Building a Civic Engagement Pipeline

It takes a village to run a village.

In addition to the elected representatives who sit on the city or town council or county board of supervisors, a host of others run for office to serve on the board of directors of fire protection, water, parks and school districts and other administrative bodies. Add to this all the people appointed to sit on commissions to advise the elected officials, and it becomes clear that our democratic form of government contains multitudes.

While some pursue public service as a career path, many of the people elected to office in smaller municipalities and who serve on boards and commissions do so in a purely volunteer capacity, or receive only a modest stipend for their time and effort.

Who are these engaged citizens, and how can communities better cultivate and prepare them for public service?

To gain some perspective on this, I reached out to Ryan Coonerty, a former mayor and city council member for the City of Santa Cruz and former supervisor for the County of Santa Cruz, a professor at the nearby University of California Santa Cruz, a participant in the New Deal network of up-and-coming local and state elected officials, and the recently appointed executive director for the nonprofit Leadership Santa Cruz.

What is Leadership Santa Cruz?

It's a program that began almost 40 years ago, and it was designed to give people sort of an overview of how the county works. Not the “County,” as an organization, but the county as a community. 

Every year, 40 to 50 people spend nine Fridays, one per month, talking about different issues. So one Friday they'll talk about health and human services. Another one they'll talk about local government. Another one, they'll talk about education, talk about business and entrepreneurship, arts and culture. 

And through those all-day sessions, people get to step out of maybe their silos, professional silos, and better understand the different sets of issues. 

And then hopefully see how those issues interconnect with each other in our community, and decide where they might want to engage and make a difference.

So the program takes place one Friday a month over nine months?

One full day, yes, 8:30am to 4:30pm. We’re trying to get some depth on each one of those issues.

So on, for instance, Criminal Justice Day, we’ll have representatives of the public defender and the district attorney, maybe the probation office. And then we'll actually do a visit to the jail. I think in any society, it's good for everyone to know how their particular jail operates and see inside. 

I think we'll try to have a workshop around sentencing, and try to see, in small groups, how people view justice differently. And really let people engage with what is one of the toughest issues in our society.

It sounds like the program provides a deep-dive local civics class for adults. You say the program goes back almost 40 years—how did Leadership Santa Cruz start?

I think a lot of these Leadership programs were formed in the late seventies or early eighties by Chambers of Commerce. They were a program that was offered by the local Chamber as a way to get primarily, I think, business people engaged in understanding government and particular issues over time. Some have stayed very much in that Chamber mold. 

Others like ours have gone broader and tried to become an actual leadership development program for people from any sector to engage in their community.

What kind of people participate in the program? You have an annual cohort of 40 to 50 people. Where do they come from? What's the cross section that you see represented? 

This year we had around 150 applicants which was almost triple what we normally have. So we have a big class of 56 people this year. And what we really try to do is make sure that the class reflects the diversity of our community. We look at the geographic focus to make sure we have people from each part of our county. We have a good cross section of occupations—about a third are in private sector work, a third are in government, and a third are in nonprofit work slash education. 

We're trying to do a good job to make sure we also reflect the racial diversity and socioeconomic diversity of our county.

And it's usually people who are either rising up in their careers, and they're now in upper management, and it's a good way for them to take that next step to running an organization or a C-level role. We also have an increasing number of people who are wrapping up successful careers as doctors or executives, and now they're looking for the second half of their life, how they want to serve and engage in their community. So it's a good group. 

That sounds like a very interesting mix of people self-selecting for information and opportunities to make more impact in their communities through the program. How does it work?

There's three components to it. The first component is that these 56 people get to know each other, so they get to know leaders from different sectors in the community. So when there's a natural disaster, when there's an opportunity, when there's a challenge, we're all a phone call away. And so we foster those relationships. 

The second part is to really understand the community. How do we allocate money for roads? How do we address poverty in our community? 

And the third piece is to actually develop leadership skills. So you work on your skills of negotiation or communication, and the ability to sit in small groups and do team building. 

And hopefully we can do a little bit of all three. We're not, in one day a month over nine months, onna get everybody all the way there. But they'll get a good introduction to how they can engage in the community,

What happens after people complete the program? Do you have any follow up? 

Yeah, that's a great question. And I was just talking to my counterpart in San Mateo County, and she said it's by activating the alumni that we see the biggest impact. 

We haven't done enough, in my view, to engage the alumni and to ensure that they are still engaged and still applying their skills and talents to our community. So we're gonna do a lot more of that in the future. 

I think the most exciting thing is, as an executive director, I bring these folks together, I connect them, train them, hopefully inspire them a little bit. And then we may never know the impact, but it could be that the right person who knows the right person to call in the right moment that could have a long-term lasting impact.

Learn more: 

• Santa Cruz County: Leadership Santa Cruz
• El Dorado County: Leadership El Dorado
• Monterey County: Leadership Monterey
• Nevada County: Nevada County Community Leadership Institute
• San Mateo County: Leadership Council San Mateo County
• San Benito County: The San Benito Leadership Institute is launching
• City of Sacramento: Leadership Sacramento
• City of San Jose: Leadership San Jose
• City of Santa Clara: Leadership Santa Clara
• City of Lincoln: Leadership Lincoln
• City of Stockton: Leadership Stockton