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The following remarks were delivered at a conference sponsored by the Bradley Center on Philanthropy and Civic Renewal.

I sincerely appreciate the exceptional work the Bradley Foundation has done over the years in promoting civic renewal and elevating the importance of non-governmental voluntary associations and groups in our society.   These days, a significant part of that work is being done by Bill Schambra and his team here at the Bradley Center on Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, and for that we can all be grateful.

I have been involved in one way or another with civil society and empowerment initiatives of this kind for nearly 25 years.   In the 1980s, with President Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp, the “empowerment” agenda popularized economic empowerment through pro-growth initiatives such as enterprise zones.  Thanks to that effort, urban renewal programming today tilts very heavily in the direction of growth over government programs.    

President George H.W. Bush’s reference to “a thousand points of light” may have been ridiculed at the time, but today the largest driving non-partisan force behind the rival of volunteerism in the private sector is none other than the Points of Light Foundation—a direct outgrowth of Bush 41’s vision of service and volunteerism. 

Also in the 1990s, the Conservative Opportunity Society (COS), conceptualized by Newt Gingrich and his allies, searched for alternatives to the welfare state and orchestrated the passage of the 1996 welfare reforms. Although those reforms were deeply divisive at the time, they have since gained broad bipartisan acceptance; and more than any other law, these reforms signaled the end of open-ended access to welfare as the standard means of dealing with poverty.   It may have proven be the turning point in the trajectory of the welfare state at home and to some extent in Europe.  The idea at the core of that proposal was not fiscal stinginess; at the core was the idea that human dignity requires that all able-bodied persons have some relationship to the sacred activity called work.    

Also in the 1990s, The Alliance for Renewal, led by former Senator Dan Coats, produced a variety of interesting measures to expand private charity predominantly by means of expanding private-sector incentives.   On a largely separate front, the Congress during this same time period adopted several charitable-choice provisions, which set the stage for the emphasis in President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative on making social service funding available to a wider range of providers.    

What’s the relevance of this survey of history?  Almost without exception, these initiatives were roundly denounced by opponents as trivial half-measures, window dressing, PR for a party that was allegedly heartless.   I remember distinctly being told again and again that to focus on civil society is to long for a return to the 19^th century, when caring was carried out by ragtag groups of bumbling amateurs.   

To believe in the relevance of civil society made you something of a social policy Neanderthal in the eyes of critics.  At a minimum, it just wasn’t serious social policy.  Worse, our approach was often summed up in the catch-all epithet “privatization,” a term uniquely meant to convey heartlessness by suggesting that our plan for the poor, jobless and sick was just “let the private sector do it.”   That was never accurate, and one of the great favors the President has done is to remind people that he had no interest in wholesale replacement of government with private charities.  The answer to the current practice of depositing the poor on the doorsteps of government bureaucracy is not to dump them on the doorsteps of churches and charities.   

The focus instead has been on results – which implicitly carries a requirement of investing in what works, whether that means more or less spending.   And yes, in the name of promoting true dignity for the poor, it means looking to attach them to loving relationships that transform.  The language of love, perhaps strange to government but not to voluntary groups or individuals, should never be thought of as quaint.   Social policy must recognize that man is more than a mass of material needs; there are behavioral, attitudinal, and, yes, spiritual components which should be addressed holistically. And that’s something government isn’t particularly good at.   

What the sound and fury was mostly about during the past twenty-five years was the death pains of 20^th century command and control models for meeting social needs.

I should add that while much of the ridicule and hostility coming from protectors of the state quo was directed toward republican initiatives, similar attempts led by very smart and sensible Democrats like Bill Galston were similarly dismissed at the time as serving mostly political objectives (triangulation).  To her credit, Senator Hilary Clinton has recently returned to discussions of “third way” approaches to social problem-solving, not as an ideological halfway house, but as way for all to begin conceiving of non-governmental institution-building.   That debate should be welcomed and joined.             

So that is the larger context in which the initiative was set, and by which it will likely be understood with the passage of time. For the faith-based initiative, it was the component parts not the whole that caused some to be critical.  To borrow a travel analogy, it is more important that we look at the vehicle we are riding in and where it is going than to get preoccupied with the transmission or undercarriage. 

With the passage of time the contentious details blur in importance as the larger themes and forces are evaluated. Almost any criticism misses a more important point, one which I hope we can establish here today, which is that the entire faith-based, volunteerism and service agenda of today is a bold extension of decades of hard, creative work.  

The faith-based initiative was not only a simple, straightforward initiative designed to promote compassion in society.  It was also, in my opinion at least, a strategic initiative, introduced in the hope of affecting change in our thinking within government about social services and the true meaning of compassion, especially when linked to a range of other initiatives such as Freedom Corps and a variety of international initiatives.   

If the 20^th century was about top-down rule driven bureaucracy, the 21^st century is about social entrepreneurs, private philanthropy, public-private partnerships, urban and suburban mega-churches and globally connected grassroots civil society.

I am by no means the first or only person to make that assertion.   The difference today is that it is factually, demonstrably true.  There is little about this that today is ideological or merely wishful thinking.

Peter Drucker heralded the 21^st century as the century of the non-profit, sighting specifically the proven limits of government and even of business to solve society’s toughest problems.  In describing the rise of civil society as a co-equal leg of the stool, others have described a global “associational revolution,” a global “fifth estate,” the “first global electorate.”    

By any measure – percentage of GDP, non-profit employment, levels of private philanthropy, to name three – civil society is exploding, including in areas of the world that had little prior experience with it. And with this explosion, the norms of philanthropy and citizenship are evolving.  The U.S. non-profit sector now comprises 7.5 percent of the GDP, with 12.5 million people employed.    

The explosion is even more significant internationally.  In Tocqueville’s day, there were said to be 32 NGOs with international operations; today estimates range as high as 40,000.  Indigenous civil society organizations worldwide run into the multiple millions.

Whether it is how we do international development or how we confront poverty at home, we have learned much about the limits of development bureaucracies laden down with expert planners coordinating and directing solutions.   That has its place, but it’s just not how you build healthy communities or transform lives.  

Writing for the Financial Times, John Kay says central planning is giving way everywhere to a rapidly changing environment in which “success comes not from the inspired visions of exceptional leaders, or prescience achieved through sophisticated analysis, but through small-scale experimentation that rapidly imitates success and acknowledges failure.”   Where does a 20^th century welfare state patterned after Frederick Taylor’s management systems fit in that kind of world?

I would further observe that the policy world’s reluctance to embrace this new model of innovation is preventing a lot of good things from happening.  To illustrate, many were frustrated by the lack of a bold new lurch forward on the domestic anti-poverty front following the fresh awareness of American poverty after Hurricane Katrina.   The answer to that is simple: the policy debate is still stuck in a kind of cull de sac of conflicting paradigms.  The Republicans were loathe to promote a new poverty reduction agenda because of a fear that Democrats would make one last-gasp effort to revive interest in old New Deal/Great Society proposals, and Democrats held back (I have that on pretty good authority) for fear of being charged with precisely that. 

I spent almost four of my five years in the administration of George W. Bush on international policy projects.   Just before leaving the administration, I was asked to coordinate the private sector response to the tsunami, which is my favorite example of this emerging new world.  It illustrates a number of powerful points.  While the Congress met and passed a generous appropriation of $857 million, the private sector supplied upwards of $2 billion.  As we hear increased talk about public-private partnerships, keep in mind that in a good many cases, it really means that government is the minor partner, as it was in the case of the Indian Ocean tsunami. 

And it wasn’t just providing “handouts” – another frequent caricature of civil society at work.  It was driven by real needs on the ground.   Not only are NGOs vastly more sophisticated in this area today, so is business, as was demonstrated in the response to the tsunami and Katrina.  Operating from pre-existing data bases of expert volunteers, businesses have been putting into operation their own private emergency response systems, setting up IT platforms, providing supply-chain and logistics know-how, and providing donations based upon specific needs.

The capacity and the ingenuity of businesses and NGOs were breathtaking.  We saw for the first time the explosive power of e-philanthropy.  We saw for the first time the power and reach of global philanthropy.  We saw for the first time the emergence of global interest in American faith-based organizations.  How many people are aware that World Vision last year received $273 million from Australia, $247 million from Canada, $92 million from Germany and $74 million from Hong Kong?  Dozens of other societies not known in the past for their interest in faith-based programming did the same. 

If the tsunami produced the largest outpouring in history for a disaster on foreign soil, no prior domestic disaster produced a response even approaching the outpouring of support for Katrina relief and reconstruction.  Thus far, $7.37 billion has been contributed, with two thirds of all Americans reporting that they have contributed.  Note as well that it was private, small-scale relief organizations and congregations that got the highest marks following Katrina, while it was the larger non-profit structures that raised doubts about performance and accountability.    

There is nothing about any of this private response that is trivial – nothing.  And the case presented for it need not be construed as downplaying the critical role of government, as we were also reminded during the Katrina disaster.   We need to move beyond that. 

A closer look at the national debate suggests that we are nearing a remarkable turning point.   I will predict that nationally ambitious Democrats will make faith and social justice a major part of their effort to win favor with the electorate.  Furthermore, most if not all mainstream Democrats will likely refrain from proposing massive new top-down remedies for poverty.   If true, this spells the possibility of a convergence focusing on redesigning people-serving institutions in the 21^st century.  

Two presenters to a recent meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council discussed American attitudes toward family, community and government.  The American people, they concluded, “are increasingly rejecting the idea that command and control government programs are the best way to solve social problems and are looking for a relationship to government that reflects changed economic and social realities.”  The speakers continued to explain that what the people want is a new social contract, one that involves a very different role for government than was established during the New Deal and Great Society war on poverty.

Viewed in this context of significant shifts in public expectations, I believe the whole panoply of Bush administration initiatives will be judged as a significant step forward as we look back.   The media has completely missed, in my opinion, the fact that there is a core social policy doctrine at work stretching across domestic and international programming, represented by a variety of initiatives: the OFBCI, the Global Development Alliance at USAID, the Millennium Challenge Account and a variety of initiatives to promote private sector volunteerism.  The administration has also clearly inserted the importance of private-sector development into the international development agenda, and promoted an unprecedented number of public-private partnerships across numerous agencies.   

It is for good and justified reasons that the President has repeatedly stated his desire to have as part of his legacy keeping the “spirit of Tocqueville alive.”  In my opinion, that should be the desire of all republicans (both r and R) because at the core of republican thought is the idea that the non-market, non-governmental institutions of civil society form the foundation for healthy communities and a healthy democracy.   

The emphasis, as this symposium suggests, should be predominantly on how to strengthen civil society, including through public policy.  Our discussion is either mostly about civil society or mostly about improving government services, but it certainly isn’t one to the exclusion of the other.   My own opinion is that too great an emphasis on faith-based funding can end up promoting the more limited goal of merely improving social services.  

In fact, the end objective of government programs should be to build stronger non-government associations at the community level wherever possible.   Is it possible that social policies can be directed toward “standing up” effective non-governmental institutions?   With this approach, the starting point of social policy is not to expand or shrink government budgets: the goal is building government programs down by strengthening real non-governmental alternatives in the communities of America.  It is to reduce the demand for social welfare spending by taking more effective aim at poverty and dysfunction.   

Now, allow me to share a few more specific comments on the President’s initiative.   There are several things, in my opinion, that are beyond doubt.  One is the President’s sincerity.  As one who heard the President articulate his vision on dozens of occasions during the earliest stages, it was quite clear that he was both sincere and committed to transcending politics.   The President knew that the vast majority of anti-poverty workers out there, and especially in the faith-based sector, are actually a-political.   They weren’t being asked to become Republicans.  Proof that the initiative was really not designed as a party-building tool is found in the fact that the first two directors the President chose were Democrats in good standing.

There were two great events that injected themselves in unhelpful ways; one was 9/11.   Absent the shift to national security, I think we would have had an amazing domestic policy debate over the past four years.   Second was the fact that the faith-based initiative was politicized against the President’s wishes and best intentions, and responsibility for that must be born by both parties.    

Having been denied an honest, bi-partisan and elevating debate, the administration was wise to allow the initiative to settle into the more routine, low-key level of implementation.  By following that path, the administration was able to accomplish far more, and more than most people know.  Today, the initiative is at work in 11 domestic as well as international agencies and numerous states and localities. 

The idea of equal access to funds is unassailably sound and will become a permanent part of the federal social policy landscape, although one must always admit that it is not quite that easy, as many have come to discover. To the extent that the effort to expand access to funds includes support for what may be called faith-saturated programs, this unavoidably introduces the need to spell out the rights of the beneficiaries, religious providers, and scope of religious expression allowed.   Unavoidably, technical issues of law attach themselves to the effort and this can erode the very spirit of promoting compassion.   As a general rule, in building more neighborhood capacity we should resist generating still more bureaucratic oversight.   That is the inescapable conundrum that emerges from a heavy emphasis on direct grants.

There are also real issues of potential entanglement that must be respected.   The American people are faith-friendly, but don’t want the government supporting religion as such.   That attitude is shared by majorities of religious believers, and it largely accounts for our nation’s success in preserving the freedom, dynamism, and authenticity of faith itself.    So these are very fine and consequential lines to observe in policy.

Let me conclude by sighting a number of factors and trends that are enormously promising:

There is more fertile discussion going on between Evangelicals and Catholics on issues of poverty and social justice than perhaps any time in history.   Rick Warren wants to restore a 19^th century Evangelicalism that removes the false division between concern for men’s souls and social justice.    

Every great leap forward on social justice was aided by movements that were religious in character, the most prominent example was the civil rights movement.  Persons of faith can be counted on to care for the hardest to reach when no one else will.  How to encourage that outpouring will remain a major issue of debate.

Second, I think there will be a healthy new interest in communities.  As I have said, all of the trends and shifts in attitude are away from remote, central command and control systems.   I have often lamented the lack of a sociology of community or neighborhood among many liberals and conservatives alike.   Liberals embrace the individual and the state.  Conservatives dismiss interest in the “village” as a metaphor for a larger social service state, perhaps for good reason.  It takes a village, it takes a family, it takes economic growth strategies, and it takes reclaiming neighborhoods from thugs and pimps – the point is, it takes a lot of things.   More than anything, it takes lots of healthy civic institutions and congregations that share the same zip code as the problem, as our friend Bob Woodson reminds us often, generating social health in an integrated way, and with whom everyone else partners and takes their direction.

Random acts of charity, volunteerism and even expanded faith-based social service programs, are fine as far as they go. However, such approaches can reflect the fragmented and individualistic approach of our society, and fall short.  

For me, the critical issue is not that there might be an array of social service programs that are in some fashion or form more effective when performed through faith-based institutions.   That is certainly half the equation.  But what interests me is the contribution of these groups and associations make to social capital – they are transformative of communities.  The real story of what congregations and faith-based organizations do is their presence as anti-bodies in dieing neighborhoods.  Conservatives would do well to spend some time rediscovering community organizing strategies popularized by the Left – Industrial Areas Foundation.

I am deeply interested in the new urban mega-church.  Last month’s Black Enterprise Magazine featured not business leaders but preacher-social entrepreneurs Kirby John Kaldwell, T.D Jakes and Bishop Eddie Long.   They have far larger visions than traditional urban social work.   Their mission is comprehensive community transformation; taking back urban territory from decay and dysfunction, all in the kind of comprehensive and integrated way that, in my judgment, is uniquely possible for people who live there and own the problems.   

Third, the new era of innovation to which I referred is not possible without more openness to experimenting with social service vouchers, and more interest in intergovernmental flexibility, by which I mean federalism.   Cutting-edge reformers like Secretary of State Ken Blackwell in Ohio really want to advance compassion and social justice by means of policy flexibility and a revitalized civil society.  

Fourth and finally, we need a new private sector war on poverty.   When the massive transfer of wealth that scholars have predicted begins to occur between now and 2040, estimated from $30-40 trillion, tax policy should move aggressively to capture a portion of that wealth and direct it to non-profits that are applying creative energy to innovative poverty reduction efforts.