Can a “new normal” help make the impossible… possible?
Normal. What a complicated word that has become for me.
For some people, perhaps it was always complicated. What does “normal” mean anyway? What should it mean? Who gets to decide?
And then, when the status quo (aka “normal”) is in total upheaval, much of what many of us thought, knew, felt, or believed to be true is suddenly… maybe not so certain.
World-altering events seem to be unfolding around us on a more-regular-than-usual basis. The words “new normal” have been swirling around a lot recently, and to be sure, the way we live our lives is changing. This can feel scary — both because it’s uncomfortable, and also because it can feel like we’re being forced into something unknown and uncertain, rather than deploying our agency and voice to make a conscious choice about our future. Those feelings of uncertainty are real, and there are some things we might understandably want to “keep normal” or at least retain a sense of normalcy within. But I would also offer we can feel hope and opportunity, for we might have the cleanest slate we’re ever going to have upon which to envision what we want to be “on the other side.”
So what if instead of unwillingly being pushed into a new normal, we could intentionally create the future state we want to embody? What if we could “change the frame of the possible,” as my friend Eric Liu often says?
At PACE, we’re just audacious enough to believe that we can — or at least that we have the opportunity and privilege to try. We are a member-centric philanthropic laboratory — our work seeks to learn, experiment, collaborate, and model what vibrant civic space can look like. Our members share a belief that America is healthier and more resilient, productive, and successful when our democracy is strong and when the ‘office of citizen’ is treated as central to how democracy functions.
In a time of great uncertainty, we’re embracing an opportunity to reimagine what can (and should) be different in our civic life, and engaging people in the process of creating it. Our first two forays into imagination are:
Crisis as Catalyst.
My friend and long-time colleague Nancy Murphy and I had what turned out to be a very serendipitous Zoom catch-up call back in March. We discussed our admiration for philanthropy’s quick response to the COVID-19 crisis, but also a concern about the opportunity we almost always miss. Data from the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and Candid tell us that only 2% of disaster funding goes toward resilience and preparedness efforts. When disaster strikes, we have the often under-utilized opportunity to elongate our civic response (philanthropy, volunteerism, engagement) into a civic reimagination and to create healthier and more resilient communities and civil society organizations in the long-term.
We believe investments in civic engagement can be some of the most powerful ways to leverage and maximize philanthropic resources over time. So together with our colleague Decker Ngongang, we put together a conversation starter called Crisis As Catalyst: A Conversation Starter for Reimagining What’s Next. With foundations as its primary audience, we hope it will help funders:
- Consider how to sustain and elongate investments beyond initial disaster response;
- Explore how seemingly different crises can have ramifications on each other;
- Imagine how the future can look as a result of their investments and civic leadership; and
- Interrogate how structural racism and disparities show up within every disaster.
Imagination Sprints.
We have an organizational commitment to modeling, which means we don’t just want to encourage others to do things, we want to challenge ourselves to do the same. Through a series of Imagination Sprints, PACE aims to create the space to bring meaning and creativity to specific problems across aspects of democracy and civil society. We will host five imagination sprints through 2020, each engaging a diverse group of funders, thinkers, and doers to imagine together (for example “imagining civic learning without disparities in access”). The end goal is to spark new ideas and creative thinking as we seek to understand, reflect, envision, and iterate on particular topics, and to share those ideas and the fruits of imagination with the broader civic philanthropy field. We also hope to explore how we can turn imagination into reality through new projects and collaborations that will guide our work in 2021 and beyond.
A core question at a time like this is not just “what do we want to be true on the other side of all this?” but “who do we want to be when we get there?” How can we strengthen underutilized but necessary “civic muscles” — like imagination or faith — to help us along the way?
Greater introspection is both possible and necessary to chart a creative, pragmatic, and purposeful path forward. We invite funders to consider taking the time to embrace that introspection over the second half of 2020. Our ability to land in a “new normal” with a stronger civil society and social fabric depends on it.
