This is Part II of a series of blog stories about issues affecting grassroots and community organizations in the nonprofit sector.  This month we hope to continue to inspire dialogue around the theme of “Community Engagement in the Immigrant Nonprofit Sector.”  The purpose of this thematic blog is to create a conversation between practitioners and scholars about the role that nonprofit organizations are playing in addressing the many challenges facing immigrant communities, families, and individuals in the United States.

Community Engagement and the DREAM Act

by Catherine E. Wilson

Villanova University

In response to a decade-long inability to pass the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) act at the federal level, thirteen states have passed versions of the DREAM Act which allow undocumented youth to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities.   Spearheaded by Rep. Tony Payton (D-Philadelphia), Pennsylvania became the latest state to introduce DREAM Act legislation in June 2011.  Two months later however, a package of bills (HB 138, HB 856, and HB 857) – modeled after Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration enforcement legislation – subsequently were introduced.

DREAM Activist Pennsylvania, a nonprofit organization comprised of undocumented youth and allies, occupies the epicenter of the fight to pass the DREAM act in the state.  However, the group faces an uphill battle to rally supporters around their cause.  Headquartered in Philadelphia, the group is experiencing difficulty in engaging undocumented youth and adults as well as voting-age citizens around its desired legislative effort.

Can DREAM Activist Pennsylvania learn best practices from other successful nonprofit organizations fighting for the cause?  If so, what are these best practices?

How can DREAM Activist Pennsylvania empower undocumented youth and adults to “come out of the shadows”?

How can the organization simultaneously educate immigrants and citizens on its movement?

How can the organization make immigration an everyday or mainstream topic – as opposed to a hot-button issue during the election cycle? 

CGAP is initiating a new series of blog stories about issues affecting grassroots and community organizations in the nonprofit sector. This month we hope to inspire dialogue around the theme of “Community Engagement in the Immigrant Nonprofit Sector.” The purpose of this month’s blog is to create a conversation between practitioners and scholars about the role that nonprofit organizations are playing in addressing the many challenges facing immigrant communities, families, and individuals in the United States.

The Tamejavi Festival:

A cultural gathering place for immigrants and refugees

by Erica Kohl-Arenas

In response to growing anti-immigrant sentiments in the wake of 9/11, a group of immigrant and refugee nonprofit organizational leaders came together to found the first ever festival in California’s Central Valley to honor, celebrate, showcase, and discuss the rich cultural traditions, contributions, and struggles of Valley immigrants. With organizational leadership from the Pan Valley Institute (a project of the American Friends Service Committee) and the Central Valley Partnership for Citizenship, and support from the James Irvine Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and local supporters in Fresno, California, “The Tamejavi Festival” is now in its tenth year. Named after a mixing of words from different languages that signify an ethnic marketplace, Tamejavi was created from: “Ta” from the Hmong taj laj tshav puam, “me” from the Spanish mercado, and “javi” from the Mixtec (an indigenous Mexican group) nunjavi, all of which translate as “market” or “plaza.” In a region defined by great agricultural wealth yet home to the poorest, mostly immigrant, Americans The Tamejavi Festival quickly became an eagerly awaited annual gathering place for the regions diverse yet often isolated immigrant communities.

This year the National Endowment for the Arts captured the unique model and achievements of The Tamejavi Festival (see link below). While there is much to celebrate after 10 years of The Tamejavi Festival, the deepening poverty and insecurity, stalemate on immigration reform, and shrinking philanthropic giving raise questions and concerns for many immigrant serving nonprofit organizations. Tamejavi organizers hope to figure out how they can move beyond festival organizing to support greater civic and political inclusion and rights for Valley immigrant and refugees. One answer for the Pan Valley Institute’s Tamejavi project is to build capacity across the region by training immigrant leaders through a new ‘Cultural Organizer Fellowship’ program .

How have other organizations supported, trained, or organized immigrant leaders involved in cultural preservation, cross cultural exchange, and public dialogue through the arts?

• How can the leaders of projects like Tamejavi deepen community engagement beyond immigrants and immigrant allies?
• How can cultural work inspire greater civic and political participation and rights for immigrants?
• What are alternate funding strategies that organizations can adopt to survive budget cuts that are so often experienced by the arts/culture nonprofit sector during economic downturns?

For more information see:

• National Endowment for the Arts, NEA Magazine feature of the Tamejavi Festival: http://www.nea.gov/about/nearts/storyNew.php?id=02-together&issue=2010_v4
• The Pan Valley Institute and the Tamejavi Festival: http://www.tamejavi.org
• American Friends Service Committee – Quaker values in action: http://www.afsc.org

Dear CGAP members:

Two quick reminders before the conference:

1. Remember to renew your membership in CGAP. There will be a table at the Conference in Toronto where attendees can join a section or renew their membership. Your membership is very important. Please check to make sure your membership is current. Thanks so much!

(Please note: Alternatively, you may join CGAP or renew your CGAP membership online when you join ARNOVA or renew your ARNOVA membership. However, because of the way that the online website works, you will not be able to join CGAP or renew your CGAP membership online independently of joining or renewing the ARNOVA membership.)

2. Remember to check out the blog for the discussion on community engagement immigration nonprofits (http://cgaptoday.wordpress.com/.)

We will post any additional updates prior to the conference on the blog.

I look forward to seeing everyone in Toronto.

Lehn Benjamin

Dear CGAP members:

Hope everyone is well. On behalf of the leadership of CGAP, I wanted to let you know about a couple of great events at ARNOVA and another exciting initiative.

1. Sponsored Colloquy at ARNOVA. CGAP will have one sponsored session at ARNOVA. This will be a great session. We hope you will be able to attend.

* Thursday November 17th at 3:15 p.m. “Community and Grassroots Organizing in International and Transnational Contexts” with Howard Lune, James Mandiberg, Carmen Parra and Erica Kohl-Arenas.

2. Business Meeting and Reception. Our business meeting will be held at 7:30 on Thursday November 17th in Pier 9, after the opening reception. We hope everyone can join us! There will be light food and soft drinks. We plan to discuss the by-laws, the blog, the next pre-conference workshop and colloquia at ARNOVA 2012. Please let me know if you have anything to add to the agenda!

3. Blog. Starting October 30th, we are going to have discussion on Community Engagement in the Immigrant Nonprofit Sector! This online discussion will be facilitated by CGAP members Joon Kim, Erica Kohls, and Catherine Wilson. Below is a brief description. The purpose of the focused blog is to create an on-line conversation between scholars and practitioners on key topics. You can participate and follow the discussion by going to our blog http://cgaptoday.wordpress.com/ .

Since the passage of Arizona’s SB 1070 in April 2010, national attention has focused on the introduction of copy-cat immigration enforcement legislation at the state-level. However, such a focus misses the wider range of cultural and political initiatives taking place throughout the country that welcome immigrant presence and advance immigrant integration and immigrant rights.

CGAP is initiating a new series of blog stories about issues affecting grassroots and community organizations in the nonprofit sector. This month we hope to inspire dialogue around the theme of “Community Engagement in the Immigrant Nonprofit Sector.” The purpose of this month’s blog is to create a conversation between practitioners and scholars about the role that nonprofit organizations are playing in addressing the many challenges facing immigrant communities, families, and individuals in the United States.

We look forward to seeing everyone in November!!

Lehn M. Benjamin

UToronto sociologist Barry Wellman passed along the following travel tip: another airport option, just a short cab ride away from the conference hotel, is the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. If you live in other cities in Canada, or reside in the NY/NJ, Chicago, Boston, or Myrtle Beach areas, Porter flies your way. Their 30% off fares sale ends today, July 13th.

Inspired by an economist’s query, the orgtheory blog has had a series of posts about the nonprofit vs. for-profit organization distinction, with some spirited discussion in the comments. Click here, here, and here to read the posts and comments. In addition, orgtheory blogger Brayden King has posted a review of Politics and Partnerships: The Role of Voluntary Associations in America’s Political Past and Present (2011, UChicago Press). Click here for the official link to this book, which is edited by sociologists Elisabeth Clemens and Doug Guthrie.

an NVSQ symposium Co-Sponsored by CGAP and VRADS sections

In what ways does being not for profit differentiate voluntary and advocacy organizations from their for-profit and/or public sector counterparts?  Why, and in what ways, do their substantive values matter?  And most importantly, where substantive values are put first, does this open up the prospect for a more involving, deliberate and democratic form of organization?  Put another way, we are interested in the substantive values, participatory processes and organizational cultures of not-for-profit and voluntary organizations.

Through this mini-symposium, we seek to deepen scholars’ understanding of the discovered relationships among these three elements.  We invite both theoretical and empirical submissions for a proposed special symposium in NVSQ that support this theme. Examples/samples upon which articles might be based could include any sort of grassroots community organization or national non-profit organization in which membership/participation is voluntary, such as churches, social service-oriented organizations, self help groups, social movement organizations, worker or consumer cooperatives, advocacy organizations or others.

As not-for-profit and voluntary organizations coordinate with outside agencies that are bureaucratic and rely more on professional paid staff than volunteers, these organizations often tend to reproduce conventional hierarchical organizational structures.  As Weber warned almost 100 years ago, this rationalization may replace substantive values with an allegiance to proper form, rules and procedures.  Some of what passes for ‘accountability’ today appears merely to justify procedure over an authentic devotion to substantive purposes.  Concern with efficiency can crowd out devotion to substantive purpose, robbing organizations of creative ideas and individual members of any autonomy in the process.  Yet, this rationalization is hardly an iron law. Some organizations remain more or less value-rational, as Weber termed them. Thus, it seems timely to consider how the substantive values comprise the basis of not-for-profit and voluntary organizations. Among the kinds of questions that would fit this discussion are:

• What does it mean (or should it mean) in terms of organizational form and practice, that an organization is not-for-profit?

• What effects do accountability mechanisms have on the enactment of substantive values?

• How do the age and size of an organization and whether it has paid staff affect the values it effectively pursues?

• What happens when a non-profit organization is shown to have violated its stated values or purposes through corrupt practices (that belie its basic mission)?  How does the organization respond to this information?

• If the basis of non-profit and voluntary organizations is their other-than-profit (substantive) values, then what does this mean for the decision-making structures they choose? For the accountability methods they implement? For their organizational culture?

• Does the whole concept of ‘efficiency’ need to be re-thought in organizations that are, first and foremost, devoted to advancing goals other than profit?  Can their members find sustained sources of satisfaction and meaning in them without recourse to formalization, hierarchy and bureaucracy?  If so, what does this alternative form of management look like?  Do different sorts of not-for-profits require or do best with different sorts of management?  If so, does this suggest a new typology of organizational forms for the not-for-profit and voluntary sector?

• How can efficiency co-exist with high levels of participation and democracy?

• Many rules and procedures in bureaucracies are established in order to address conflicts that may arise.  Can conflicts be just as easily (or more easily) addressed in cooperative, consensus-seeking organizations?  If so, how?

• Does trust (and the social solidarity of participants that comes from mutual trust) play a more fundamental role in not-for-profits than it does in public or for-profit organizations?  Is trust simply more necessary for the smooth and enduring operation of volunteer-based, values-driven organizations?  If so, what are the implications of this for participant involvement and democratic structure of the organization?

• What have we learned about how getting outside money (from the state and/or from for-profit organizations) affects structure and commitment in not-for-profit and social movement organizations?

• What do substantive values such as social justice, peace or human rights imply for the organizational structures that are adopted and/or the organizational cultures that evolve in these democratized organizations?

• Others…

Please note that this call is on a tight deadline. Authors of substantially complete papers on the proposed theme are asked to send abstracts now to the guest editors, Howard Lune (hlune@hunter.cuny.edu) and Edward L. Queen (equeen@emory.edu).

Full papers will be required for blind review by September 30, 2011.

Papers must be submitted to NVSQ using the journal’s manuscript management system at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/nvsq.

Guidelines for submissions may be found at http://www.sp2.upenn.edu/nvsq/submissions.html.

Please note that identifying information for all authors are required on the cover page, and must be removed from all other pages.

N.B.: The cover page must specify that the submission is to be considered for the “Values, Culture, and Democracy in Voluntary and Advocacy Organizations” symposium.

Then nominate yourself for one of the association awards.
See http://www.arnova.org/?section=awards&subsection=index

You may know that one of the benefits of membership in ARNOVA is that you get the first look at the “Call for Participation” in our Annual Conference each year. Attached you will find the Call for the 2011 ARNOVA Conference in Toronto. The Conference will be held from November 17-19, 2011.

Planning is already well underway, and we are excited about what we can do there with the Conference being hosted in one of the great cities of North America. The theme will center on “Diversity in the Voluntary Sector,” building on and connecting to the fact that Toronto is one of the most diverse cities in the world. Please know, however, that papers and panels on a wide range of topics – beyond the theme – will be welcome, as always.

So, please look at this invitation to submit a proposal for ARNOVA 2011. The Call will be distributed more widely at the end of next week, and the system for submitting proposals will open on February 15th. We look forward to another great Conference next November.

Thomas Jeavons

Executive Director

Call for Participation

ARNOVA’s 40th Annual Conference

Diversity in the Voluntary Sector: Who Are the

Participants, Funders, Beneficiaries, and Volunteers?

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

November 17-19, 2011

Challenges and opportunities abound as nations around the world include increasingly diverse populations. Many countries that have long had clear majorities of a single race and/or ethnic background are becoming societies where soon no one group will be able to claim majority status. Societies everywhere now seek creative and constructive ways to integrate persons and communities of many backgrounds and cultures while also trying to preserve and respect the strengths and assets of those persons and cultures. Our meeting site this year, Toronto, exemplifies all this. In recent decades it has come to identify itself as “a city of diversity” and a “cultural mosaic.”

The nonprofit or voluntary sector embraces a societal space where diversity has been critical and visible for a long time. It has been the incubator for organizations formed around ethnic, racial and religious identities. It has been the social space where some groups formed to serve minority communities in need, and assist their integration into a wider society; while other groups formed to preserve their own privileges or interests, and resist integration. It has been the realm where different groups form to promote, challenge or contest different values and visions for society.

Questions of diversity are of central importance for the research and practice of many ARNOVA members. Questions need to be asked about the roles of voluntary organizations in supporting a healthy diversity in society. Questions are asked about these organizations, like: Who participates in the sector? Who funds or finances it? Who serves in it? Who benefits from it? Who has led and will lead it? Are the resources and activities of the sector employed fairly to meet the needs of all? How should these organizations interact with other sectors around these issues?

Exploring questions like these will be one focus for our Conference next November. We hope to frame a conversation on these matters of such importance to our field. One track will be devoted to the Conference theme with the hope of creating shared exploration of the ideas, issues and questions surfaced there.

In addition, ARNOVA’s Annual Research Conference will, as always, be a key opportunity to present and discuss the latest research on the wide range of topics relating to nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, voluntary action and civil society.

The conference committee welcomes proposals addressing a broad variety of topics, in addition to the theme. We invite proposals from all disciplinary (and interdisciplinary) perspectives. We are very interested in international as well as national and local perspectives. Proposals may focus on the entire sector, or on any type of nonprofit or field of activity. We look forward to entertaining a wide variety of proposals, and invite you to submit yours. We particularly welcome younger scholars and members of under-represented groups to make their interests known to the conference organizers so we can include you in our community.

¡ ¡ ¡ Information on Track and the Submission of Proposals Follows¡ ¡ ¡

Proposal Submission Tracks for the 40th Annual ARNOVA Conference

Below are examples of the types of questions that could be considered for each track, but please do not read these suggestions as exclusionary. They are intended only to be illustrative.

§ “The Conference Track” – Diversity and its Implications in the Voluntary Sector. We invite proposals on a wide variety of issues related to this theme. See the previous page.

§ Boards, Governance & Accountability – How are the various ‘governance models’ changing now? What are the strengths and weaknesses of new models? How do nonprofits remain accountable – and to whom – amidst tremendous shifts in funding, expectations and need?

§ Community & Grassroots Organization / Secular & Faith-based – Will social movements gain traction? How are new technologies changing the way “organizing” takes place? Will faith communities increase their involvement in meeting human needs?

§ Effectiveness, Evaluation & Programs – How do we know when nonprofit work is effective? How are evaluation practices and metrics shifting to capture large-scale community change? What kinds of programs are thriving or failing in the “new normal” of this economy?

§ Philanthropy, Foundations, Fundraising & Giving – Are foundations’ roles and practices changing in a new environment? Is individual giving changing in hard times? How are donors and fundraisers shifting their behaviors now?

§ Innovation & Entrepreneurship – Are nonprofits breaking new ground in their approaches to services? Are new (hybrid) organizational forms replacing traditional ones? Do we know if innovation is more effective?

§ Management, Leadership & Strategy – Have hard times changed the approaches to and work of management in voluntary organizations? Are styles of leadership changing? If so, how so, and why? As resources get scarcer are nonprofits finding new ways of working?

§ Public Policy & Law – Presentations can explore the changing roles of and relationships between governments, NGOs and the voluntary sector at all levels – local and state as well as national and international – and a broad spectrum of legal or policy issues for nonprofits.

§ Social Economy – In some countries and communities “social economy” provides a different perspective on meeting community needs? How are social economy organizations contributing to sustainable development? What can be learned from social economy research?

§ Teaching & Education – What is being done to prepare the next generation of nonprofit leaders? Should programs and pedagogy be changing in these times? If so, in what ways?

§ Theory & Methods – Are we seeing new theoretical insights evolve and paradigms shift in these times of broad societal changes? If grassroots civic engagement and networks are becoming more important, can our current organizational models understand these trends?

§ Voluntarism & Volunteering – How is voluntarism changing in the current environment? What new or additional knowledge, skills, and abilities will be needed by volunteers?

Types of Presentations & Submissions:

Proposals can be for individual Papers, Panels (pre-arranged) of 3-4 papers, or Colloquia. Submissions by practitioners and doctoral students engaged in research are also welcome. Panels and Colloquia should (as a rule) involve people from multiple institutions.

The on-line proposal submission system will open February 15, 2011, and close at midnight, March 21. To submit a proposal, you will be able to go to www.arnova.org, and click on the tab that says “Submit a Proposal.” More information about types of sessions and presentations, and about submitting proposals can also be found there – under “Guidelines and Instructions for Proposals” – by February 10. Questions can then be directed to the ARNOVA office at (317) 684-2120, or to conference@arnova.org.”

The question that I would like to raise here is what can we do about this, or things like it? We all recognize the dangers to a free and open civil society when journalists, politicians, and academics are threatened, or worse, for participating in public discourse. Are there things that academics can or should do to encourage greater public support for the basic underpinnings of democracy? Or to support and protect our colleagues?
What are your thoughts?