship game?
- Was that it? He said the game. So I said the game. So that sounds like the game. I'm happy that my friend
- Don was able to join us today. With anyone happy online? Leslie?
- Sorry, I was shaking my head. No, we do not have any online. Okay, thank you very much. We're so happy
- though. Thank you, Hank. Okay, Michael Schirmus is traveling today and he is the one who arranged for
- today's speaker. And he's gotten out to California and he's discovered that he does not have a reliable
- internet connection.
- So evidently, the tech structure in California for these things probably not as advanced as Indiana.
- So anyway, I will happily introduce today's speaker. Dr. Brad Fulton is an associate professor of management,
- data science, and philanthropy at Indiana University. His research draws on organizational theory and
- network analysis to examine the social, political, and economic impact
- of philanthropic foundations and community-based organizations. Fulton co-leads the Observing Civic
- Engagement Lab, which uses an innovative data collections technique known as systematic societal observation
- to analyze the internal dynamics of community organizations. He also leads the Philanthropy Lab, which
- is analyzing IRS Form 990 data
- on 250,000 foundations, 1 million nonprofits, and 10 million grants to construct a foundation grantee
- network of the entire U.S. nonprofit sector. Fulton's collaborators include the Federal Reserve Bank,
- AmeriCorps, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He's also served as a fellow with the
- Aspen Institute
- an academic research partner for Giving Tuesday, and an academic ambassador for Tableau. Welcome, Dr. Fulton.
- So thank you for that introduction. The word philanthropy is a tongue twister, so Steve did a great
- job with that. And I'm super excited to be here, because you all embody what my research captures. And
- I'm going to kind of walk you through an overview of what we do at the Observing Civic Engagement Lab,
- and sort of how the implications it is for groups like Rotary, not only here in Bloomington, but around
- the country, and how that relates to civic engagement.
- And okay. So you can. And do I use this microphone or either one. Let's stick with that one. Okay. I'll
- cut this one. Perfect. Let's see.
- Okay, perfect. That works. Well, this is great. First of all, your tech person, I forget his name, but
- Tyler is incredible. It's not just with my stuff, but like even having Hank walk around with the phone
- to give videos so that the people on Zoom can see who's giving the happy dollar. Very impressive and
- seamless. So, okay, there we go. So we're gonna be talking about civic engagement, something that's
- very common to you all. And I wanna look at it from a researcher's point of view.
- perspective, and how do you actually measure and analyze civic engagement and assess the quality of
- civic engagement. And so as a definition, civic engagement is how people with community in and with
- through civil society organizations. So it's people coming together through civil society organizations.
- Now, when I ask students, what is a civil society organization,
- They actually don't really know, even though they're a part of a civil society organization. So what
- are civil society organizations? I'll kind of walk you through. They are formal organizations whose
- participants voluntarily assemble to pursue common purposes. They're also known as voluntary associations,
- civic associations, or membership-based organizations.
- They include hobby groups, business associations, religious congregations, advocacy groups, clubs,
- and more. So here's an example of different civil society organizations. So what's fascinating to me
- is that this is a unique, something that's unique and distinct to the US in terms of its scale and variety
- and scope. Alexis de Tocqueville,
- was a French scholar who traveled to the US in the early 1800s because he was curious about this experiment
- that was going on, this democracy. And he's like, how does a democracy work? And so he came in as an
- outsider to observe the United States and how its society is structured. And his key takeaway was the
- reason why democracy actually succeeds and thrives in the US is because of
- these civil society organizations, these voluntary associations, which are different from work and different
- from home. They're the third space where people come together and connect with one another and build
- up the structure of a democratic society. And since then, there's been several books written on the
- topic of civil society and democratic civic engagement. These are just a few of them.
- And then one of the things that scholars have always been interested in is, so what happens inside of
- these civil society organizations that actually foster democratic civic engagement? Like what actually
- goes on? We know about all these different groups, but what goes on? So historically or typically, you
- have a researcher who is probably a quantitative social scientist. And what he does is he finds
- bunch of different people who are involved in civil society organizations, and he gives them a survey.
- And he says, hey, can you fill out this survey and tell us about the groups that you're involved with
- and what you do? How long have you been a member? And all the different things like that. And the problem
- with that is you get a lot of information that's very broad, but not very deep.
- So you get baseline quantitative data, like how many civil society organizations are out there, how
- many ones are people involved in, how long have they been involved. The other approach that you could
- take is you pick one organization, let's say like the Rule of Way Club here in Bloomington, and you
- have an ethnographer, someone who actually commits to observing this one organization for an entire
- year, comes to all of your events,
- of your meetings, the board meetings, the events, and just takes detailed, detailed information about
- your organization. And it's incredibly rich in deep information. However, it only lets you know about
- that one organization. And so you're like, you don't know if that's something that's generalizable to
- all civil society organizations or if it's something that's peculiar to this one.
- And so what we came up with was what's called like a middle range approach. It takes some of the advantages
- of survey research and some of the advantages of ethnographies and binds them together. And the way
- it works is we send people throughout the community to different events, convenings is what we call them.
- to observe what goes on inside of these civil society organizations. And we do it at scale. Our goal
- each year is to observe about 1,000 convenings. So it's much different than one ethnographer for one
- year observing one organization. And it's also much richer data because we're actually in the room when
- things are happening. I'm going to walk you through what we actually collect data on when we're observing
- a convening.
- Because the approach we use is called systematic social observation. And we apply it to civil society
- organizations. And this is a study that's an approach that's been used in other contexts. Probably one
- of the more famous ones is where they did systematic social observation of police officers on their
- beat. And so these observers would go and ride along with police officers
- and document what goes on in the daily routine of a police officer, like how many different people do
- they encounter? What is the types of encounters like? What is the demographic profiles of the people
- that they're encountering? What are the outcomes of the encounter? So all these different things. So
- it's been done in different contexts, but no one had ever thought to do it in the context of a civil
- society organizations. And so we said, okay, let's do this for CSOs.
- And so the way it works is we compiled this basically sheet or survey that has over a thousand variables
- that looks at all the different things that might occur within a CSO convening. And so everything from
- like, what time does the meeting start? Did it start on time?
- Is there technology used? Or is the meeting in person, or is it virtual, or is it hybrid? Were there
- any decisions made? So we list through all the different possible things, and even who shows up at the
- meeting. Where do the age ranges of the people in attendance? What is the...
- gender distribution, what is the racial composition, so all of the different characteristics, so a thousand
- different ways you could measure and assess a convening. We have that in our tablet CD form, and we
- put it on an iPad. So in a sense, if someone was gonna observe this CSO convening, they'd be sitting
- in the back of the room, you would actually forget that they were there, and they would just be
- tabulating everything that's going on. So they come 10 minutes before it starts and they stay through
- the entire meeting and they document every single thing that goes on. And so we have these modules and
- I'm gonna kind of walk you through. So what type of convening is it? Is it a business? Is it a fundraising
- event? Is it a protest? What type of convening is it? What's the space that they're meeting in? Is it
- a theater?
- Is it a church sanctuary? Is it the basement of someone's home? What is the space like? Are there tables?
- Are there chairs? Are they movable? Are they not? Is it conducive for the size of the group that's there?
- So we just go through every single mini-grid and type of thing that could occur within a convening.
- Times and participants, again,
- What was the scheduled time? And did it actually start on time? Did it end on time? What time did the
- first person show up at the convening? We talk about procedures and norms. Is it a formal meeting? Like,
- do they have Robert's Rules of Orders when they're going through the agenda? Or do they have no agenda?
- What is the, you know, the formats and stuff? Activities, you know, some would be, is there any singing?
- Is there any clapping or laughter or games that are played? So the whole litany in thinking about this,
- all the different types of civil society organizations that are out there and all the possible things
- that could go on. Also, is there organizing? Like, are you organizing in sort of four,
- taking the initiative with some sort of agenda or event that you're wanting to pull off? Are you mobilizing
- people? Is the event one that's going to be mobilizing people to take action? Do you talk about public
- sphere issues, like things outside of the purview of Rotary, but more in the broader public world? Do
- you make decisions? All the different types of decisions, everything from the mundane to who's going
- to order the food next week to should we
- Should we split off into two different groups or something like that? Planning and strategizing leaders,
- who leads the group? Is it paid staff? Is it volunteers? Social boundaries. Some groups are more exclusive
- and they say that this group is only for men. No women are allowed. Other groups are highly inclusive
- and they actively sort of recruit people who aren't normally coming to the meeting to come. Action types
- and style.
- put together this huge sort of survey to begin to observe and analyze civil society organizations. Now,
- as researchers, in order to actually implement a research project, we need funding. Thankfully, AmeriCorps,
- which is really committed to civil society and civic engagement in bolstering communities, said, hey,
- this is exactly what we're looking for.
- We fund a lot of community initiatives throughout the country, but we have no way of really measuring
- and assessing the effectiveness in terms of civic engagement and building leaders. And it'd be great
- if you guys could develop this and implement it so that we can use it to assess the effectiveness of
- AmeriCorps. So they gave us funding and we were able to start the Observing Civic Engagement Lab, and
- we were able to hire
- a bunch of research assistants, all students from IU, who, because in order to pull this off, you not
- only need a good survey collection or data collection tool, but you need people to collect the data.
- So this is just a few of them. Right now we have 50 RAs who are working with us, observing organizations
- throughout Bloomington. And so the first city that we did was Bloomington. And the number of civil society
- organizations in Bloomington, they have it on here, is,
- Let's see. So there's over 600 civil society organizations in Bloomington. We are currently observing
- 60 of them. So any meeting that they have, we will send an RA out to that convening and they'll sit
- in the back of the room and document all the different things. So there's everything from small little
- neighborhood association gatherings to the outrun Hoosiers event.
- because that's a civil society organization. And so that, you know, their big event is the run,
- the race. And so there'll be, you know, over a thousand people there. And so, yeah, it says 30 research
- insistence. Now we're up to 50. So by the end of year three, we expect to have data from more than 3000
- convenience. So again, what we're doing,
- for the past couple years is collecting this data. And just to give you a snapshot of the variety of
- convenings and organizations that we observe, it's across the board in terms of like groups like Habitat
- for Humanity, the Coin Club, the, well,
- There's several of them that we're observing. And so this was so successful in terms of, so what we
- do with each of the organizations that participates, we give them a quarterly report saying, hey, here's
- the data that we've collected on your organization. Here's the things that we've observed in terms of
- who's showing up, what's the trends for your organization, and how does it compare to other organizations
- in Bloomington?
- And so a lot of times, the organizations are very interested in their own internal dynamics. Even though
- they're members of their organization, they haven't really stepped back to assess, well, how effective
- are we at doing this or that? Or how much diversity is in our organization? Or how good are we at making
- and implementing decisions that we make? And so this was so successful that
- A year ago, an entity called the Trust for Civic Life, which is a group of foundations around the US
- who have committed to bolstering civic life in rural communities, came to us and said, hey, we are funding
- a bunch of communities, 100 rural communities throughout the US, giving them money to sort of build
- up their civic infrastructure. And they said, we have no way of assessing how effective we are at bolstering
- civic life, like in a granular way.
- what are these groups doing? So they say, could you take this method that you've developed and deploy
- people to other places around the country? And so we started three new sites, Dubuque, Iowa, Adirondacks,
- New York, and Kootenai County, Idaho. And so we basically implemented everything that we're doing here
- in Bloomington in these three new locations. And so it's kind of an overview
- of what we're doing with the OSS lab or observing civic engagement lab. But I'd love to hear kind of
- any questions that you have or ways in which this could be applied to Rotary or other organizations
- that you're connected with. Okay, I think Hank has the microphone or how should we do this?
- Okay, yep. Hi, so we actually participated in the Observing Civic Engagement Lab. It was the Bloomington
- Rotary Foundation, which is our 501-CT philanthropic arm, which I always thought was kind of odd that
- it wasn't the Bloomington Rotary Club. Now, the Foundation Board meets four times a year. Bloomington
- Rotary Club meets 50 times a year. Do you have any thoughts about that? Well,
- Yeah. Yeah. So it's voluntary. So, um, I guarantee you someone from our lab has probably reached out
- and asked, Hey, would you like to be observed? And now sometimes it takes a whole board to decide and
- say, yes, we were open to being observed. Um, we would, I mean, we would love to observe you guys.
- You did. You observed the Bloomington rotary foundation.
- But not but this is a separate end which is a subset of the club. Yeah. Oh interesting. It's a 1c3.
- Yeah. Yeah, yeah a 501 c4. Yeah, so we actually treat every organization independently Yeah, and so
- we observe this organization. Okay, definitely and and yes, you reached out to us. Okay, why we did
- it I believe teachers warehouse is one of your
- Yes, yes. And they come in each Saturday and participate with us. However, I've been a little bit concerned
- because they stay in one room and we have seven rooms that volunteers are working in. Yes. Doing all
- kinds of different
- So how do you implement that or do you? Yeah, so that's a great. That's a great example. So the teachers
- warehouse is this incredible resource in Bloomington that has a lot of traffic. OK, it's full of ice
- club. That's good. And so the challenges with organizations that have I'll say multi sites or multi
- rooms is we typically have one observer. Her site that we go to and so this happens with
- religious congregations as well, like they break up into different Sunday school rooms and stuff like
- that. So we're only able to capture, I'll say the core of what goes on and recognize that even when
- we have someone in the room, we're still missing some things. Ideally in those situations, we would
- actually send two or more people, but then that just becomes logistically challenging and a little bit
- more expensive. But that's a great point.
- I want to know what you're finding out. What are the key, what are the key success factors? Yes. Yeah.
- Yeah. So, um, big things, which I find really fascinating is we track, um, every decision event that
- occurs within a convening. So a decision event could be something very mundane and very significant.
- And when we look at the decision events, we say, okay, who initiated the need to make a decision?
- And then once it was initiated, how many people contributed to the debate or discussion about the decision?
- And then when they finally made the decision, was it a unilateral decision? Was it a vote? Was it an
- anonymous vote? How do they actually decide? And then because we view these groups over time,
- we can see, okay, did they come up with a plan to implement that decision? And then have they implemented
- the decision. And what we find is, on one level, a lot of decisions are made, a lot of them are mundane.
- And then the more significant ones, surprisingly, they make the decision, but in the time of making
- the decision, they don't come up with a plan to implement. And so then as over time, we realize, okay,
- a decision was made at time point one, but it was never actually implemented, partly because they didn't
- have a plan to implement.
- Another one, and this will seem very strange, or not strange, but just distinct, we measure how much
- hugging goes on. Like do the participants hug each other? Like when they see each other, when they greet,
- or is there no sort of physical connection in that way? Is there laughter? Is there crying? And so what
- we're trying to get at is sort of the
- the culture or the tone of the group in terms of its connectedness and cohesion. So even like, I mean,
- another fascinating thing that I've seen is that a convening can be very demographically diverse. So
- let's say like gender diverse, like a good even mix of men and women. But we not only tabulate that,
- we say, okay, how much cross gender interaction occurs? So a group could be very gender diverse, but
- all the men are sitting at one table and all the women are sitting at another table and there's not
- much interaction. So what we're trying to do is just look at the internal dynamics across the board
- that affect the health and the vibrancy of an organization. Yes, very impressive what you do. I'm just
- curious from a researcher standpoint, how do you treat the data? Obviously you share it with the group
- or organization, however,
- Uh, outside of that, uh, is, is there, um, an agreement understanding that that's remain confidential
- only with that group or, uh, cause I'm just kind of curious that outside entities might try to use this
- information for nefarious purposes. Yeah. So, yeah. And that's a great point. That's something we've
- thought through a lot. So one key critical thing is even though we're observing like I can be like this,
- We never take down anyone's name, so there's no identifying information. We will write down things that
- are said or whatever, but we won't. There's nothing that would identify any individual member in the
- group. Also, we do not publicize that your group is part of the study unless you say you're okay with
- us, you know, so like.
- Habitat for Humanity, we've asked them, hey, is it okay if we let the public know that you're part of
- this study? And if they say yes, then we will let, you know, because people would want to know what
- groups are part, and we only disclose the ones who have said, yes, you're allowed to share that with
- us. So with the data, you know, this is IRB-based research, and since Institutional Review Board, so
- like any other type of academic research, there's a lot of protocols
- for ensuring confidentiality and privacy. And so we maintain all of that. How do you determine if an
- organization is really civil? Well, there that aren't. Yes, we are very inclusive. And so what we've
- found, I mean, this is just really fascinating, especially as we expanded to new cities, we actually
- want to collect data on
- all types of organizations because they're part of society and we want to know what goes on inside these
- organizations and what makes them attractive, what makes them repulsive, what makes them successful,
- what makes them ineffective. So we really, if you're a voluntary association, we would love to observe
- your activities. Thank you, Brad. Excellent. I've read many of the things that you've showed
- earlier, and for lots of reasons, I've been interested in this. And it was only about, I got late to
- the party of the work of Theda Schofield. Schofield. Schofield. Scottsville. Sorry. Scottsville. And
- it's related, so a double question. If I understand part of her argument, we've been moving, especially
- in voluntary associations, more and more away from membership toward management.
- top-down decisions. Related to that, an observation that may or not be right, as I participated in voluntary
- groups, associations, I find less and less familiarity with how to make decisions, how to set an agenda,
- how to make a motion, how to amend a motion, how to vote properly.
- way out of line. Either I'd be interested in your comment on either either of those things. Yeah, so
- definitely. It's civil society has become, I guess, formalized or what they would say is, you have national
- organizations that sort of run these groups from national headquarters out of DC and the the grassrootsness
- of civil society organizations is sort of being lost.
- or it's dampening. And so that's something that's definitely occurring, partly because it's more efficient
- and cost effective to just have one national headquarter and just sort of have one standardized thing
- that you send out to all your affiliates around the country. There's some upsides to it, like it is
- efficient, but it loses the essence of local leaders coming together to
- to build something. The other one with the formalness of organizations in terms of making decisions
- and certain protocols, that is declining. And we've actually captured that in our data of seeing how
- many organizations actually have an agenda and have sort of a Robert's Rules of Order in terms of how
- they run their meetings. And that's fewer and fewer. We only have, for us,
- three years of data. So we can't really make big claims, but it's it's something that would just the
- proportion that are actually doing it is lower than what we would expect. Two questions. Do you monitor
- financial efficiency?
- like where the money goes, how much is for management, how much that gets out to a charity or something
- like that, and what you do with the data. Yeah, so and that actually relates to the other project that
- I'm doing with collecting IRS Form 990 data, which is the annual tax return that the Rotary and all
- these nonprofits file. And so we look at separately sort of the organizational characteristics. So some
- of the finances, who's on the boards, how much turnover there is,
- That is publicly available on the IRS website. Yeah, it's still organizational records. Yep. How much
- comes in through charitable contributions? How much comes in through government grants? And then what
- are the expenses? What do they spend money on? So I've been asked to check online to see if there's
- any questions. Okay. Hey, we have one question and it's actually,
- For me, for your first project with the civil society, do you classify by sector? Like whether it's...
- Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. So that's a great point. So, you know, there are different categories of civil
- society organizations. So, you know, one big one would be religious congregations.
- would be like neighborhood associations. Other ones would be advocacy groups. And so we break it down
- into about 10 different major categories. And really our goal is to get a broad representation of entities
- from each of the different categories. And then I have a second question. It's about your second project.
- Where can we find information about your foundation project?
- Yes, that project. Okay, so you go to the philanthropy lab at IU and that's where you can, so it's the
- philanthropy, it's probably philanthropylab.iu.edu, one of those. But if you Google it, it'll come up.
- Thank you. Thank you for your presentation today. Question, have you worked with school boards and have
- you learned anything as a result of working with school boards?
- So school boards are public and government entities. I mean, even though they're voluntary, so we don't
- do schools because they're government entities. We don't do like news initiatives and stuff like that.
- So we don't have data on that. That would be good data though, Tyler.
- I have a broader question. What is the trend nationally in this kind of civic engagement? Yeah. And
- where is it moving? Yeah, so the whole reason why Trust for Civic Life was initiated. So again, this
- is about 10 major national foundations that had historically
- Funding typically goes to urban areas or suburban. And what gets overlooked is rural communities. And
- so this was an intentional commitment to say, hey, listen, what's being overlooked is these
- rural communities. And in particular, their civic infrastructure, like their ability to sort of have
- a thriving civil society is being undermined because it's the infrastructure in terms of civil society
- is becoming deteriorated.
- And so they made a concerted effort to say, hey, if we provide seed money to these communities, we can
- help sort of revitalize civil society. And that's kind of what we're trying to measure is, is this strategy
- an effective way? Because one of the arguments would be that when civil society sort of gets reduced,
- there's a vacuum and other groups can kind of come in and set up shop and sort of take over the community.
- And so the idea is let the community be the community, but it needs the support system to thrive. Thank
- you very much for your presentation. I did some work in this field, and one of the things that I would
- always ask grantees, and then what happens? And so you kind of touched on that when you said folks coming
- up with a plan, but then not actually implementing it, or worse,
- having a concept of a plan, but not even getting into the planning process. So I think, I mean, the
- larger things I worked on both nationally and internationally was HIV testing. And so it was more and
- more people are getting tested. But the question is, then what happens? So you've tested 20,000 people,
- 5,000 are positive, then what happens? Do you refer them? If they're referred, what happened to them?
- If they got care?
- I mean, if they got into a hospital or a doctor city, then what happened? I feel sometimes a lot of
- organizations or trainings, which are notorious, everyone's getting trained, but then what happens,
- right? So are you, in addition to measuring and sharing this information, are you also able to give
- some guidance to people about here's maybe a blueprint or a roadmap or framework which you can think
- about actually
- getting to the next level, that is getting something done. Yes, yeah, that's a great point. So one of
- the things that we started doing about a year ago was sending out these quarterly reports. And I was
- kind of like, oh, it's data people aren't going to be interested in. But we email it to the leader.
- And I was amazed at how many replied back to us saying, hey, can we talk to you about these things that
- you're observing about our organization and how it relates to other organizations? And so the value
- was often to the leaders of the organization who care about the health and success of their organization.
- Some of the training things that we offer, like there's a distinction between organizing and mobilizing.
- And this is just one example where a lot of times groups will have these big events that are like big,
- I'll say pep rallies of getting a lot of people to come, but then it sort of it fizzles out. Whereas
- organizing is sort of this continual motion of building and developing leaders within
- and periodically mobilizing, but really it's the work of organizing and developing a core base of leaders
- that can grow so that your organization can actually grow at scale. I'm told we have a question online.
- I have a very simple question. You've mentioned several things about rural engagement, and I just wonder
- if you're working in concert with the Center for Rural Engagement here. Yes. Are you? Yeah, so Kyla
- was here and she had delivered, but one of the things that we want to do even more with CLE is our Center
- for Rural Engagement is expand two places beyond Bloomington, because it's in a sense,
- we can send people out relatively easily from Bloomington to these surrounding rural areas. And again,
- wanting to see what are the civic hubs within different rural communities and what makes them effective.
- And you can go to the next county over and they don't have any civic hub. And so what's different, we
- also look at a lot, especially in Indiana with community foundations and the role that they play in
- strengthening civil society within all these different counties.
- So I'm told we have just time for one more question and I'm gonna suggest with you the online question
- because maybe those of you who are in the room might be able to talk to Brad after we're done. Perfect.
- There's two questions. One is, are you finding out about participation by age and the impact of social
- media on the state of civic engagement? I'm gonna combine that into one. Okay.
- Collect data on age. With all the things, the demographic data that we collect is basically whatever
- is observable. And so we don't do precise age, we do general age groups. So we probably have four age
- groups. With religion, we only document religion if it's observable. So if someone is wearing something
- that indicates their faith. But yeah, and we try to capture as much as possible demographically. And
- then social media, the impact of social media.
- So we do look at online convenience and sort of online communication of these groups. It's much, much
- more difficult to track because even though organizations will post things, a lot of times individuals
- who are members of the organization will post, but it's hard for us to capture those because that's
- their personal stuff in the sense that they could be posting about a whole litany of things. So we only
- capture what the organization officially
- online and how active their online engagement is as an organization. Brad, so we get the best possible
- report. I'd like to give you a hug.
- Thank you very much for speaking to us today. I just think that these types of organizations are so
- important to communities, but they're really important to people. And I'd love to see younger people
- more involved and just for their overall health throughout their lifetime. So thank you very much for
- your presentation. In honor of your presentation, we'll make a donation to Amethyst House.
- I want to thank today's volunteers, some of whom, you know, volunteered at the last minute.
- Winston Schindel, Lynn Schwartzberg, Leslie Kutsenko, Jim Sims, Alan Barker, and a couple of duties,
- although he's doing it on Zoom. Hank Welter. I want to also thank our club assistants, Mandy Stewart.
- If you haven't met Mandy yet, please make sure you do so. And Tyler, who really scrambled and did a
- great job today.
- So our next regular meeting will be on February 10th. It's here in the Georgia room. Club member Dr.
- Scott Shackelford will speak to us about securing democracy in the digital age. So Tyler, if you would
- share the graphic for the four-way test, please stand if you are able and join me. Of the things we
- think, say, or do, first, is it the truth? Second, is it fair to all concerned?
- Third will build goodwill and better friendships. Fourth will be beneficial to all concerned. And fifth,
- is it fun?