Judith Rodin, President, the Rockefeller Foundation: “Cities of Service: A New Approach to Urban Problem Solving”

National Conference on Volunteering and Service, New York City

June 30, 2010

Remarks by Dr. Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service on June 30, 2010 in New York City. Dr. Rodin participated in a panel discussion titled  “Cities of Service: A New Approach to Urban Problem Solving” moderated by Shirley Sagawa. Additional panelists included Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Jim Anderson, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, Los Angeles Chief Service Officer Rafael Gonzalez, and OneStar Foundation Vice-President Rosa Moreno-Mahoney.

Jim and my fellow panelists told you more about the progress we’ve made and our plans for future growth.
But I’d like to focus this morning on the context for all of this work, namely:

What is today a great and growing network must tomorrow become a national movement of citizen activism.

America is a nation founded on citizen activism; it is an undercurrent that has run throughout our history. Alexis de Tocqueville, one of the first and most insightful social observers of our country suggested that the success of American democracy rested on a vibrant, engaged civil society:

“…Americans, of all conditions, minds, and ages,” he said, “daily acquire a general taste for association and grow accustomed to the use of it … they meet together in large numbers, they converse, they listen to one another, and they are mutually stimulated to all sorts of undertakings…

Thus it is by the enjoyment of a dangerous freedom that the Americans learn the art of rendering the dangers of freedom less formidable.”

That notion, that our cohesion as a people, our unity of purpose, and our exchange of values allow us to best combat society’s ills, is as important today as it was during the birth of our nation.

Simply by sustaining that tradition, by embracing a spirit of engagement and social cohesion, we can create a movement that uses our greatest strength to serve our greatest needs.

Let me provide a bit of context as to why such a movement is critical to the future of our cities and our country…and why the Rockefeller Foundation is intent on fueling it.

Today, for the first time, most Americans live in and around urban areas.

This shift is not only significant; it is ongoing, and it has tremendous implications for nearly every aspect of American life.

To cite but a few statistics:

American cities and their satellite suburbs and exurbs – what Katz calls “megaregions” – cover only 12 percent of the nation’s landmass, but account for 65 percent of our population.

Cities produce an incredible 75 percent of our economic output.

About eighty percent of the “knowledge economy” jobs that are so critical to our future are located in our cities as well.
Our megaregions today define America…sometimes for better…and sometimes for worse.

On the one hand, these sprawling networks anchor the country’s workforce and industries, points of commerce and ports of trade, centers of research and crucibles of creativity, gateways of immigration and intersections of cultural vitality. 

In our global economy, these interconnections give us a competitive edge.  But our cities are also the locus of pressing concerns…concerns that the Rockefeller Foundation has long been focused on managing and ameliorating…and that a national service movement can help mitigate, as well.

A primary concern at the moment, of course, is the continuing fallout from the recent recession and jobless recovery.

NESTA – the National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts in the United Kingdom – has noted that “recession” might be an economic term, but recessions are not “purely economic events.”

Indeed, they are “social and political challenges as much as economic ones – a challenge of collective and collaborative adaptation to radically changed circumstances.”

For American cities and citizens, circumstances have indeed changed radically, and our challenges today are clearly social and political as much as they are economic. 

Unemployment and underemployment remain stubbornly and disturbingly high.

Income and corporate tax revenues have plummeted. 
Cash reserves have been eviscerated by deficits and shortfalls.

In sum, resources are drastically down, and needs are drastically up.

Meeting our urban challenges will certainly require new adaptations and new innovations.

For municipalities, however, during a time of limited capacity and scarce resources, investing in innovation is a fragile and fraught proposition.

How can City Hall focus on innovation when it’s confronted with economic triage?

How can a mayor justify experimentation when she’s been forced to trim public services?

For one thing, as we know from countless examples in the private sector, innovation during moments of economic transition is crucial.

In fact, a sweeping survey by the Nielson Company of data from the past three decades of booms and busts found that companies that invest in product innovations during downturns grew by several orders of magnitude, as compared to those that hunkered down and cut back.

The Rockefeller Foundation believes that investing in innovation is just as critical in the public sector, especially during the current economic recovery.

In particular, citizen service is an area of innovation that represents a fiscally responsible and practicable investment …one that holds the potential for tremendously positive outcomes.

For evidence of this, look no further than New York City. 
In April 2009, during the apex of the recession, New York City launched “NYC Service,” a new program to increase the scale and measurable impact of citizen service citywide,  by simply making it easier to volunteer…matching prospective volunteers with service organizations.

The program has been an astounding success. 
Consider its impact on volunteerism in New York in the past year:

87,810 New Yorkers participated in 1,200 service opportunities and donated 250,000 hours of their time. 

Volunteer “Flu Fighters” conducted outreach to neighborhoods during the H1N1 epidemic.

Concerned citizens assembled care packages for 3,400 New Yorkers stationed overseas.

Tax experts offered their time and assistance to help low-income families prepare and file their returns.

In all, NYC Service volunteers touched the lives of 200,000 New Yorkers in 12 months…a huge impact for a modest investment in service innovation.

Of course, these statistics represent just one year of data in just one city.

But a fascinating study published in March suggests a strong statistical correlation between citizen engagement and long-term civic health and wellness.

Matthew R. Lee, a professor of sociology at Louisiana State University, studied mortality data from some 3,000 US counties.

What he found was astonishing.

Communities with populations that are civically active and engaged experience lower rates of mortality.

And in a separate study of small communities in particular, Lee found lower rates of violent crime in rural areas with vibrant community life.

Lee argues that the economic opportunities strong communities provide help reduce income inequality and poverty, leading to improved health outcomes and drops in violent crime.

Engaged communities can lobby for the creation of hospitals, clinics, and specialty care centers, and provide a forum for addressing public health concerns.

They can also more effectively transfer knowledge of healthy behaviors and activities among citizens.

And the camaraderie found in these communities helps boost psychological well being, helping people live happier, healthier, more satisfying lives.

But despite these newly identified benefits, our social cohesion, for so long emblematic of American life, from the time of Tocqueville to the present, has frayed over the years.
In his landmark work Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam, a public policy professor at Harvard, argued that Americans are often now less connected to their families, friends, neighbors and communities.

Today, we join fewer organizations that actually hold meetings…signing up for a Facebook group doesn’t count; we vote less often and in fewer elections; we see our friends and families less often and for shorter periods of time; and activities we used to do together – watching movies, sitting down to dinner, attending religious services, and yes, even bowling – we increasingly do alone.

In short, Putnam found that our involvement in social and communal activities has declined by 50 percent in 25 years. 
The stock of America’s “social capital” – Putnam’s measure of community engagement – has fallen dramatically.

Which brings me back to the reason for seeking innovation in growing social capital. The time is ripe for a new movement of citizen engagement in America…a movement that Cities of Service is hoping to seed and grow by placing Chief Service Officers in cities across the nation and creating a national network of local governments that have prioritized service innovations.

Our hope and vision is that these Service Officers and cities will pursue a number of different innovations so that they can learn from each other.

Innovations that synchronize volunteer energies and efforts.
Innovations that connect diverse engines of engagement and empowerment in common cause.

Innovations that enable and equip local leaders – the people who best understand community needs – to build networks between volunteers who want to do good and organizations that need their help to make a difference…networks that are a source of learning and leverage for other cities around the world, as well.

During this time of mass urbanization and profound economic transition, our needs are growing in scale and complexity.

Innovation that effectively and efficiently engages citizens in community service is a key part of the solution to the pressing needs of metro America.