PACE 2022: Our Year in Review

Dear Colleagues,

As a philanthropic laboratory, PACE’s roles are to learn, experiment, collaborate, and model vibrant civic space– in how we support our Members, and also how we display leadership within the civic field more broadly. This has looked a lot of ways over the years, but in 2022, something felt different: we feel like we hit a stride with work that is uniquely “ours to do.”

We have been in deep reflection over the last few weeks trying to unpack what–exactly–made this year feel different than previous years. Was there something unique about 2022? Was there something new about PACE’s work or leadership posture? What made our contributions feel different to us? What should we take away from these reflections as we look ahead?

While we typically use our annual letter to share our biggest highlights from the year, this year we want to take a different approach, and instead, share our biggest reflections. We are an organization that prioritizes learning in everything we do, and we have become disciplined about moving from “learning for exploration” to “learning for purpose” over the last few years. In line with our commitment to “learn out loud,” we want to share our reflections with you–our Members and community writ-large.

Reflection 1: There is more appetite for complicated and nuanced conversations than we might think.

How we came to this realization: We tried to be more intentional–and courageous–in creating space for somewhat “off-limits” civic topics that did not have homes elsewhere.

Before PACE embarks on new efforts or initiatives, we always create an intentional pause to ask ourselves: “What is our work to do?” We believe part of knowing how we can make a difference and contribution is by knowing what is already happening in the field, what other partners are working on, what questions are going unanswered, what learning opportunities might best strengthen democracy and civic life, and how all of that aligns with our goals, capacity, and expertise.

Answering the question “What is our work to do?” led us to focus our energy over the last year on exploring a variety of topics, including civic language perceptions, social cohesion in philanthropy, and the influence of faith on democracy. With the state of the world and many concerned about the stability of U.S. democracy, these might not be the priority topics that immediately come to mind for an organization whose mission is to “support funders who seek to maximize their individual and collective impact on democracy and civic life in America.” Surely, we should be looking hard at the 2022 midterm and 2024 presidential elections, the threats to voter access, the rise of disinformation, and what this all means for our country’s slow decline into autocracy… right?

The reality is, many groups are engaging those questions and issues. PACE takes seriously our job to know about those efforts and to refer–and in some cases, partner–with organizations and leaders who are focusing their energy on those topics. We can (and do) support those conversations and believe they are critical, but we realized that perhaps we need not be at the forefront of leadership on them ourselves. Our work felt like focusing on some areas that seem to have strong potential and interest, but perhaps less visible leadership. And by that, we mean opening space for the “off-limits” civic topics–the hard conversations we aren’t having as a field but seem to be inhibiting us on some level.

These are conversations that people were having quietly, but may not be “on the agenda” because they felt taboo or controversial, or perhaps too “settled” — and people seemed to feel raising them or questioning the conventional wisdom or dominant narratives around them was too risky. As an organization that seeks to model vibrant civic space, we felt a responsibility to also model the courage that civic space requires. So we found ourselves asking “can we say the hard thing?” and it turns out, when we did– with thoughtfulness and curiosity, rather than provocation– people were eager to hear more and engage in dialogue. That didn’t always mean agreement–and that’s okay!– but it meant we were talking in ways we might not otherwise with people we might not otherwise. We often heard colleagues and partners say something like “Oh, I’m so glad you said something, because it’s been on my mind and I didn’t know how to bring it up.” We could feel that by opening up conversations that were not readily accessible in the field, civic leaders were being given permission and invitation to share their experiences, ask skeptical yet good-faith questions, consider perspectives they wouldn’t be exposed to otherwise, and imagine and explore new ways of thinking.

Take, for example, PACE’s work to raise a conversation about social cohesion in philanthropy. For the last few years, PACE has heard a quiet yet consistent refrain that the polarizing dynamics that seem to be “the norm” in American politics are having a profound impact on the nonprofit sector. The “quiet part” that people were struggling to say out loud was that funders (not just partisan actors or conflict entrepreneurs) may be exacerbating toxic polarization. For example, this can look like grants that prioritize “ends” over “means” and reinforce “us versus them” mentalities. Funders began sharing that they were gaining short-term wins, but they were concerned about where those “wins” may be eroding the long-term social fabric of our communities, country, and democracy in the process.

This conversation in philanthropy is a difficult one–we’re in the “social impact” sector, and aren’t we all trying to “win” for the common good? Don’t we have a moral obligation to do what it takes to achieve our missions? In partnership with Democracy Funders Network (DFN) and New Pluralists, we spent a lot of time this year speaking about philanthropy’s role in advancing social cohesion at conferences, developing resources and tools to support funders, and generally raising the dialogue and the legitimate questions and tensions that exist within it. It turns out, when we started to talk about it more publicly, more and more funders wanted to talk about it, too. It felt like we hit “a nerve” around a tender and important conversation that was not receiving oxygen. By starting to open up the conversation, we believe we’re helping to make it less taboo and put us on a path towards a constructive and solutions-oriented approach–one that is cognizant that it’s not just what philanthropy funds but how it funds that can have a profound impact in the health of our democracy.

Reflection 2: We need optimism, imagination, and long-term hope– especially when things feel hard and threatening.

How we came to this realization: We tried to balance learning from the current threats to democracy with what is going right for democracy.

Very understandably, it is easy–even tempting–to see what is broken and going wrong. For those of us who are in the business of trying to strengthen democracy and civic engagement in the United States, it’s been a hard, long, and trying stretch. PACE believes we have a responsibility to take seriously the very real threats to democracy and learn everything we can to be vigilant against those forces. That’s why PACE focused its Spring 2022 Member Meeting–a two-day immersive learning experience–on racial equity and civic life and exploring where racial inequity is keeping us from realizing our full American potential. It is also why we partnered with groups this year to release pieces about political violence, protecting state courts, and the aftermath of January 6th. These threats to democracy–and many others–are real and deserve our attention and resources to combat.

At the same time, PACE also got clearer this year about our responsibility to see and learn about what is going right for democracy and where we might even find optimism. One thing we heard clearly at points throughout the year is that we need to make democracy’s often-invisible successes (and the work that goes into them) more explicitly visible. That’s why we also put energy into sharing bright spots–things like a deep dive into Michael D. Smith’s vision for national service, the state of civics education and the widespread support for more of it, and the good news for democracy following the midterm election. We are also diving into questions about how we can imagine better futures, as our partners at DFN are encouraging.

Perhaps the best example of how we lived in this balance was with our Faith In/And Democracy initiative. This effort aims to deepen our understanding of the intersection of faith and civic life, and in 2022, we officially crossed the threshold of granting $1 million to faith-inspired organizations and leaders making a positive impact on democracy. We engaged our Learning Community of 35+ leaders to explore the question: What is the influence of faith communities on democracy and civic life? We found inspiring evidence that:

• Faith shapes the formation of civic character
• Faith and faith-inspired organizations help communities build civic infrastructure and navigate crisis
• Faith communities build cohesion across political lines and call us to our better angels
• Faith communities play key roles in pro-democracy movements
• Faith leaders are influential in inspiring civic engagement and behaviors

While we were also honest about some of the limitations of faith and ways it can live in tension with democracy, all of this learning led the initiative to believe there is more opportunity–and frankly, need–for leadership in telling the story of the positive influence faith communities have on democracy. This led us to invest in six projects that yielded evidence of the impact of faith communities on civic life and to amplify their findings more broadly. We continue to curate and crowdsource additional evidence of this impact. To that end, there will be much more to come in 2023 as we tell the story of this work more broadly and seek to inspire more funders to invest in this infrastructure.

This is all to say, one of our major reflections from 2022 is that we believe it is important to be honest that two things can be true at the same time: things can be both going badly and going well for democracy. After all, the American experiment is just that–an experiment. No one in the world has ever experienced the promise of a multicultural, multi-faith, multi-racial democracy at this scale before. We want to believe it’s possible, and if that belief is to be nurtured, our idealism and our realism both need a healthy and consistent dose of hope and faith that we can get there.

Reflection 3: Curiosity is empowering.

How we came to this realization: We worked hard to avoid certainty and certitude.

PACE’s approach and spirit is to lead with questions about challenges, rather than starting with answers or solutions to problems. We often hear people say they feel this creates a generative space and it can be empowering to see where the questions take us, without feeling there is an “agenda” we’re pushing toward.

The importance of this came into new focus this year as we reflect on why it felt like PACE hit a stride. It was our intention to not state or project that we had “answers” to any of the learning journeys we were on. This might feel antithetical to some… after all, isn’t the point of learning to find answers at the end of your process? Well, PACE believes that learning, collaborating, and modeling vibrant civic space means you engage with challenging questions that don’t necessarily have universal or absolute answers, and there is value in engaging multiple perspectives that might come to wildly different conclusions. Learning is a process of wading into unknown waters, making sense of what you find, and staying humble in the realization that your findings might not reflect the wholeness of truth. As long as the information that is the basis of the matter at hand is credible, legitimate, and truthful, there are lots of different, accurate, and principled ways to look at an issue and come to different conclusions. In other words, we need to resist certitude in that our answers are the right answers for everyone all the time, and remember that the journey of a question can be as important as the destination of an answer.

There was perhaps no clearer example of this over the last year than PACE’s work on the Civic Language Perceptions Project. In an effort to respond to the funders in the democracy space who shared they detected a disconnect between how the “professionalized” space talks about democracy and how those they seek to serve and inspire think about and experience it, PACE launched a year-long project that provided rich quantitative and qualitative data about this disconnect, surfaced surprising findings, funded some mini-explorations, and led to some guidance to inform communication approaches. The funny thing about this project, however, is that the more we “knew” about civic language perceptions, the less we felt like we could say with certainty. People kept asking us “…but what should I say instead?” and we didn’t have an answer other than “it depends,” as much as they (and we) might have hoped. It felt surprisingly empowering to be honest about this, and it made a significant difference in helping to bring more people into the dialogue, which we found to help keep the conversation and exploration going beyond PACE.

Take, for example, our learnings related to an assumption we hear from civic leaders that it feels like words are “owned” by certain people and groups (such as “patriotism” and “racial equity”). Our data bear out that this is true–in some ways. But it is also not true in other ways. When we presented these findings to the field in October 2022, we showed two different slides that projected both interpretations accurately… but we didn’t actually change the graph or data between slides. Because it all depends on how you want to interpret the data, and you could be right from both perspectives. Honestly, it felt a little nerve-wrecking and vulnerable to not be projecting certainty through what we were sharing. But it turns out, the more transparent we were about this tension, the more people were eager to engage. This note from a participant really made that clear: “Thank you PACE for keeping your study objective. I’ve become so primed by the media to be fed an overt agenda or thinly veiled perspective, I can tell you tried to listen and analyze without making many value judgements. This actually gives me hope for ‘civic unity’ in the future.”

Final Thoughts

We made the intentional choice to not make this letter a list of everything PACE did this year. In fact, we did not even touch on the important work we did to convene a Funders Summit for Effective Governing Institutions, coordinate a Civic Learning Funder Affinity Group, organize Racial Equity Jam Sessions, speak at over 40 events and convenings, support PACE Members one-on-one and by hosting Member Meetings and providing other services, welcome 10 new PACE Members (A More Perfect Union: A Jewish Partnership for Democracy, Arabella Advisors, Bayer Family Fund, Bezos Family Foundation, Kalamazoo Community Foundation, Lubetzky Family Foundation, Mayor’s Fund of Los Angeles, Pivotal Ventures, Porticus North America, Schmidt Futures), or grow our PACE team (but while we have you… we’re hiring). Rather, we thought it was important to distill our activities into reflections and share the lessons we are carrying with us into our future. They are hard-learned and we might not always get them right, but we will always try. We hope these reflections are helpful to you as well.

PACE has been looking ahead to 2023 and beyond for some time now, and we will be sharing our direction and priorities with this community. Stay tuned for more on that soon, and thank you for all you do in service to our democracy!

Yours in service,

Kristen Cambell, CEO

Amy McIsaac, Managing Director of Learning and Experimentation