The way forward is simple but not easy. Can we count on you?
The recipe for democracy is simple, with few ingredients, but requires time and our best energy. Vitaly Gariev Free to use
An ongoing project here at California Local is our Doing Good series of Explainers, which introduce different groups and service clubs making their communities better.
Groups such as Rotary International, Soroptimists International, the League of Women Voters, and so on.
As I’ve been researching and writing about these organizations, and about the now more than 1,700 nonprofit community groups in our 10-county database, I continue to be struck by how the impulse to self-organize into mutual aid networks is so deeply ingrained into humans.
And into the US economy. Nonprofits employ over 12.8 million people, or 9.9 percent of private- sector jobs. An astonishing 64 million Americans volunteer in their communities or serve on the boards of 1.3 million nonprofits every year. This volunteer force provides untold trillions of dollars worth of unpaid labor in their communities—in addition to the monetary contributions of more than 10 million donors. Every. Year.*
A striking feature of many of these groups is that they are democratically governed. Indeed, they’re incubators of democracy and civil society. Officers are elected by the membership and meetings are run on some variant of Robert's Rules of Order. Funding is raised and spent to provide services to the community according to a plan developed with the input of members, donors and boards of directors.
This gives me hope.
There is much discussion about American democracy being under threat as a new administration is elected with the stated aim of returning the three million strong federal civil service back to a partisan spoils system. Anxiety is understandable given the rollback of women’s right to control their own bodies and the promised rollback of rights for LGBTQ+ folks, the mass deportation of immigrants, and dark talk of the “enemy within.”
But democracy in America and civil society remains strong.
No matter what happens in the days ahead, people of good heart will continue to discover and connect with each other, and act together to make things better. Despite the recent rollbacks and those to come, people of good heart will continue to work together to extend human rights. Despite the impending setbacks to progress toward a sustainable future, people of good heart will continue to work toward that future. People of good heart will continue to self organize to collectively make the world better.
Democracy plays the long game and requires ongoing effort. Find the others. Combine your efforts. Make things better.
The formula for the days ahead is Discover → Connect → Act.
*This dwarfs the combined local, state and federal government employed civilian and military labor force of about 25ish million people (but not the combined monetary contributions of 160ish million “donors”).
Sources:
National Association of State Retirement Administrators: Local and State Government employment
https://www.nasra.org/content.asp?contentid=181
US Bureau of Labor Statistics: Nonprofit employment
Statista.com: Federal employment
https://www.statista.com/statistics/204535/number-of-governmental-employees-in-the-us/
Wikipedia: Numbers serving in the armed forces
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces
Tax Foundation: Number of filed federal income tax returns
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/
Internal Revenue Service: 501(c) exemptions
https://www.irs.gov/charities-and-nonprofits
Wikipedia: Spoils system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system
Wikipedia: Warren Harding
