Why is this Organization Needed?
The Macro View – Meeting the Civic Needs of American Society
People who are concerned with issues such as civic involvement, community engagement, and – dramatically, but truthfully – the future of American democracy – have had an uneasy feeling over the last twenty-five years. Some of the “spirit” that makes The United States of America a great country seemed to be seeping away. We have heard reports about voter apathy, and we've been aware that some civic clubs have been struggling and that attendance has been down at some churches. For the most part, the concern we're discussing has just been a “gut-level” feeling.
In the meantime, organizers of certain types of participatory activities such as modern western square dancing (MWSD), have watched a boom and bust drama unfold.
MWSD enjoyed explosive growth in the decade following World War II with estimates of as many as 6 million participants at its peak. Then, beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, participation began a slow, steady decline. Participants in the programs remained interested and committed, but younger people didn't join in. Clubs aged and dropped from eight squares per evening to six and then five and four and two and now, many of the clubs have disbanded.
Organizers and other people who were closely involved with club square dancing, its glowing success and precipitous decline, were inclined to believe that something was wrong with them or the activity that they represented. Now, they know that they were caught in a sea change that has affected and reverberated throughout American society. Now, they know they are not alone.
Professor Robert D. Putnam of Harvard University, the former head of the Kennedy School of Government, has thoroughly researched and documented a wide range of similar examples of this phenomenon, affecting everything from pleasant pastimes such as card playing and inviting neighbors for dinner to civic issues of great consequence such as voting and personal involvement in democracy. In his book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Dr. Putnam uses the term “social capital” to describe qualities essential to healthy communities and strong democracies.
If you believe in the importance of having a nation of active, involved, community-minded citizens, the results of his research are stark and distressing. The United States of America has made a transition from being a positive paragon of civic virtue to become a country that is threatened with community bankruptcy. Dr. Putnam provides example after example of community and/or civic-oriented activities that grew stronger over the first three-quarters of the 20th Century, and then declined precipitously. For seventy-five years, we evolved an energetic, admirable nation of community builders with vast wealth in social capital. Over the last twenty-five years, we have given away nearly all of the gains that we made.
The idea for the J. Appleseed Foundation was conceived completely independently of his research yet, when his work was called to our attention, it provided an authoritative, thoroughly researched description of the problem that this organization proposes to address.
Dr. Putnam's logic, evidence and conclusions lent academic weight and credence to our “gut level” sense that something is wrong, and that we need to do something about it. For this reason, we have included an extensive synopsis of his work in Appendix B of this proposal (and we encourage anyone who is at all interested in this idea, to read Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community). As a result of his research and analysis, we have a clearer understanding of the overall challenge participatory arts, cultural and leisure organizations face. And more importantly, we have clearer concepts and tools we can use to address the challenge. These include:
- A term, “social capital,” that identifies an underlying value that every participatory arts and leisure organization creates.
- Quantification through scholarly research, the decline in organizational participation that organizers have felt at the “gut level” which show that they are not alone – that the challenges (in some case crises) that they face are not necessarily a function of the value of their activity or a function of their stewardship
- Identification of the major causes of the loss of social capital, thereby clarifying the major challenges organizers must overcome
- A higher mission for everyone involved in these types of activities – they are part of a movement to reverse a serious national decline in civic virtue
We agree with Dr. Putnam's conclusions. We see a serious problem emerging in this country. We believe there is an urgent need to address the problem.
In the closing pages of the last chapter of his book, Dr. Putnam identifies the need for an organization such as the J. Appleseed Foundation when he says: ”If we are to reverse the adverse trends of the last three decades in any fundamental way, the electronic entertainment and telecommunications industry must become a big part of the solution instead of a big part of the problem.” Then he says: “The key, in my view, is to find ways in which Internet technology can reinforce rather than supplant place-based, face-to-face, enduring social networks.” These statements, as you will see, reinforce many aspects of the methodology we propose to pursue in building our organization.
Immediately after the statements quoted above, Dr. Putnam issues a challenge that lies at the heart of the mission of the proposed J. Appleseed project. He says:
- To build bridging social capital requires that we transcend our social and political and professional identities to connect with people unlike ourselves. This is why team sports provide good venues for social-capital creation. Equally important and less exploited in this connection are the arts and cultural activities. Singing together (like bowling together) does not require shared ideology or shared social or ethnic provenance. For this reason, among others, I challenge America's artists, the leaders and funders of our cultural institutions, as well as ordinary Americans: Let us find ways to ensure that by 2010 significantly more Americans will participate in (not merely consume or “appreciate”) cultural activities from group dancing to songfests to community theater to rap festivals. Let us discover new ways to use the arts as a vehicle for convening diverse groups of fellow citizens.
The italics are Dr. Putnam's. The words describe exactly what we propose to do.
Why is This Organization Needed?
The Micro View – Leveling the Playing Field in the Competition between Electronic Media and Participatory Art and Leisure Activities
Consider for a moment, the creative energy and money that is invested in bringing viewers to television screens every night.
Talented writers craft tight provocative messages. Skilled editors craft them into visually interesting exciting television commercials; or produce intriguing radio messages. These messages saturate America, consuming “air time” valued at tens of millions of dollars daily. Meanwhile, well-paid, well-connected public relations professionals craft news releases and arrange interviews on television and radio stations. The Internet contributes its buzz. The daily newspaper provides two or three pages devoted to television. Fan magazines and sections of nearly every major magazine add their encouraging voices.
It is an powerful, deafening, nearly overwhelming force that fills the environment and surrounds people, drawing them on and into the comfort zone of their television sets. It doesn't matter that one message are calls viewers to one program and one to another. The viewer's choice may matter in the network ratings, but not to the overall effect. Take a step back and you see that all this energy and carefully crafted communication has one overarching goal: to get people to sit at home in front of their television set.
And competing against that force we have: Jane Appleseed, armed with eight and half by eleven-inch flyer.
Maybe Ms. Appleseed's book group gets included in the calendar listings of a weekly newspaper. The flyer is posted on the bulletin board in the hall at the local public library. Maybe the event even gets a mention on a nearby campus radio station.
But really, it's not a fair fight. Not even close.
Yet the astonishing thing is, people do come out and participate. People still join book groups. They come to dances and to poetry readings and to chess clubs. Maybe not in the numbers they used to, perhaps not in numbers commensurate with the value of the activity – but they come. This speaks to the inherent strength, beauty, and ultimate value of the activities. They help us engage in life, connect with other people, and live better lives.
The J. Appleseed mission, in summary, is to help the people who organize these activities communicate effectively about the extraordinarily valuable opportunities they offer, and to help them contend with the overwhelming forces they face.
They can't compete toe to toe. They don't have the resources. So they have to be smarter, more agile and more effective. They have to use every ounce of resourcefulness, and along the way, use every tool they can lay their hands on.
The J. Appleseed Foundation will serve as their ally: a reservoir of experience, a mine for ideas, a place to get encouragement, and a convenient, easy-to-use source of organizing tools. Our objective is to provide a set of resources that will allow new activities to take root and grow, and that will allow existing activities to reverse decline, survive and thrive. These resources include:
- An in-depth understanding of the features, advantages and benefits of participatory activities
- Access to modern communication tools
- Coaching in how to use a wide range of low- and no-cost marketing tools effectively and consistently
- “Best practices” in management, from marketing and finding prospective attendees to “wowing them with the experience and forging strong “customer” relationships
Field of Dreams is a lovely movie. But if you want to start a reading group, a new bridge club, a community chorus or a new dance series today, it's not enough to say: “Build it and they will come.”
One of the great ironies of working to build a participatory activity today is that you can “build it” and you can get a lot of people to come try an activity one time. And they may have a wonderful time – they'll tell you that and you'll know, from their involvement, they're honestly telling you how they feel. And even after they've been shown a wonderful time: they may never come back.
Our philosophy, therefore, is to confront the challenge of building participatory involvement for what it is: a tremendously complex, difficult, long-term task. Our organization will provide organizers with support, advice, tools, recommendations on tactics that work, innovative promotional ideas, planning templates, communications tools, strategies for strengthening relationships with participants, tools for gathering feedback to help make the event even better – everything we can collectively think of to help the participatory activity organizers of the world succeed.
Time for Action: The Window of Opportunity
The business community has developed sophisticated market research and marketing communications capabilities in order to compete, survive and thrive in today's media-saturated marketplace. Billions of dollars are spent on public relations activities, advertising space and media time, to attempt to guide people toward specific uses of their leisure time.
Recently, the competition for people's attention has become so fierce and media communication channels have become so diverse (cable TV, the Internet), that consumer marketing has embraced alternate strategies: network marketing, guerilla marketing and public relations campaigns designed to create “buzz.”
This represents a major change in our culture. We are moving from an environment in which one could “buy” instant awareness via network television with a big advertising budget toward an environment that challenges all the assumptions of mass marketing due to increasingly fragmented mass media audiences.
This weakening of the grip of mass media provides us with a window of opportunity for participatory arts and leisure activities. Additionally, several other current social trends also support the idea that the time may be right for cultivation of participatory arts and leisure groups:
- Greater awareness and interest in personal health, both physical (participatory dance activities) and mental (other forms of personal expression such as music)
- Growing population of older citizens and need for appropriate recreational activities
- Interest in family-oriented activities
- Need for ways to establish create a sense of community
- Need for ways to form social relationships (dissatisfaction with singles bars, for example)
To generalize, it seems that conditions are favorable for the growth of healthy, personally satisfying, participatory arts and leisure communities. It is an environment in which an organization dedicated to the creation and development of participatory arts and leisure organizations could play a significant role.
Purpose
The purpose of the J. Appleseed Foundation is to encourage and facilitate the growth of organizations that sponsor participatory – face-to-face – arts and leisure-time cultural activities.
We will fulfill our purpose by:
- Supporting individual initiatives and encouraging group leadership
- Facilitating communication between organizers, via the Internet and in person
- Providing organizers with resources and tools
- Promoting awareness of key issues, educating the public and conducting research
There are two principle reasons for creating an organization with this purpose.
First, it benefits the organizations and all the people involved in the organizations by making it easier, more fun and more rewarding to be involved in the art or activity.
Second, by supporting these types of participatory organizations, we will encourage civic engagement and create valuable Social Capital that will benefit participants, communities and the nation as a whole. (Please see Appendix B for an explanation of Social Capital and its benefits.)
Constituencies
In its first phase of development, the organization will provide direct support and services to activity organizers. In the future, we hope to expand our services to encompass activity participants, and eventually, public outreach.
From the outset, the organization will provide indirect support to people of all ages, races and walks of life by encouraging “average” people to participate in activities ranging from book groups and square dancing to bridge clubs and quilting circles.
Participatory arts and leisure-time cultural activities encompass a wide range of “folk” arts, popular and classical arts, crafts, creative expression of all types, interest groups, hobbyists, and fans of other types of recreational activity that involve group participation. Potentially, anyone could become a constituent of our organization.
The types of activities we will encourage share the following general characteristics:
- Activities that have a low entry barrier – if someone wants to participate and is willing to try – he or she will be encouraged to join in and participate.
- Activities that are inclusive – allowing people with average, little or no both experience to become engaged and participate in an appropriate, personally rewarding way.
- Activities that can be thought of as lifetime, and intergenerational, pursuits – people of all ages participating and, in general, people of all ages participating at the same time.
- Activities that are, in general, organized by small groups of advocates or aficionados (the “organizers”) who want to share their enthusiasm, encourage participation and who are motivated by their enjoyment of the activity.
The limitations on direct support of organizers/activities are:
- Activities must be non-political.
- Activities must be non-sectarian in nature and not designed to proselytize. While we believe we can fairly support programs sponsored by faith-based organizations, the activities themselves must be open to the public and focused on the activity.
- Activities must be not-for-profit. Although a profit-making organization might sponsor or underwrite an activity, the organizing group must be independent, open to the public and genuinely activity focused.
Our approach to serving this potentially vast constituency is to offer a three-stage plan that will gradually increase the number of “roles” (job descriptions) of people we serve as well as the number of interest areas (if this were a business, we might say “market segments”). Each phase of development will meet the needs of a new, larger group of constituents. Additionally, as we intend to address the need for face-to-face communication between people, we will also include regional “market” component to our development.
n Initially, we will focus on organizers – the people who start and maintain the groups that sponsor these activities
n To a small degree in the first phase of development, and much more in the second phase, we will offer additional services that directly touch activity participants
n The third and final stage of development, we will expand to include services valuable to organizers, participants and to the general public
Phase 1 Development:
Establishing an Online Presence
and Prototyping the Organizational Concept
To fulfill its mission, the J. Appleseed Foundation will require the ability engage and communicate with people with a wide range of experience in organizing activities, and give them the ability to communicate with each other and with new organizers who are interested in establishing similar organizations. Since we are operating on an extremely limited budget, we will need to do this as economically as possible.
Our experience has shown that the kinds of people we want to involve in this organization are generally willing to share their experience generously. Also, based on our experience in some interest areas, the great majority of the people we want to engage do have e-mail capability.
We believe there is great potential for the creation of an organization that will initially be Internet-based and which will, as it evolves, encourage face-to-face, participatory activities and itself become, to a significant degree, “face-to-face” organization.
The evolution of the organization as we project it for Phase 1 development will be:
n Information and Development Web Site
n Virtual Community Linked by E-Mail with Web-Based Interface
n Web-Based Resource Center
The initial “information and development” web site is already in existence and was used in the development of this proposal. It provided the initial group of project participants with a discussion forum and ongoing access to the proposal as it evolved.
Many parts of the Internet-based component of the organization are, in terms of today's web technology, familiar and straightforward. The “virtual community,” however, is a much more complex idea. It may use a web site to allow participants to enroll, but it is not just a web site. It will rely on e-mail discussion lists as a communication medium, but it's not just another listserve. The communication will be available to future users, but it is not just an archive or database. Our goal is to create something that truly reflects many of the ideal characteristics of a real, face-to-face community, even though initially it will exist only on the Internet.
Phase 1 Development:
The Virtual Community
The first focus of the J. Appleseed organization is on the creation of a “virtual community,” accessible through an Internet web site or by directly e-mail, which will provide a unique communication nexus and will support all of our additional activities. Because of the central, essential role that it plays, it is worth spending time here to explain the concept in some detail.
The principal members of the J. Appleseed virtual community will be “organizers:” people who are: actively running groups, serving on boards or committees, thinking about starting groups, struggling to promote groups or who are experienced in ways that may be beneficial to others and who are willing to share their experience or expertise.
They will also have access to basic e-mail service. E-mail discussion groups – electronic mailing lists that allow users to send an e-mail message to one address and have it relayed to all the subscribers in the group – provide the core communication medium for the organization. Organizer/subscribers will be able to join the lists via e-mail or through a web page interface, and subscribers will have a range of options to choose that will give them control over the frequency and number of messages they receive.
The Two-Dimensional Interest Matrix
The people who join the J. Appleseed organization will, in general, be interested in some specific activity when they join. They might be interesting in participatory dance of some type, or reading groups and poetry circles and similar “writing” activities. We can think of these as vertical groups: people with a central interest in a type of activity and a wide range of experience, roles and skills.
As we create the community, we will organize these people on a second dimension, based on a different set of broad criteria. Initially, this could be keyed to the types of people that the organizers are trying to recruit to participate in their activities. These could be thought of as demographic criteria: two obvious examples being “children” and “senior citizens.” Other criteria could be a job description such as activity director, or an organizational involvement such as a civic clubs or educational institutions.
We can think of these as horizontal groups.
Part of our efforts will include outreach to people with a horizontal interests who don't have a specific vertical focus: recreation directors, for example, or parents who are home schooling their children.
Our very minimal initial membership requirements will ask our members to participate in two e-mail discussion groups: one vertical and one horizontal. For example, the organizer of a new dance group, primarily interested in the vertical dance group, might decide to participate in the “children” group. A social director for a senior community, principally interested in “any” activity for her constituents, might decide to participate in the reading/writing activity group.
The result will be a two-dimension grid of interconnections, with each crossing point representing a possible source of synergy – unanticipated interaction, which could lead to new ideas for growth. (See figure 1)
Figure 1: Two-dimensional Interest Matrix
A = Primary Vertical/Horizontal Interest Area
B = Potential Points of Synergy
Adding A Geographic Dimension:
The Two-Dimensional Community Matrix
In creating our virtual community, we will also ask our participants to provide a real, physical location. This will be used for communication that ultimately will address regional issues and lead to face-to-face interaction.
While discussion list communities frequently do organize real-world gatherings, we will use our geographic data very selectively, to encourage this type of interaction. We can use it to promote events or programs that we believe will be of interest to subscribers in a region. We can also use it to promote J. Appleseed gatherings. The result be another set of relationships within the matrix (See Figure 2).
Figure 2: Two-dimensional Community Matrix
H = Primary Vertical/Horizontal Interest Area
N = Neighbors – Additional Points of Possible Face-to-Face Synergy
The Fabric of the Virtual/Physical Community
When we combine the communication potential of the virtual and physical community criteria, it creates rich tapestry for potential interaction and action. When you realize that each “home” intersection on the diagram has the kind of potential for interaction that is shown in the following illustration, you can see that this virtual/physical community has tremendous potential as a valuable information resource and social capital building mechanism.
Figure 3: Three-dimensional Matrix:
This diagram is a representation of the interaction potential of only one member of the community. The total number of individual interaction points must be multiplied by the number of members in the community to provide an indication of the total communication potential
Phase 1 Development
Web-Based Resources
The J. Appleseed web site will also serve as an online source for education, templates, customizable text and materials directly related to activities.
Tutorials: The J. Appleseed community will, over time, identify certain areas where any organizer can use a fairly fixed set of instructions – follow a formula – in order to accomplish certain objective. The web site will provide this kind of “tutorial,” a combination of instructions, forms, checklists and related information, that the user can work through to accomplish the goal. This can be thought of as an expansion and enhancement of the typical Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQ) provided by many discussion lists and web sites.
n In Phase 1, we anticipate providing three such tutorials:
n How to establish a 501(c) 3 non-profit corporation
n How to create a marketing plan for your activity
As the virtual community evolves, we may identify other topics that will lend themselves to this type of presentation and they will be added as needs are identified in Phases 2 and 3.
File downloads: The web site will also offer a location for members to download files. It will provide a library structure where files can be organized and placed, descriptions of the material for searches and reference, and mechanisms for downloading them.
This information will include information for organizers (examples of constitutions and by-laws, news releases, flyers, etc.) as well as resources to assist in conducting the activity (sheet music, discussion guides, sample programs, etc.)
The content of the resource library will ultimately be determined by the community. As information is shared, people will volunteer to supply these types of items. The web site will organize, house and enable more people to share them.
Links: In Phase 1, the web site will also provide web links to other helpful resources. Like the library of downloadable resources, the links will be identified primarily by the members of the community. The web site will provide organization, annotation and periodic testing to serve members and casual visitors.
Phase 2 and Phase 3 Development:
Extending J. Appleseed's Electronic Resources
In the Phase 2 development of the organization, the web site will be enhanced to turn it into an Application Service Provider (ASP) for member/organizers. We anticipate the development of a number of web-based applications that will be tailored to the needs of the organization's members. Indeed, the Phase 1 members will be integral in designing the applications and many will serve as beta testers.
The benefits of providing Internet-based management applications for the types of groups we will be serving are numerous. They include:
n Low cost: the applications will be available free to member organizers
n Ease of transferring responsibilities: when a committee chair changes, all that will be required will be to exchange passwords – no transfer of physical files or concerns about software
n Secure: the system will assure the organization that the records are properly stored, backed up and available, protected against computer crashes and loss of information even if a volunteer just disappears, failing to fulfill his/her responsibility
n Ease of use: everything will be browser-based and easy to use
In Phase 2, the “Management Applications” we anticipate adding would be:
n Membership management: keeping track of members, contact information and status
n Member communication: the ability to communicate quickly and efficiently by e-mail or by mail (mailing labels)
n Accounting & financial Management: A simple accounting system that will allow an organization treasurer to maintain appropriate financial records for a small, non-profit organization
We will continue to augment our web-based resources. Tutorials that we may be able to offer would support our services and could include topics such as:
n The Ins and Outs and Realities of Insurance
n How to manage the finances of a non-profit organization
The Mature Organization: A Complete Service Center
Projecting further into the development of the organization, we anticipate enhancing the existing applications and adding additional services such as:
n Enhanced accounting and financial management tools
n Membership payment (to the activity/organization) & fundraising tools
n Online publicity information (media address and contact information)
n Research: participant satisfaction data collection to provide action-oriented feedback to the groups (information they can use to increase participation) and, though relationships with academic resources, to provide data relevant to the study of social capital.
National Outreach
We also anticipate having the ability to offer a special service that would be available to the general public: a searchable national directory of participatory art and leisure activities. For organizers, it would allow any appropriate group to register and provide descriptive information through J. Appleseed or a link to the organization's dedicated information/schedule site.
For the public, it would provide a nationwide reference source. Anyone would be able to go to the directory and enter basic search criteria – a zip code for example – and be able to locate all the bridge clubs within a radius they chose, or all the Tuesday night reading groups in an area, or all the participatory activities available for children in a town. This directory would be a place people could go to easily and quickly find alternatives to television, singles bars or loneliness.
Creating Social Capital in Person
The Internet is a vital tool that will be used extensively by the J. Appleseed Foundation. Our ultimate goal, however, will always be encouraging the face-to-face interaction that occurs in the kind of participatory activities we are supporting.
Part of our ongoing mission, from the inception of the organization, is to encourage that kind of in-person interaction among organizers, and to use J. Appleseed itself as a catalyst for local, regional and national interpersonal engagement.
During Phase 1, the principle person-to-person, participatory interaction generated by J. Appleseed will be among the developers and a core group of organizers and advisors. The end result of Phase 1 development, the creation of the Phase 1 web site, will through fulfillment of its mission, produce a small, but we believe significant, amount of participatory interaction.
Significant face-to-face social capital building will begin in earnest during Phase 2 of the growth of the organization. We anticipate interpersonal interaction on two levels.
First, the developers and directors of J. Appleseed will begin meeting with and forming relationships with leaders, directors and members of other organizations which are either allied in their mission or which may benefit from J. Appleseed services. We could expect, for example, that people from J. Appleseed would seek out and take advantage of opportunities to meet activity organizers at conventions, festivals, chapter meetings and other gatherings.
Using the “Virtual” Community to Organize “Real” Meetings
Second, we will take advantage of our ability to communicate on a geographic basis, and plan J. Appleseed gatherings. These could rage from a gathering of a handful of people in one or two communities for a potluck dinner, to holding a mini-convention (a special program for J. Appleseed members) at an event like a regional folk festival. (This type of program could bring “members” together and, at the same time, introduce newcomers to the organization).
The precise size and nature of these types of face-to-face meetings will be determined through experience; the key point to make at this time is that a commitment to face-to-face, participatory gatherings is essential to the full realization of the J. Appleseed mission. This is not an Internet-only organization. We believe that by creating an effective virtual community, we will be able to lay the foundation for a strong, vibrant community of real people meeting friends, colleagues and neighbors.
As we find ways to encourage face-to-face interaction and forge personal relationships, we believe it will be possible, over time, to plan to have major regional and even national gatherings. Possibly these will be held in conjunction with special events or the gathering of some allied organization(s); or with sufficient growth, the organization may grow to the point where it can host it's own conventions. At this point, we can't project how this will evolve, but we can anticipate that it will be an organizational goal.
Products and Services
What do Rotary International, Wal-Mart and Modern Western Square Dancers know about making it easy to talk to other people, that most organizations don't know?
Wear nametags. It makes it much easier to get to know a person if you can address him or her by name. Knowing other people's names is the first step toward establishing a community, a real human relationship and ultimately, friendship.
In the no- and low-budget world of activities that J. Appleseed supports, nametags are one of the simplest, most effective ways people in an organization can create social capital. As one of its founding tenants, J. Appleseed will serve as a nametag advocate and advisor, offering ideas for creative, inexpensive ways to make attractive nametags, maintain them and encourage their use. Our initial “product” that we will offer members will be a special magnetic “clip” that can be used with nearly any kind of nametag, that's quick and easy to put on and won't damage clothing.
Evolution, Growth and Service Offerings
Along with nametag resources, we will look for other merchandise or services that we can offer that will directly impact the ability of organizers to establish and grow their organizations. Our criteria will include items that help J. Appleseed in its outreach, or items that will be of direct benefit to our organizer/members. These would include things such as:
Wearables: As J. Appleseed begins to participate in festivals and activities, we anticipate providing a small line of classic wearables – T-shirts, caps, tote bags and such, that can raise the organization's visibility.
Publications: As the organization grows and establishes strengths in certain areas, we anticipate producing a limited number of publications that will either focus on:
n General skills that support the overall mission
n Organizing skills/experiences related to specific activities
n Resource material related to specific activities
These publications will be digitally archived, and will probably be printed (or duplicated in the case of audio recordings) on demand. While it is possible that all of this type of material could be maintained and distributed via the web site, we believe that actual publications and recordings still have special impact and provide tangible and intangible benefits that web-only communication cannot match.
Our objective is to be as effective as possible. We believe that to achieve that goal, we will, at some point, become publishers of materials that will help organizers or strengthen our bonds with members and participants.
Services: We will investigate opportunities to set up shared resources for things such as insurance. Many venues require groups to provide proof of insurance before they can rent a facility: we would work with other consolidators to provide reasonably priced group insurance for them. As the organization evolves, we will seek out other possible areas where we could provide similar, group-rate benefits.
Information and Advocacy
From its inception, J. Appleseed must be viewed as an advocacy organization that supports participatory arts and leisure, and by extension, awareness and understanding of the concept and benefits of Social Capital.
With this in mind, we will ally ourselves with organizations that are identified with Social Capital such as bettertogether.org and bowlingalone.org, linking to them and encouraging organizers and members to visit them and take advantage of their resources.
We see ourselves as champions of non-political and non-sectarian civic engagement. That will be an ongoing theme through our web site and all other forms of interaction.
J. Appleseed Media and Messages
During the evolution of the organization, we anticipate two major communication initiatives. The first will be an ongoing, web-based newsletter, highlighting ideas, developments and successes of the J. Appleseed community. The design of the J. Appleseed Journal will be such that it will be publishable as an e-mail newsletter or as hardcopy to a limited number of subscribers. We will use the Journal as a means to keeping key supporters, advocates, key media contacts and others advised of the organization's activities and progress.
A significant part of our communication outreach will involve building relationships, and when possible, alliances with other organization and potential allies. We believe that there will be great potential for mutually beneficial involvement with:
n Other Not-for Profit Organizations with Congruent Goals and Objectives
n Public Libraries
n Independent Bookstores
n Newspapers
A Seond, High-Profile Cause
Our second communications initiative will be small, ongoing commitment to “Plug-In Drug Awareness” programs. We will ally ourselves with organizations that promote awareness of negative impacts of television, video games and the Inter(tainment)net, and we will encourage grassroots awareness of the issues involved with our members.
As advocates of participatory activities battle for the hearts, minds and time of the American public, television and its offspring are our single most powerful adversary. While we cannot devote excessive energy toward a negative force, we owe it to our members to provide factual data (know thy enemy). And we can afford to add our small voice to support existing Plug-In Drug Awareness programs.
A number of factors suggest to us that this effort should be undertaken:
The facts – everthing we know about the effect of teleivision watching on people
The potential for getting the attention of some types of media such as newspapers,
The intimate relationships between television watching and declining participation in so many activities
The tremendous need for public education on this topic
We believe we should, at a minimum, start planting seeds that may, over time, mature into a force that can offset in some small way, the overwhelming power of television in our society. Our organizations do it indirectly, by providing an alternative. We believe it's also appropriate to address the challenge head-on.
Metrics: Looking at Ways
We Can Measure Success
As the J. Appleseed organization evolves, we will have several statistical measurements we will be able to use to track growth and the success of our organization. Additionally, we will develop programs that will measure, at least in part, the direct impact of the organization on the public. Following is an overview of the measurements we anticipate using as the organization evolves:
Phase 1
n List subscribers/members
n List statistics/message count
n Overall Web site statistics
Phase 2
Phase 1 measurements plus:
n New interest groups (created though subscriber demand)
n New group activities (as reported by list members)
n Number of times organization participates in festivals, conventions or other large gatherings
n Number of people engaged at festivals, conventions or other large gatherings
n Face-to-face member meetings
Phase 3
Phase 1 and Phase 2 measurements plus:
n Increased participation in existing activities (as part of ongoing reporting/research information system)
n Organizational memberships (paid)
n Annual meeting/convention attendance
n Fundraising success
Staffing
The J.Appleseed Foundation is an all-volunteer organization with information technology and web site development services provided by professional service firms that will make adding, updating and maintenance functions accessible via browser to volunteers.
During the Phase 2 development, we hope to engage one full time employee, and to be able to offer expense reimbursement to volunteers who will represent the organization at festivals and other face-to-face meeting opportunities. Information technology and web site development will continue to be provide by professional service providers who will continue to make the maintenance functions accessible to volunteers.
During Phase 3 development, we hope to expand the staff to include two or three full-time equivalent employees. We will continue to pay expenses for representatives at meetings and conferences. We will continue to outsource information technology functions.
Working Methodology
Volunteers, probably the members of the initial board of directors for the organization, will work though the process of establishing the organization. We will seek pro bono assistance from professionals such as attorneys and accountants to help work through the incorporation process.
On the operations side, the people we are seeking to involve in development of this organization are technology-aware and equipped. In many instances, people with an exceptional about of computer programming and web site development expertise are involved and willing to contribute their expertise.
When you look at the success of development efforts in the “open source” programming community such as the creation of the Linux operating system, it is clear that an interactive “virtual” community can be extremely effective and successful. Our effort will involve working to create a similar kind of working community.
Our approach to developing the web site will be to use seed money to pay for professional web designers to create the initial framework for the site, designing it in such a way that volunteers will be able to easily add content and continue the development.
We will rely on professional service providers for hosting, communication and backups.
Expense Planning
Grant request is for funds to be used in Phase 1 to:
n Purchase domain name
n Pay incorporation fees
n Develop web site
n Purchase listserve (e-mail discussion list) software
n Pay for web hosting and communication access
n Memberships in key organizations such as the National Folk Alliance, the Country Dance and Song society, and the Lloyd Shaw Foundation.
n Pay for “announcement” advertising in key participatory arts journals
Expense plan to come.
Appendix A
What's In a Name?
J. Appleseed is a spiritual descendent of one of best known figures in American history; yet a person who we know remarkably little about.
Johnny Appleseed was, in the words of Pete Seeger:
“. . . a real flesh-and-blood man – John Chapman, born in 1776 in Massachusetts; died in Indiana 1847. When hardly out of his teens, he got the wanderlust and joined other pioneers with their clumsy wagons lumbering over the rocky forest trails to western Pennsylvania. There he hit upon the scheme of starting an apple nursery to supply farms with their first orchards. He footed it east to the cider mills, begged for the pressed pulp, separated and dried the seeds, and started back with his precious cargo.”
“For fifty years he traveled back and forth, trading a night's lodgings for seeds or seedlings. Many thought him eccentric, thousands loved him, but all recognized the practicality of his system. He refused to carry a gun, became friends with Indians, and transmitted their lore of healing herbs to the new settlers. A letter writer for the illiterate, a librarian who loaned books as he traveled his route, he became also an abolitionist in later years, helping runaway slaves escape to Canada by the Underground Railroad. It is said that he knew Abe Lincoln in Illinois. He never married and early sold the only home he ever had. After he died such a legend sprang up a out him that many today think he is pure myth.”
In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes the personality types that contribute to positive “social epidemics” such as the effect of Sesame Street on early childhood education. He identifies three key archetypes: connectors, mavens and salesmen and theorizes about the roles that they play in the process of introducing, exciting and educating an entire society. By Gladwell's definitions, John Chapman was a connector, maven and salesman rolled into one. In his impact on frontier America, John Chapman – Johnny Appleseed – provides an vivid example of the application of the law of the few: one man with a tangible legacy of tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of fruit-bearing trees in addition to an immeasurable human legacy that elevated him to mythic stature.
Pete Seeger, using the pen name Johnny Appleseed Jr., is another connector/maven/salesman whose life work resulted in the growth of culture and consciousness that affected at least two generations of Americans.
In a column written in 1954, he said:
“This column is dedicated to Johnny Appleseed Jrs. – the thousands of boys and girls who today are using their guitars and their songs to plant the seeds of a better tomorrow in their homes across our land. They are lovers of folk songs and the best of our heritage of the past, and they are creating a new folklore, a basis for a people's culture of tomorrow. For if the radio, the press, and all the large channels of mass communication are closed to their songs of freedom, friendship and peace, they must go from house to house, from school and camp to church and clambake.
“This column aims to print news of and for these modern Johnny Appleseeds. I have met them in every state of the union, playing their guitars and building a new folklore out of the best of the old.”
Seeger and his contemporaries, Woody Guthrie, Huddie Ledbetter and others, planted seeds. Those seeds have taken root. If you travel around the country, you can find small, carefully tended gardens of music and song and dance in hundreds of locations. The next generation – hundreds of John and Jane Appleseeds, are carrying on the work involved in creating live, participatory music and dance activities.
The J. Appleseed in the name of this proposed organization stands for John or Jane Appleseed: any of the hardworking heirs of this legacy who are working to plant the seeds of participatory arts and leisure and help them grow.
Appendix B
Bowling Alone: A Synopsis and Observations
I. Introduction
Dr. Robert Putnam begins his book with anecdotal evidence of a profound change in American society: the decline of many types of social activities such as bridge clubs, women's groups and bowling leagues, that where once central to the community life of its citizens. He introduces the concept of Social Capital as a measure of civic involvement and a way to study these possible changes.
II. Trends in Civic Engagement and Social Capital
The author examines a number of areas of American life such as voting, civic participation, religious participation, informal socializing, volunteerism and philanthropy, and identifies a general trend in most of them.
There is an upward trend during the first half of the 20th century, tempered in many instances by the Great Depression, which produces a dip in the upward curve. The curve continues upward after World War II and in many instances, accelerates. Then, toward the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, the curve begins a sharp decline. In example after example, Putnam tracks various types of civic virtues through the same disturbing pattern. The examples he uses include:
n Voting
n Citizen participation in Campaign Activities
n Attendances at a political rally or speech
n Service as an officer of a club or organization
n Membership in Chapter-based Organizations
n Participation in PTA/PTO
n Church attendance
n Union membership
n Membership rate in professional organizations
n Family dinners
n Social visiting
n Card playing and other leisure activities
n League bowling
n Philanthropy
n Trust
The author provides illuminating insights and observations; discusses anomalies to the trend and generally, provides an extremely reasonable, scholarly picture. The overall effect is to give the reader a clear understanding that the anecdotal evidence of a serious decline in all the factors that make up “community” in our minds can be substantiated.
III. Why
The author identifies four major sources for the decline. Three are ones we might guess, the fourth, less intuitive, is even more significant.
The three most evident sources for the decline are:
n Pressures of time and money (the two-earner family)
n Mobility and sprawl (disintegration of neighborhoods, urban sprawl, commuting)
n Technology and mass media (television, television, television and the Internet)
One of the more interesting aspects of Putnam's analysis of these factors is the extent to which, in documenting their impact on people's behavior, he also illuminates many of the false assumptions that underlie them. In considering the impact of time pressures, for example, the author's research shows that men and women in 1995 generally had significantly more “free time” than their counterparts in 1965. Putnam looks at the behavior of affluent, non-working women, and documents a “dropout rate” from civic engagement that is nearly equal to the decline in the general population.
In assessing the effects of mobility and sprawl, Putnam identifies commuting as an important factor in the decline of civic engagement. It represents lost time and a loss of connectedness between the work and home. In his analysis, he assigns some responsibility to the shift to suburban lifestyles – but less than we might imagine.
In his discussion of the impact of Technology and Mass Media, Putnam finds another extremely significant factor/symptom of civic decline: television.
Considered in combination with a score of other factors that predict social participation (including education, generation, gender, region, size of hometown, work obligations, marriage, children, income, financial worries, religiosity, race, geographic mobility, commuting time, homeownership, and more) dependence on television for entertainment is not merely a significant predictor of civic disengagement. It is the single most consistent predictor that I have discovered. (Putnam, p. 230-231)
Putnam's discussion of the effects of television is illuminating and disturbing. He marshals an array of evidence that points to television viewing as major source of civic decay. After reviewing a wide range of research concerning television viewing, Putnam says the results appear to be that “heavy television watching probably increases aggressiveness (although perhaps no actual violence, that it probably reduced school achievement and that it is statistically associated with 'psychosocial malfunctioning,' although how much of this effect is self-selecting and how much causal remains controversial. Heavy television watching by young people is associated with civic ignorance, cynicism and lessened political involvement in later years, along with reduced academic achievement and lower earnings later in life.” (Putnam, p. 237)
Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence pointing toward television as, in effect, a plug-in drug, Putnam says: “Correlation, however, does not prove causation.” In his conclusion on the effects of television and electronic media on civic engagement, Putnam says: “At the very least television and its electronic cousins are willing accomplices in the civic mystery we have been unraveling, and more likely than not, they are ringleaders.” (Putnam, P. 249)
Statistically, the most important factor in the decline of civic engagement over the last quarter century has been, in Putnam's term, “generational succession.” He traces the greater portion of the many increases and declines he has documented to the involvement of the “long civic generation” born between 1910 and 1940 and its passing. It was a generation that attended grade school during the Great Depression and spent World War II in high school or on the battlefield, Putnam says. In his chapter From Generation to Generation, he compares this generation with its successors and concludes that generation change is the largest single cause of the last quarter century of civic disengagement.
IV. So What?
Does the decline in Social Capital matter. Putnam says it does, and offers a strong case for the importance of this matter and why we ought to be concerned and take action to try to reverse the trend. The benefits of Social Capital he cites include:
n Allowing citizens to resolve collective problems m
