ICF Transcription

Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

ANDREA ROBLES: So, welcome back for those of you who have attended our last panel today or 

yesterday's panel. I just want to say I'm very excited to hear about the research being 

conducted by these panelists that you'll hear from today. They have all been studying 

civic engagement in different contexts. So that means local communities, rural and urban 

settings, civic-based organizations, and through social networks. We are eager to hear 

how these different settings might be incubators for civic engagement and volunteering.

But before, well, the way we've been working it, there's a lot we do in an hour-and-a-half, 

but we will hear from our panelists. Then we will go into breakout rooms so we could hear 

from all of you. And then in the last few minutes, we'll come back and finish our 

discussion. So we will begin by having the panelists introduce themselves and give some 

background on their studies. And we'll follow that up, like I said, with a few questions that 

they will answer. So I will just turn this over to Brad.

BRAD FULTON: Great. Welcome, everyone. My name is Brad Fulton, and I'm working with Matthew 

Baggetta, who's also a professor at Indiana University. And so our research, we are 

doing observing civic engagement using a method where we send RAs into civil society 

organizations to basically sit there and document and observe what happens in these 

meetings and gatherings of community-based organizations. And how do I advance my 

slide for this one? Or should I post my slide? OK, perfect.

So a quick little snippet of what I might share in the next three minutes is an observation 

that we had that when we were observing these organizations in terms of racial diversity 

and gender diversity, we found that civil society organizations that were comprised of 

organizational members where they bring together multiple organizations tended to be 

more diverse, more racially diverse and even gender diverse, in terms of leadership than 

individual member associations that you join as either as an individual or as an 

organization.

And so we wanted to test this on a larger sample of organizations, so we worked with 

Candid Together, their diversity and demographic data. And we did an analysis which 

basically tests whether civil society organizations that are structured as having 

organizational members are more diverse than organizations that are structured with 

individual members. So, the next slide.

So again, we looked at approximately 15,000 nonprofit organizations. We looked at their 

gender composition and racial and ethnic composition of their board members, senior 

staff, and full-time staff and then controlled for other characteristics, like size of the 

organization, their budget, how many years they've been around. And the fascinating 

results for us in regards to being incubators of civic engagement is that consistently, 

across the board, organizations that have an organizational member structure where they 

pull together a bunch of other organizations to become members of the organization, like
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

a coalition, tended to be more racially and ethnically diverse and marginally more genderdiverse.

And the main takeaway from this is that voluntary associations are supposed to be places 

where you can have greater diversity, the bridging social capital. But it actually doesn't 

happen. Most voluntary associations tend to be homogeneous. But this is what we would 

call, I think – if you take it to the next slide, one more slide – OK, yeah.

So what this means, what we discovered, through this is what we call the diversity layer. 

So the social sector as a whole isn't necessarily particularly diverse. But what we find is 

this layer where you have coalitions and large groups of multiple organizations working 

together is where you actually experience the social-bridging benefits of the social sector 

and the voluntary associations. So that's just a soundbite of some of the research that 

we're engaging in in Indiana. Thank you.

ANDREA ROBLES: Thank you, Brad. I can't wait to hear more. So, Carol Cutler White.

CAROL CUTLER WHITE: Hey, yeah. Well, good afternoon, everybody. You can go to the next slide, 

please. So I'm really glad to be here. And thank you, Andrea and Melissa, for inviting me 

to share about our project in Mississippi. I have two partners who couldn't be here today. 

One is the Woodward Hines Education Foundation. They are a statewide organization 

that conducts college access work in Mississippi to help students and families fill out the 

appropriate paperwork. And so when I was listening to Sam's presentation in the 

previous panel, I was remembering when we met in November of, what, 2018? Three 

years ago. And our projects were very similar in intent.

So to bring you up to date for where we are – oh, my second collaborator is the city of 

Greenville. And Greenville is – their byline or their tagline is, we are the heart of the 

Mississippi Delta. So they are the north-south, they are the midpoint of the delta in the 

state of Mississippi. And so as you can imagine, it's very high poverty. It's very high 

unemployment. It's very low college-going rates, very high minority populations, all of the 

indicators that would seem to say that this is not going to be a good outcome. But I have 

other news to share.

So my incubator is really focused on college access. That's the work that I do. And I also 

work with community colleges. But for the last two years, or three years, I guess, by now, 

I conducted or we conducted, some action research with PhotoVoice. That was our 

baseline data, we called it. And I had 10 students – six high school students, four college 

students – and then I had four adults who were working with me. And they documented, 

more or less, challenges to getting information about going to college in Greenville, 

Mississippi.
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

And the reason being, if you're not familiar with this work, is that most college information 

is, well, I would say the majority and by and large all college information, is likely passed 

through high schools. And so if you are in the minority community, there is good research 

that says that even in a high-minority community, you may not still receive adequate 

information. You may not receive the support that you need to fill out those paperworks 

and follow through on your aspirations.

So most students aspire to go to college, but they don't know how to get there. So our 

project. First we did PhotoVoice, and then we did a methodology called Q-methodology. 

It is a way to gather a common-consensus perspective on an issue. And so our research 

question was, how can Greensville increase the college-going rate through trained 

community volunteers to assist residents with college and financial aid processes?

And Mary and Melissa and Andrea were – we were glad to have them join us for that Qmethodology community meeting. Approximately 52 people came and did our activity. 

And what resulted from that was an action plan. And then my four adult volunteers 

carried out that action plan. They have been taking that action plan, and they recruited 

volunteers from the community – not paid volunteers, but real community volunteers, 

grassroots volunteers – to learn how to help students with these applications.

So my partner, the Woodward Hines Education Foundation, trained all of the volunteers, 

and they have been working ever since. And my next – I guess I'll save my next findings 

for the lessons learned. That was my four-minute warning. But I'll just close with, there 

was, like I said, they have the action plan. They are carrying it out, and some really good 

results from it so far.

ANDREA ROBLES: Thanks, Carol. So Mary.

MARY OHMER: Good afternoon, everybody. It's great to be here. I'm here with my colleagues, Katie 

Holler, who was an MSW student, intern, working with us, Donnell Pearl who is a resident 

at Homewood and a community researcher with our project. Shannah Tharp-Gilliam is 

our partner. She couldn't be here today, but she sends her greetings. We began our 

project in October 2018. And the name of the project is Research for Equity and Power.

So it's a partnership between our Pitt School of Social Work and Homewood Children's 

Village. And it came about because of the community's interest and goal to achieve 

equitable development and prevent displacement and gentrification that was occurring in 

other neighborhoods. The goals of our project are part of Homewood's comprehensive 

neighborhood plan. And we're important not only to Homewood Children's Village, but to 

the rest of the community.

And so we really have been working since 2018. And really, in 2019 is when we engaged 

over 30 youth and adults in trying to increase civic engagement and influence of
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

residents on equitable development issues. And through our program, the important thing 

is that we're trying to increase residents' knowledge and understanding of what civic 

engagement is and equitable development, strengthening their ability to influence 

neighborhood change, and engaging with policymakers city-wide, and local organizations 

and developers, along with residents, to create partnerships and ability to influence 

change.

So some of the initial results after our community conversations showed really strong 

levels of agreement that both the youth and adult participants in those conversations felt 

their voice was heard. They learned more about the organizations that influence 

development and equitable development in their neighborhood and how to influence 

people who make decisions about equitable development. They understood equitable 

development. Many of you have never even heard of it before. And they knew how to 

influence it. And they understood the importance of civic engagement in their own 

community. Next slide.

So basically, our project is to engage the community-based participatory research 

process all through, and still does do that. So it's community-based participatory research 

in that we have a community advisory board and a Pitt researcher that are all Homewood 

residents that we are continually meeting with and sharing our results and refining what 

we're doing.

Community conversations, which I just mentioned, with youth and adult residents, and a 

playbook that we created, actually, to improve the conversations with our participants and 

our CAB members on how to influence equitable development. We will be doing this 

project in a neighborhood called Hazelwood throughout this year, and hopefully into next 

year, replicating this process with 30 youth and adults there and with two communitybased organizations to create a Hazelwood-specific equitable development playbook.

And many of the same goals are in Hazelwood's comprehensive plan. Next slide.

Oh, I thought I had a picture of the – sorry. I think I sent you updated slides. I was going 

to show everybody the actual equitable development playbook and the picture of all of us. 

But I can actually put that in the chat. Thank you.

ANDREA ROBLES: Thanks, Mary. Yeah, definitely put that in the chat. And I don't know if we could show 

the photo when you're talking in a bit.

MARY OHMER: OK, great.

ANDREA ROBLES: So next is Rebecca and Laurie.
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

BECKY NESBITT: Great. Thank you. Yes, I'm Becky Nesbitt from the University of Georgia. My 

colleague, Laurie Paarlberg, who's working on the project with me, couldn't join us today. 

So I'll just fill you in a little bit on what our project is and what we're doing.

So on this next slide, you'll see our main research question for our project is about, how 

does community context affect volunteering? So if you could advance the slide, whoever 

is doing that. Great. And so what we're really interested in – there's been a lot of research 

that looks at volunteering that investigates how individual-level drivers affect volunteering, 

so individual motivations, demographics, et cetera. We're interested more in the context 

of the community and how that affects volunteering. And specifically, we're really 

interested in differences across rural and urban places.

And so one of the things that's unique about our study, we're actually using the current 

population survey's volunteering supplement to do the research, but we've gone through 

the process to get permission from the Census Bureau and all the people that have, all 

the organizations that have some kind of tie to these data, we've gotten permission to 

access the data in a secure Census Bureau facility which allows us to access 

confidential-level data. So in the publicly available current population survey, about 40% 

of the county FIPS codes are masked in order to protect respondent confidentiality. We 

have access to all those FIPS codes in this secure Census Bureau facility, so we can 

merge in county-level characteristics for these communities to try to understand how 

those affect volunteering.

And we think that this is important research because we know that communities in the 

United States are changing rapidly. We know that there are disparities between rural and 

urban places and that those disparities really increased, especially after the 2008 

recession. Rural communities just have not recovered as quickly, or some even at all, 

since that time. And we want to understand how the characteristics of these communities 

affect civic engagement, specifically volunteering, in our study.

So on the next slide here, you'll see I have a couple of bullet points about some 

interesting things we found and some things that we are currently working on. 

Volunteering rates, the likelihood of volunteering, is higher in rural places than in urban 

places, but those rates have been falling. And the likelihood of volunteering in rural 

places is falling even faster than it has been in urban places, to the point that those rates 

are starting to converge. And so that's one of the things under my future directions here 

that we want to investigate, is what's driving this cliff, this downward direction of these 

volunteering rates, especially what's causing the difference between the changes in the 

rural likelihood of volunteering in rural places versus urban places.

One of the interesting things that we found in one of our first papers out of this study is 

that personal resources and community resources, so things like education, your 

personal level of education and the level of education in your community, those things
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

affect volunteering differently in rural places versus urban places. They actually have 

more, a greater effect, in rural places. So even though people that have a bachelor's 

degree in general are more likely to volunteer, the worth of that bachelor's degree for 

volunteering is even greater if you live in a rural community. So that's one thing that 

we've found that's been really interesting.

We're currently working on trying to understand how pathways into volunteering are 

different across rural and urban places and how that affects how much people volunteer 

in terms of the hours that they give to volunteering. And another set of analysis that we're 

working on is we're looking at how community age structure affects volunteering across 

rural and urban places. So if you're an older person living in an older community, or a 

younger person living in an older community, how does that affect your volunteering, and 

is it different across rural and urban places? So we're really excited about these things 

that we're working on and hope to have a lot more results to share by the end of the 

summer. So thank you.

ANDREA ROBLES: Thanks. Thank you so much. Jim.

JIM WITTE: Yes. Good afternoon. I'm Jim Witte. I'm director of the Institute for Immigration Research at 

George Mason and also a professor of sociology. My three colleagues, three co-PIs, 

couldn't be here today. But that's Amy Best, John Dale, and Shannon Davis, who all 

worked on the project throughout the entirety. If we go on to the next slide, I can show 

you a little bit about our division of labor.

Shannon and I are both quantitative researchers, and Amy and John are primarily 

qualitative. And so we integrated the two pieces together into this project. And we started 

out with an online survey of 4,000 immigrant professionals in six cities. And that was 

based on our community partner, which is called IMPRINT. That stands for Immigrant 

Professional Integration, which is a coalition of a number of groups. And actually, one of 

the positive outcomes of this project is we are now a partner in the coalition with 

IMPRINT. It's primarily funded by World Education Services, which helps with credential 

and transcript evaluation so that immigrant professionals – and we define those as 

people who have gotten some degree of higher education outside the US before coming 

to the US – that they're able to use the skills and talents they have.

And so as part of that, we were given access to a database of immigrant professionals in 

six particular cities we focused on. You can see them there. And the idea was many of 

these cities, the original survey focused in part on economic success, but also, we 

included questions about civic engagement. And that's because four of these six cities 

are actually what are known as Knight Cities where the Knight Foundation has invested a 

fair amount in looking at how to encourage civic engagement in the different cities.
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

And then Amy and John did follow-up interviews with 68 of our survey respondents. And 

we also had some supplemental funding that we did some pretty interesting stuff with, 

using graduate students. One of them, who has a degree in computer science, was 

working on using IRS-990 data to locate our immigrant-serving nonprofits located where 

the immigrants are. And then he did a fantastic – and we're happy to share with anyone – 

it's a Qualtrics-based set of survey questions that integrate Google Maps so you can 

begin to, if people don't remember their exact address, they can get as close as they can 

recall to where they're currently living.

And that's really important because throughout the immigration literature, we learned that 

there's a fairly high degree of mobility once immigrants rely, once they land in the US, 

that they begin to disperse and move to different areas. And a long, comprehensive 

literature review was done as well. If we go on to the next slide, I can show you that this 

is one thing that's not so much tied to civic engagement, but we tease some things out of 

it. It's really astounding to me, at least, how many – 37% of our respondents – said that 

when they arrived in the United States, they did not have anyone that they could rely 

upon for support. So this degree of dis-attachment or disengagement from the community 

when they arrive is important. But then we see that it picks up fairly quickly in between 

the time when they arrive and their current situation.

If we go to the next slide, our quantitative findings. One of the things that Shannon and I 

have been working on most recently is the extent to which civic engagement and 

economic success, both in the quantitative and qualitative findings, they're tightly 

intertwined, and that they're gendered. And so that economic success – it probably 

comes as no surprise that our male respondents were more successful than the female. 

And we can go into the question and answer if you want to know how we define that.

But then also, the volunteering patterns, the types of organizations they volunteer with, 

are gendered as well. And the male respondents tend to be tied to business and 

community groups that then also help them in their professional careers. And so if we go 

to the next slide, the last one I've got here summarizing the qualitative findings. Again, 

we've heard some of the same messages about the extent to which professional success 

and civic engagement were intertwined, but then also, we learned a lot about the extent 

of mobility so that, again, these professionals are – they're really global citizens, and 

they're moving around, at least prior to, this data was collected before the pandemic, but 

they were highly mobile within the United States, but then also around the globe.

And the ways they participate are very varied. And that's something that we think we 

have to learn to do and pick up better, is that the new forms of civic engagement that you 

find among immigrant professionals and immigrants more generally are very different 

than what's captured by traditional survey instruments. So I will stop right there.
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

ANDREA ROBLES: Thank you. These are all really interesting. And again, want to hear more, so 

hopefully these questions will elicit more conversation and more findings from all of you. 

So you are all conducting research on civic engagement in different contexts, as I 

mentioned, in different spaces. And you alluded to this already, but how does your 

particular context enable civic engagement that could lead to positive community 

change? So I will get off camera. And Brad, why don't we start with you?

BRAD FULTON: OK. Somehow, I am unable to put my video on, because the host has stopped it. But I 

can go without a video. Either way.

ANDREA ROBLES: Can someone put on Brad's video, please? 

SPEAKER: Yep. I will look for it. Sorry.

BRAD FULTON: The first time I stopped my video. OK. Gosh, usually people are telling me to turn on my 

video.

So what Matt Baggetta and I are doing is wanting to understand the mechanics of how 

civic engagement is enacted and how leaders are developed in civil society 

organizations. And we're doing this by deploying several RAs into community-based 

organizations, to their gatherings, to their convenings, to all their activities, and basically 

documenting what goes on in these meetings. What are the actual internal dynamics of 

these meetings?

And so you can have a master list of who's a member or who's involved, but actually 

going to the meetings and seeing who comes, who's leading, who interacts with who, 

what decisions are made, and getting this type of data at scale across multiple 

organizations and across multiple convenings of those organizations. And really, the 

product of that is to have a better understanding of what dynamics work to foster greater 

civic engagement and also to help develop leaders within these organizations or within 

these contexts.

ANDREA ROBLES: Thank you, Brad. Carol?

CAROL CUTLER WHITE: Yeah. Thank you, Andrea. I would say that in Greenville, Mississippi, that the 

project is catalyzing civic engagement. And so we're just beginning to see the community 

engage, and so I don't have a real answer to the question at large, what are the 

outcomes. But I will say that in thinking about Greenville and whenever I even mention 

that I'm working in the delta, people go, “Ohhh.” And so I would push back and say, but 

the delta is rich in culture. It's rich in history. It's rich in cohesiveness amongst the 

community. And I think that those factors or those characteristics of the community really 

will, in the long run, set the stage for the civic engagement and really buying into what's 

going on.
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

Everybody that we speak with in the community really wants to see Greenville do better. 

And so because of that, there is a lot of support from the city government, from the 

fraternal organizations and other organizations. There's a community foundation. So they 

want to see Greenville do better, and they see this as a way to do that. And so it's really a 

catalyst, my project has turned into a catalyst for creating civic engagement to then have 

students get to college and complete college and then become engaged in civic 

engagement themselves. So it's really creating a cycle of civic engagement in the 

community.

ANDREA ROBLES: Thanks. And I couldn't help but to think of our AmeriCorps programs as you were 

describing that. So Rebecca. Oh, I'm sorry. I missed, I just went over Mary. Donnell, I 

think you're going to present.

SPEAKER: I'll be taking that question. 

ANDREA ROBLES: Sorry. Yeah.

SPEAKER: So our particular context is that we work within the Homewood community. It's a community 

that has a long history of working with community organizations. And, I'm sorry. Hold on 

one second.

MARY OHMER: Donnell Pearl is our community researcher, who is a Homewood resident. So hopefully 

he'll come on. Here he is.

DONNELL PEARL: Sorry about that. Someone's phone was ringing. I had to go turn off the phone. Sorry.

Our particular context is that we've been working with the Homewood residents. They 

have a long history of working with community organizations. And we put them in charge 

of some of the decision-making in the project, and we gave them a leadership role in it. 

So it helps us to help them engage the community issues and engage with organizations 

and engage with the city around issues, particularly around equitable development and 

preventing gentrification. A lot of the residents who live in Homewood own homes, and 

they are reacting to gentrification they've seen in other neighborhoods that are a part of 

the Homewood neighborhood system.

MARY OHMER: So I think, Donnell, why don't you tell them about the recent meeting with the 

Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, where our residents who were trained and 

really engaged in this project really started to influence some decisions the city were 

making about mobility and infrastructure in the Homewood community?

DONNELL PEARL: Yeah. So we had several residents at this meeting. It was called [INAUDIBLE]. It's a 

pilot program that is trying to bring transportation options and infrastructure changes in 

the neighborhood. And we basically talked about a lot of issues, but we also came with 

information pre-prepared. So there was a lot of things that they said that didn't quite gel
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

with people because they had already been said in other programs or platforms. And they 

were prepared to call people out for reneging on agreements that they had made 

previously or talk to them about extraneous issues. One of the locations they wanted to 

do has a high crime rate, and they needed to work with the police and work with 

organizations instead of just doing things unilaterally.

MARY OHMER: They wanted to put all these bike lanes in and scooters and all this stuff. And they're like, 

did you look at our comprehensive plan? The residents spoke up and said, did you look 

at our comprehensive plan? We have a mobility section and infrastructure section. We 

don't have anything in there about wanting scooters and more bikes. But we do have 

these other things that Donnell just brought up, examples of where infrastructure could be 

improved to promote safety, for example. So I think it's a really good example that they 

spoke up, and they actually used their influence with the city government department. So 

thank you.

ANDREA ROBLES: And I'll be looking forward to hearing what happens with that. OK. So I don't know if, 

Rebecca? So in terms of your particular contexts and how that can enable civic 

engagement and lead to positive community change.

BECKY NESBITT: Yeah. So I mentioned that we're looking at how community contextual factors affect 

volunteering. And we found when you put all the individual factors and the community 

factors together in one statistical model, that the power of the community contextual 

factors is much stronger than the individual-level demographic predictors of volunteering. 

And in particular, a few that were really important, and especially for volunteering in rural 

places, are the percent of people in the community, the county, that have a bachelor's 

degree, the density of nonprofits in that community, and also, the number of religious 

adherents in the community.

So religiosity, nonprofits, bachelor's degree – so this speaks to opportunities for 

community leaders and policymakers in order to support rural volunteering, that 

supporting community education and community organizations would be really important. 

And also, working with religious organizations is an opportunity to get more volunteers 

and really bolster the pool of volunteers, especially in rural places. So we thought that 

was something that's really interesting, is that these community institutions make a real 

difference for volunteering in rural places. So there's a lot of implications for community 

leaders and policymakers.

ANDREA ROBLES: Thanks. Jim?

JIM WITTE: Yes. I'll just follow on with what Rebecca just said, because we find the same thing in urban 

areas. We picked on these six different metropolitan areas and found each had a unique 

culture of volunteering, and that there was a pretty large range. And this is not just
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

immigrants. But if we look at all residents of Seattle, 40% of them report volunteering in 

the last year. And then we go to Miami, and it's 30%.

Again, this is survey data. There's always a bit of measurement error. But a range that 

large indicates that there are things similar to what Rebecca was saying about the 

opportunity structure for volunteering as well as individual inclination. And that's one of 

the things that we really have been playing with throughout the project, is looking at the 

structure and the places where people can get engaged, along with individual 

characteristics that we know are positively or negatively associated with volunteering, 

and see how those two things interact with one another in different cities. So I think that 

was, in terms of the context, that's one of the things we find most important.

And also, because so much of what we did looking at civic engagement was tied to 

economic success and economic participation, and their crosscutting, that there are 

different economic climates in different cities. And just as a quick example, if we look at 

entrepreneurship and starting businesses, probably the most dynamic – and again, this 

was pre-pandemic – of 100 metropolitan areas in the U.S., the most dynamic in terms of 

startups and new small businesses is Las Vegas, and the least dynamic is Pittsburgh.

But then when you look at the continuity and small businesses that have persisted for at 

least five years, it flips 100%. So Pittsburgh is where the businesses are enduring and 

providing that degree of continuity. And as you would expect, in Las Vegas, it's a very 

volatile place. And so though they have a lot of startups, they also have a lot of failures. 

And so this is the context within which individuals – there are varying contexts within 

which they civically engage but also pursue an economic path and career.

ANDREA ROBLES: Great. I hope the two of you end up in the same breakout room. So we're hearing 

how much place matters. We're hearing about social networks and cohesion and these 

individual versus social context variables that are important. So can you give us a few 

examples of lessons learned in your work for others trying to engage communities or 

settings or places similar to your own context?

BRAD FULTON: Sure. Great question, Andrea. So I think one of the fascinating things for us is once we 

look at variation across organizations and across their different convenings, we begin to 

notice patterns in some ways that you wouldn't necessarily notice if you were just visiting 

one organization or visiting one particular convening. So one takeaway that we've 

discovered is the importance of physical space for where convenings occur.

And so physical space is everything from – whether it's indoors or outdoor, the convening 

is indoors or outdoors, what the entrance of the convening is. Is it a closed door or open 

door? Is it through a double door to get into a convening? Is there someone at the 

entrance of the convening welcoming people or acting as a bodyguard, or in a sense, 

someone, not a bodyguard, a bouncer to prevent unauthorized people to come in?
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

And so there's all these different aspects of the physical space in which civic engagement 

convenings occur. And then even in the actual space, is the furniture movable in a 

sense? Can you move chairs around? Can you move tables around, or is it like 

auditorium seating? And you would think all of these things, in and of themselves, are 

fairly mundane. But when you then take that data and compare it with the actual social 

interactions and the social composition of the people at the convening, we see some 

striking patterns of things that either foster and encourage across gender, across racial 

interaction, or things that deter it.

And so our most recent paper on this is looking at the relationship between the physical 

space of a convening and the social composition and social interaction that occurs in 

these spaces. And so the biggest thing is the factors related to the entrance. How 

welcoming is the entrance? If I'm a newcomer, and there's someone standing at the door 

that's not a greeter, but more of a bouncer, the convenings tend to be less socially 

diverse. And then other things, when you're having a convening in a space that doesn't 

have any type of movable furniture, there tends to be less social interaction between 

participants, and especially between cross-gender and cross-racial participants or crossracial interaction, cross-gender interaction.

Other factors where how accommodating the physical space is to people with disabilities 

and how that affects the social composition and social interaction across different 

categories. So that's just one lesson, one takeaway, that you wouldn't necessarily find if 

you're just observing one organization or one convening. But when you observe over 100 

convenings, you see these patterns. Thanks.

ANDREA ROBLES: Thank you. And things to keep in mind when we start interacting again, right? Given 

where we've been for the past year. All right. So now I'll pass it on to Carol.

CAROL CUTLER WHITE: Yeah. Thanks again, Andrea. So I think the lessons learned from my project 

would be to engage the community early in the process. And so I think of that in two 

ways. I think of the co-researchers that I had, the high school students, the college 

students, and the parents of the community. They were really the face of this project. I 

don't think that people in Greenville would know me from anyone. Plus, I don't look like 

them. So it was really important for my project to engage, to work, to have the community 

solve their problem, which is what all of our projects were designed to do.

But I also think that making the project known to the city leaders was really important so 

that they knew what the project was, what the outcome was, and they followed it. They 

followed it along for the two years of the two different parts of the research. And as that 

time went on, they had the chance to, or the project and myself had the chance to, build 

trust with the city leaders. So by the time we came with this action plan to them two years 

later, two years in, it was presented by their own residents. It was presented on behalf of 

the community. And they were familiar with it, and they were already brought in before we
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

even made the presentation to the city council, which then adopted a resolution of 

support for the project.

So I think those are really important things. I also think that, finally, I really like Rebecca's 

work and the findings about the bachelor's degree. Those were the volunteers that we 

found in the community, well, I didn't find them, my co-researchers found them in the 

community when they went out to recruit volunteers, they found the people who had 

already completed a bachelor's degree. And that was not a directive that I gave them.

That was what they intuitively knew would be effective, because they wanted people who 

had accomplished that goal to be the volunteers and mentors that were helping the 

students and families coming up behind them.

And then I think the last thing was, for a project such as mine and a community such as 

mine, is find the moms in the community, the parents. The co-researchers have just 

taken the ball and run with it. And they were the three moms, and you can't stop them. So 

I would find the moms.

ANDREA ROBLES: Thanks, Carol. OK. So next, I see Mary and Katie.

KATIE: Yes, hello. So I just have a couple of lessons that I wanted to share about engaging with 

communities. And the first one is an echo of what's already been stated, which I think just 

highlights how important it is, and that's that community members can be your greatest 

resource and your greatest partners throughout the process. They have a deep 

knowledge of community history and assets and true needs. And then they also have a 

strong commitment and a strong investment in what's going on within their community, 

obviously. And so they're willing to put in the time and to be present.

And then additionally, they have a wider reach into the community to connect more 

people into the process. And I think that's something that we've greatly seen through our 

community advisory board, is that our members are able to reach out to other people or 

to reach into meetings that we otherwise wouldn't have had access to. So they're 

definitely your greatest resource and your greatest partners, so that's the perfect place to 

start.

And then secondly, it's OK to let connection take priority over efficiency sometimes. And 

this is something that I've seen, especially during the wild year-and-a-half that we've had, 

is that while you want to be respectful of everyone's time, sometimes people need to just 

talk about what's happening around them and process it with a group of people who 

understand and respect them. And so while sometimes this means your agenda gets 

pushed back a little bit in time, it can lead to a stronger trust and connection and 

understanding within the community members and within the research partners. So it's 

definitely worth it to increase that connection when necessary. Thank you.
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

ANDREA ROBLES: Thank you. And that's very valuable for all of us to remember when we are trying to 

build connections. So I'm going to move on. Thank you, Katie. Rebecca.

BECKY NESBITT: Yeah. So I would say even though we don't necessarily have the data in our dataset to 

be able to test this, our results really seem to indicate the importance, again, of social 

ties. And so I'd say as far as implications for communities, not only do these institutions 

matter, but social ties really seem to matter. And as our rural communities are changing 

and diversifying and maybe struggling, there are implications for civic engagement from 

that.

So as community leaders, policymakers, people who are in these institutions, thinking 

about how to strengthen and build upon current social ties and really trying to foster more 

social ties among people, I think, is really important, especially in these rural places that 

have been struggling and where it seems like their civic engagement, at least in the form 

of volunteering, is decreasing. It does seem to point to the fact that, as these 

communities are diversifying, that the social ties might be struggling in those areas, or 

they might not be coping as well with diversity and figuring out how to handle that and 

how to connect with people that are different from them that are coming into their 

communities. So for me, I'd say that's one of the big lessons learned here is, again, the 

importance of social ties along with the community institutions.

ANDREA ROBLES: Thank you. And Jim.

JIM WITTE: Rebecca keeps setting me up with good things to respond to because our work seems to fit 

so closely together. But the social ties, it's really interesting, because one of the things 

we found, and I showed that graph about social capital people had when they arrived in 

the US and how much they had later on. And what we found is having a large number of 

people in your network, strong social ties that you could rely upon for help, in the current 

situation, that was a strong predictor of economic success. And we're still trying to tease 

out which direction the relationship goes.

But then when you look at social ties, social capital that you have when you arrived as an 

immigrant, it was actually negatively associated with economic success. And what it was 

saying is that in some ways, when you arrive in a new place, and you're forced out of 

your comfort zone, then you're forced back into the mainstream. And our indicators of 

economic success were very much mainstream-oriented – that you were using your 

education, that you were earning above a certain threshold, that you had a certain type of 

job title.

But I think this is what Alejandro Portes describes as the double-edged sword of social 

capital. That it can provide a support system, but it also then can be a constraint in 

moving into the mainstream economy or mainstream society. And we've seen that in the
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

same way with our work. We've been using American Community Survey data to look at 

immigrant entrepreneurship.

And what we see there is that in cities – and there's a great group, if you don't know the 

New American Economy, that has put out a really interesting set of policy indices for 

different metro areas. And what we found was that in the cities that were particularly 

immigrant-friendly in terms of their policies, there was actually a reduced rate of 

immigrant entrepreneurship. And it probably goes to the fact that they could get jobs, that 

thanks to the policies that were in place, they were better integrated in the mainstream 

workforce. But it's thinking about how these different environmental factors, whether it's 

policy or social capital, that those interact with individual characteristics.

ANDREA ROBLES: Thank you. I'm just thinking that this is something that – all of you have mentioned 

the importance of social ties or how to increase some relationships, such as space, that 

Brad mentioned and the physical space. So we're going to have breakout rooms for 15 

minutes. And so I would love to hear more in the chat, examples of this, but also from our 

AmeriCorps, our national community family that's on. What examples have you seen in 

terms of your projects, or what did we hear that we could incorporate into some of the 

work we do? And so let's leave it at that.

Mary Ohmer mentioned how social ties have been strained during the pandemic. I think we could all 

agree to that, but that it's become more important as well in terms of connections around 

equity. So anyway, it would be great to talk a little bit more about that and then come 

back to the discussion. So Larisa, could you put us into rooms? OK. Thank you.

SPEAKER: Hey, everyone. Feel free to stay on camera, and we could do some civic engagement. 

SPEAKER: [INAUDIBLE] engagement.

SPEAKER: Video is civic engagement. 

SPEAKER: I like [INAUDIBLE].

ANDREA ROBLES: Hey, [INAUDIBLE]. Hey, did you hear our Spanish?

SPEAKER: What?

ANDREA ROBLES: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

SPEAKER: Oh, really? In Spanish? 

ANDREA ROBLES: Yeah. You missed it.
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

SPEAKER: Oh, my God. You don't give that choice to me.

ANDREA ROBLES: I know. We should have. You are the reason we, Mary, actually, said we should start 

it that way.

SPEAKER: Oh, perfect. Yes. I missed that one. My congratulations to [INAUDIBLE]. And you, for you all 

too.

ANDREA ROBLES: So are we – I don't know if all the rooms are back. Can someone let me know? 

SPEAKER: Yes. All the rooms have been closed.

ANDREA ROBLES: OK. Fantastic. Well, we had – it was just great to be able to be in a smaller room and 

chat. I think this has just been a really great panel, and really thinking about issues 

around space. And we were thinking about time, what it takes to build these type of social 

networks, and trust, what it means to have – what does it mean now in terms of space 

when you can't actually come together, but you have the virtual settings and people 

moving based on work being anywhere and so forth?

So I'm going to stop with that. And what I'd like to do is – everyone was in a different chat 

room. If you all, I'm looking at the time, 2:58. We just have a few minutes, about seven 

minutes. So if you all could just, and we could start with Brad. Brad, some last-minute 

thoughts on maybe something you heard and anything else you want to say to wrap up, 

and then we'll go in order.

BRAD FULTON: Yeah. I would say probably the general sentiment is not only the communities that we 

observe and research and work with, them coming back together in person, but I'd say 

also us as researchers and community scholars getting more connection together to 

recreate that synergy that we seem to have lost over this past year. So that's probably 

the thing that I'm most optimistic and most hopeful about.

ANDREA ROBLES: Thanks. OK. Let's see. Who is, Carol?

CAROL: Yeah, thank you. So in our group, we were really diving into the whole idea of the bachelor 

degrees and building off Rebecca's research and James's research as well. And we were 

just saying how it's cyclical. If you have this low educational level, you're going to have 

low civic engagement. So how do we increase that?

So I guess I'm taking that away and coming to my project with a renewal of energy to 

close it out really strong. But we also wanted to thank you for, the ORE office staff, for all 

of your good efforts on our behalf in this last year. We know it wasn't easy, but thank you 

all.
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

ANDREA ROBLES: Thanks, Carol. And I just want to give a shout out to the agency because of COVID 

and the work we do, just really having that flexibility to allow people to continue their work 

and knowing how important it is, especially during this time. So let's see. Mary and Katie 

and Donnell.

MARY OHMER: Thank you, yes. We appreciate being able to do this work even though it's changed 

during COVID significantly. But we're hoping to be in person gradually as things open up. 

But really, our group, and Donnell can chime in here, Carlos also was very integral to our 

conversation. We talked about how American society tends to be very individualistic, and 

so civic engagement is about what you do – your vote, your engagement in a 

neighborhood. When we began to talk about in Mexican society, obviously, that's very 

different. It's a much more communal society. I actually lived in Mexico.

And anyway, so Carlos said, well, what is civic engagement then? How do we 

[INAUDIBLE] about the community, community engagement? It's about coming together. 

And I talked about how, in our playbook, we actually – and in our conversations, we 

taught organizing skills to people, community organizing skills to find common interests, 

to find common ground, to bring people together. It's not just about your interests, it's 

about the community's.

And how do you begin to engage not only the community, but other external stakeholders 

who you could potentially find common interest with maybe to actually negotiate for 

change and influence change? So how important that is and how important that we focus 

on that. And I don't know if anyone else wants to say anything, but it was really key to 

what we did, at least. And I think it takes away – it's not an individual problem. You have 

to make individual problems public problems, communal problems. And that's how 

change happens.

ANDREA ROBLES: [INAUDIBLE] want to mention something? 

MARY OHMER: [INAUDIBLE] you have a final thought. Go ahead. 

DONNELL PEARL: I was going to say, you actually just killed that. 

MARY OHMER: Oh! [LAUGHS] Thank you.

ANDREA ROBLES: Donnell, any last words? Any closing words? OK. Katie? Kate? I shouldn't call you 

Katie.

KATIE HOLLER: I don't think I have anything else to add other than I really enjoyed hearing from 

everyone else. And it's really great to have been in this space, so thank you.

ANDREA ROBLES: Thanks. OK. Rebecca?
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

BECKY NESBITT: Yeah. So I also want to echo everybody's thanks to the agency for the research grant 

and for being flexible and working with us through obstacles and difficulties, especially 

this past year. But it's just amazing to have some money to dig into some research, and 

that's a really – it's been really great.

I'd say my takeaways from today are basically three C's – context, community, and 

connection – that those are things that all really, really matter for civic engagement. And 

those are things that are shifting and changing and that we might need to be rethinking, 

rethinking what we mean by community, rethinking connection. But just the importance of 

those and the context that we're in and how that really does shape our civic behaviors.

And the more we understand those things and the more we understand how they do 

affect civic engagement, I think that gives our communities a lot more power to be able to 

empower themselves, empower the people that live in that community to really come 

together in all these different forms of civic engagement. So that's what I'm left thinking 

with through this panel.

ANDREA ROBLES: Thanks. Jim?

JIM WITTE: Yeah. And again, thank you for your patience about our final report. We got it done, but it 

took a little time. And I think our breakout room was pretty well summarized, the interest 

in thinking about the three C's. That's important. And how the pandemic really is, to me, it 

was bad. But for social science, it was good. It really gave us a chance to think about the 

way a certain exogenous shock hits the globe, and how is it played out, and how much 

variation there is based on context.

And I saw Mary Ohmer, that you do a lot of international work, as do I. And to me as a 

sociologist, the cool thing is that's where you get variation in social structure. And that's 

where you're able to see how much it matters. And I think that's an important thread, at 

least in my work, going forward.

And I would encourage people – civic engagement is a theme that's vital. We learned 

about it in the pandemic, how vital it is. And to understand how it plays out, I think, in 

different contexts is important. In our room, we talked a little bit about micro versus a 

grander scale, whether you're talking about a room that you're in or a city you're in, and 

then thinking about that middle level, the meso level, where the organizations are 

involved.

And they translate what's being made in terms of policy to things that have implications 

for individual lives and vice versa, that individual lives, so individuals let these 

organizations know where their shoes are too tight. And that hopefully gets translated up 

to policymakers. But different organizations are more or less effective at that. And trying
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Civic Engagement as a Catalyst for Community Change: 2021 Research Grantee Dialogue 

Incubators For Civic Engagement 

to understand which ones are doing it best, I think, is going to be a key thing moving 

forward.

ANDREA ROBLES: Thank you. And so well said, I have nothing more to say. So thank you all for such a 

great conversation, and I hope you all can come back tomorrow, including all the 

participants. And if there's anything more you want to add in the chat box, please do so. 

And I will just turn this over to Mary for some closing comments.

MARY HYDE: Thanks, Andrea. And thank you, everyone, for taking the time to share with us and learn 

with us today. As Andrea said, hope you can join us for at least one of tomorrow's 

conversations. Tomorrow, we have the first panel will be "Rising Up to the Challenge: 

Civic Engagement in the Time of COVID." As many of the ideas expressed today were 

related too, we could continue that conversation.

The second panel will be about mobilizing and managing volunteers for positive 

community change. I would just also like to be sure to thank our ICF partners for their 

invaluable support for this convening so far. Thank you to our colleagues in the Office of 

External Affairs for helping us to get the word out. Thank you to our AmeriCorps 

colleagues for taking time to learn with us. We know how busy you are right now. And of 

course, thank you to all of the panelists today for sharing what you're discovering with all 

of us.

And certainly, if you enjoyed today's conversation, please feel free to invite a colleague 

tomorrow. I think my last, final reflection, just following some of the themes, was it struck 

me today how this virtual reality that we've been living in because of the pandemic, in 

many ways, creates a level of intimacy that we didn't have before. We're seeing each 

other's homes. We're meeting each other's babies. We're seeing our kitty cats run across 

the screen.

But yet it's somehow not a level of intimacy that really facilitates genuine human 

connection, which I think is what we're all craving, and which is what I think is central to 

the work that you're all doing. So those are my final reflections. I hope you have a great 

afternoon, and I hope we see you all tomorrow. Thank you.