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Friends & Neighbors

Friends & Neighbors

What’s Complicated About a Pocket Park?

Janis Foster Richardson -
What could be complicated about a pocket park? I am digging into that question to explore some of the ways we can over-think, over-judge, over-complicate and get in our own way as big thinkers about small grants — unaware of...
Friends & Neighbors

Transforming a Dysfunctional Legal System

J. Kim Wright -
I started law school in 1987. I was 29 years old and married with a blended family of seven kids at home. We were politically and socially active, making a difference in our community. My husband was sometimes arrested...
Friends & Neighbors

Escaping to Freedom of Association and Neighborliness

John McKnight -
In his groundbreaking study of American associational life (Bowling Alone, 2000), Robert Putnam found that until the late 1960s, Americans' participation in associational life steadily increased. Beginning in the 70s, this participation began a decline that continues to this...
Friends & Neighbors

20 Things You Can Do When You Know Someone’s Gift

Bruce Anderson -
Introduce the person to others by first describing his/her gift. Ask the person to tell you about people they have met who they think have a similar gift. Ask the person to tell you a story about a...
Friends & Neighbors

Nourishing America

Zoe S. Erler -
“We are not just what we eat but how we eat,” says John Schwenkler, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University, in a recent article on nourishing America from The Philanthropic Enterprise’s Trends in Innovation series. Americans...
Friends & Neighbors

Framing for Change: How We Tell Our Story Matters

Doyle Canning -
These days, the big issues of our time are digested and disseminated by cable news, internet blogs, and tweets—and repeated by everyday people in our common conversations. But the choices about how that digestion happens—about how big stories are...
Friends & Neighbors

The Economy: Under New Ownership

Marjorie Kelly -
Pushing my grocery cart down the aisle, I spot on the fruit counter a dozen plastic bags of bananas labeled “Organic, Equal Exchange.” My heart leaps a little. I’d been thrilled, months earlier, when I found my local grocer...
Friends & Neighbors

A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life

Jill J. Jensen -
The challenge of modern life seems to be to learn how to cope with paradox and the sense of crazy-making it can produce. News reports are filled with horrendous tales that portray the most unpredictable elements of nature and...
Friends & Neighbors

Harnessing and Harvesting “The Ignorant Perfection of Ordinary People”

April Doner -
Last week, I drove with friends and colleagues from Indianapolis to Cincinnati to attend the three-day Connecting4Community (“C4C”) conference, “a powerful gathering of master and apprentice change agents and social entrepreneurs across sectors and communities, from around the world.” I came for...
Friends & Neighbors

Seeing Blue

Edd Conboy -
When Edd Conboy took over orchestrating the Breaking Bread meals at Broad Street Ministry in Philadelphia, he focused on developing as many ways as possible to counteract the constant messages about scarcity that their guests encounter each and every...
Friends & Neighbors

Measuring and Evaluating Community Initiatives

Peter Block -
Download or listen to John and Peter's April 16 conversation with Tom Dewar on different ways of thinking about what local initiatives mean and how to support them. Tom is the co-director of the Aspen Institute’s Roundtable on Community Change.As a...
Friends & Neighbors

“The Well” ~ A Symbol of Healthy Community

Jeffrey Bordelon -
The I Ching is an ancient Chinese book of 64 oracular readings that reflect enduring wisdom that predates and includes Confucianism and Taoism. The readings consist of archetypal circumstances with guidance on how the individual may act in harmony...
Friends & Neighbors

Love Letters to Strangers

Hannah Brencher -
In October 2010 Hannah Brencher had recently moved to New York City. She was feeilng lonely and depressed when her heart one day was touched by a sad-looking woman she saw on the subway. She started writing a letter to...
Friends & Neighbors

Strengthening Government and Community through Genuine Partnerships

Jim Diers -
Local governments everywhere tend to think of their jurisdictions as places and people with needs. They seek to address these needs by relying on tax revenues and bureaucratic expertise. Such a top-down approach may be appropriate at times, but...
Friends & Neighbors

Pay It Forward

Jill J. Jensen -
For years, Hollywood has found inspiration in books. While not all film adaptations do justice to the source material, many expand on the original in ways that create new and compelling experiences of their own. Pay It Forward is such a...
Friends & Neighbors

Together? Tis the Season

Paul Born -
Thanksgiving, Diwali, Christmas, Hanukkah, Ashura, Bodhi…these are just some of the seasonal celebrations that bring people together to remember, celebrate and enjoy each other. For people like me, who has a community and people to be happy with, it...
Friends & Neighbors

Out of Chaos

Sarah van Gelder -
I wrote this piece for the very first issue of the new YES! and it struck me as worth revisiting. What's your take? Do you see possibilities in a time of chaos? There are times in history when two eras—with...
Friends & Neighbors

The Classic Duo

Dan Duncan -
Local governments can create effective community change. How? By becoming community engagement organizations and bringing the community together — residents, associations, nonprofits, the business community and government — to act collectively as coproducers of their community's well-being. Using results-based accountability (RBA) coupled...
Friends & Neighbors

The Possibility of Sustainable Communities

Jeffrey Bordelon -
When we hear the term “sustainable communities” in general it refers to the Triple Bottom Line of Social, Economic and Environmental interests at the “community scale.” For our purposes in discussing sustainable (or resilient) communities, the focus is on...
Friends & Neighbors

44 Ways to Build Community

Abundant Community -
This thought-and action-provoking list of simple ways to build community is a poster circulating on the Internet. We found it on the Facebook page of GoodSamMinistries of Holland, MI. Home page image: Leo  Reynolds
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Association449Gifts449Cooperation430Local Economy296Care of People on the Margin275Raising Children257Hospitality246Generosity215Safety205Health203Food195Land/Environment191

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Latest ThinkingSteve Dubb -

Corporate Capture: Can We Find a Way Out?

This article, published originally by Nonprofit Quarterly, from Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine’s summer 2024 issue, “Escaping Corporate Capture.” The aircraft manufacturer Boeing,...
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