In Summary: The Grantmakers Forum for Community and National Service evolves its purpose and mission and re-brands and re-organizes itself to become Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement. PACE is established as a 501c3 nonprofit, and the first full-time executive director is hired.

In April 2005, PACE was founded to be a national community of grantmakers and donors committed to strengthening democracy by using the power and resources of philanthropy to open pathways to civic participation.

Formerly known as the Grantmakers Forum on Community and National Service, PACE renamed itself to signal a broader approach to educating grantmakers about effective civic engagement strategies to strengthen communities.

Chris Gates, former president of the National Civic League, became PACE’s new Executive Director in June 2006.

PUBLICATION: Released Power to the Edges: Trends and Opportunities in Online Civic Engagement, a snapshot of the current state of online democracy in the age of connectivity brought about by the Internet and other digital information technologies.

Report
Discussion with report authors
Reflection essay: Fostering a More Engaged Citizenry Philanthropy’s Role in a Civic Reawakening
Reflection essay: Building Democracy Through Service
Reflection essay: Unstuck
Reflection essay: Re-Invigorating Democratic Participation and Activating an Engaged Citizenry
Reflection essay: The Problem of Philanthropy for Civic Renewal
Reflection essay: Prescription for Democracy at Middle-Age: A Healthy Regimen of Public Dialogue

In Summary: PACE found its footing by exploring a variety of topics of interest to members and partners; major themes included deliberative democracy and creating civic pathways for non-college-bound youth and people experiencing poverty. This was also an exciting time to explore trends and evolutions in voter engagement, political reform, and public-private partnerships, particularly given the momentum of the 2008 presidential election.

April 2007: Chris Gates moderates “Citizens Leading the Way: A New Plan for Rebuilding New Orleans,” an open session at the 58th Annual Council on Foundations conference in Seattle, Washington, about how philanthropy has played a leadership role in addressing one of the most critical issues of our time: The rebuilding of New Orleans after Katrina.

September 2007: In collaboration with PACE, Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation and other civic participation funders, Proteus Fund conducted a research project exploring whether an integrated, comprehensive approach to democracy issues could be more effective than single-issue or sectoral approaches. The Democracy Agenda Project has examined linkages and gaps among areas in the field, including structural reform to elections, lowering barriers to participation, deliberative and shared governance approaches to democracy and campaign finance reform.

September 2007: PACE partners with Proteus and Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation to facilitate a Democracy Agenda Project Funder Strategy Session on “Creating and Supporting a Holistic Democracy Agenda,” drawing inspiration from the Democracy Agenda Project. Hosted by the Joyce Foundation, the purpose of the session was to identify the most effective current approaches and funding strategies and the most promising experiments in the field that were working to better integrate a more holistic democracy agenda.

October 2008: PACE presented “Deliberative Democracy: The Next Form of American Governance?” with the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers (NYRAG). Deliberative Democracy was considered a rapidly growing field of practice, as more and more communities were finding ways for residents to meaningfully enter the policy and political lives of their cities and towns as participants, and not just spectators. The board of PACE decided to focus much of its work on the field of deliberative democracy and was currently developing a “Deliberative Democracy User Guide” for community foundations.

November 2008: PACE and Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation (FCCP) facilitated “Analyzing the Outcomes: A 2008 Post Election Debrief,” which drew pollsters, practitioners and academics to help the philanthropic community analyze the results of the election and identify new opportunities and directions for grantmaking.

September 2009: Partnered with Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation and Interfaith Funders for a phone briefing on “Faith in Politics Faith-based Initiatives in Civic Engagement,” with Jim Wallis (Sojourners), Jennifer Butler (Faith and Public Life), and Vicki Kovari (Catholic Alliance for the Common Good) as speakers.

December 2009: PACE partnered with the Case Foundation and the Charles Kettering Foundation on a presentation, “Building Civic Paths for Non-College-Bound Youth,” drawing from PACE research. Increased attention was being given to new research findings that young people without college experience had an unemployment rate double their college-bound counterparts and voted/volunteered at much lower rates.

March 2010: PACE participated in the Katrina @ 5 initiative with 30 partner organizations to explore, five years after the Gulf Coast disasters, what lessons could be learned for donors who seek to rebuild their communities after disaster.

PUBLICATION: Released Funding and Fostering Local Democracy: What philanthropy should know about the emerging field of deliberation and democratic governance, which provided a detailed description of how local civic engagement grew and developed over the previous decade (April 2009)

PUBLICATION: Released The New Laboratories of Democracy: How Local Government is Reinventing Civic Engagement, a major report detailing the innovative methods local governments around the country were using to increase civic engagement by the public (May 2009)

PUBLICATION: Released An Inequitable Invitation to Citizenship: Non-College-Bound Youth and Civic Engagement, a White paper on the gap in public and civic involvement between college-bound youth and non-college-bound youth (October 2009)

PUBLICATION: Released An Evolving Relationship: Executive Branch Approaches to Civic Engagement and Philanthropy, a white paper based on a briefing memo prepared for a White House meeting between leaders of the philanthropic community and Executive Branch officials. The meeting focused on where there might be shared interests between the two groups (May 2010)

In Summary: During a time of rapid social innovation and technological evolution, as well as ongoing economic challenges, PACE’s support focused on helping philanthropy make sense of emerging trends opportunities, particularly in the fields of journalism, civic technology, and public engagement.

March 2011: Partnered with the McKay Foundation, Columbia Foundation, Rappaport Family Foundation, Tides, and the San Francisco Foundation on a briefing about democracy, free speech, and fair elections after the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC.

March 2011: Webinar on “Trend or Tipping Point: Arts and Social Change Grantmaking,” which introduced “arts for change” to inform grantmakers’ conversations, program design, and assessment.

March 2011: Webinar on “The Color of Change: Inter-Ethnic Youth Leadership for the 21st Century,” accompanied by a corresponding report from the Equity Research Institute at University of Southern California. The webinar/report argued that a better future involves seeing youth as the progenitors of change and not simply the recipients of services.

May 2011: Webinar on “The Future of Social Networks: How will people connect for the greater good?”, drawing from a report from Knight Foundation and Monitor Institute.

June 2011: PACE conducted a “June First Monday” call on “Behind the Numbers: An Analysis of 2010 Census Data and What it Means for Your Foundation.” The call brought leading political demographers to discuss how census trends might affect public policy and civic engagement, especially as it relates to underserved communities, and what that may mean for how foundations invest in social change.

September 2012: PACE and the Knight Foundation gathered local and national leaders for a day-long conversation in Detroit to exchange ideas for how grantmakers can better engage communities in an increasingly connected, yet still fragmented world. The insights shared through the TED-style learning event were collected in a new report, Connected Citizens Detroit: A Snapshot of Civic Engagement. PACE also partnered with Knight Foundation to host another TED-style learning event that gave Detroit – and the country’s – leading thinkers on civic engagement a chance to share their insights.

September 2012: Webinar on “What’s New with Community Philanthropy in the US and Around the World.” Between 2000 and 2010, the number of one type of community philanthropy organization – the community foundation – grew by a remarkable 86%. The webinar examined the trends, challenges, and activities engaged with by several organizations at the intersection of philanthropy and civic engagement.

September 2012: Chris Gates and Nick Penniman published “A Second Front for Democracy Reform” in HuffPost, promoting “a truly trans-partisan space where Americans of every political stripe can find common ground and come together to fight to fix our political system…we believe that the philanthropic community — including organizations like ours — can provide the space needed to find common ground.”

November 2012: Webinar on “Igniting a Movement: Community College Student Leadership and Civic Engagement” in partnership with Rappaport Family Foundation with testimonials from The Democracy Commitment, Roosevelt Institute’s Campus Network, and the New Organizing Institute.

June 2014: Gates invited to participate in the Clinton Global Initiative-America meeting in Denver, Colorado on June 23-25 as a resource person in the ‘Empowering Opportunity Youth’ track as a voice for the perspective that PACE has championed for several years, that service can provide a civic path out of poverty for disconnected, disadvantaged and disengaged youth.

PUBLICATION: PACE and the Kettering Foundation released a white paper, Philanthropy and the Limits of Accountability: A Relationship of Respect and Clarity, about how the issues of transparency and accountability impact the field of philanthropy.

PUBLICATION: PACE released a white paper, Infogagement: Citizenship and Democracy in the Age of Connection. The paper grew out of PACE’s ‘Information and Engagement Project’, a two year conversation that involved multiple convenings across the country and dozens of interviews with leading thinkers and practitioners in the fields of journalism, civic technology and public engagement.

In Summary: PACE’s Board spent intentional time revisiting and re-envisioning its aspirations for the organization and its mission. Following the hire of a new CEO, PACE doubled-down on its commitment to understanding the importance of impact of civic engagement on issues of member concern, including health and safety, polarization, and civic education.

July 2015: Kristen Cambell hired as the new CEO of PACE.

January 2017: PACE began a multi-year process of exploring the work of our field in service of this question: “How can philanthropy create spaces for people to come together around complex and divisive issues?”

January 2017: PACE launched three specific focus areas to explore from 2017-2019: Bridging Divides, Health & Safety, and Civic Learning.

June 2017: PACE launched Office of Citizen, a blog on Medium, which was active until 2023.

September 2017: PACE members respond to the events in Charlottesville.

December 2017: PACE collaborated with Aspen Institute’s Inclusive America Project (IAP) on a gathering of interested stakeholders to explore the link between civic engagement and religious pluralism, particularly how philanthropy can advance religious pluralism to bridge civic divides.

March 2019: PACE’s Health and Safety Working Group–a constellation of funders and practitioners committed to health and safety in U.S. communities–took on the task of exploring the impact of youth civic engagement on the shared aim of identifying links between civic engagement, health and safety among youth.

In Summary: PACE responded to members’ requests to deepen its commitment to action– for our members and for the broader field of civic philanthropy. Becoming a “philanthropic laboratory” meant we sharpened our focus on learning, collaboration, experimentation, and added a commitment to modeling the principles we think healthy civic life requires.

2020: PACE launches new strategic plan through 2022.

During this three-year period, PACE explored what it means to be a philanthropic laboratory (a collective space for philanthropy where learning is participatory and actionable), what PACE’s philanthropic laboratory would focus on, and what learning and racial equity look like in our philanthropic laboratory.

2020: PACE supports members in addressing and responding to COVID-19.

Landing
Impact on election and civil service
Creative philanthropy
Funder response (1)
Funder response (2)
Funder response (3)
Funder response (4)

April 2020: PACE joined Media Impact Funders in hosting a webinar on how election coverage can be more inclusive and reflective of the communities it’s trying to inform.

June 2020: Launched Imagination Sprints– mechanisms to create space to bring meaning and creativity to specific problems across aspects of democracy and civil society.

Sprint 1
Sprint 2
Sprint 3
Sprint 4 (early 2021)

July 2020: PACE partnered with CSR Communications to develop Crisis as Catalyst, a tool meant to guide discussion of the role civil society institutions play in disasters and crises.

Press Release
Conversation guide
Research summary
Press release

July 2020: PACE members commit over $220 million to new efforts to promote racial justice and combat systemic racism. (October 2020 update)

October 2020: PACE joined 120 of our philanthropic peers on an open letter affirming the core principles of democracy during this tense election season.

Letter
Chronicle of Philanthropy Piece
Inside Philanthropy Piece
Marketing Image

January 2021: PACE signed an open letter with 280 of our philanthropic peers condemning the violent insurrection that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.

Spring 2021: PACE partnered with the Center for Effective Philanthropy on a conversation series, “Complicating the Narrative on Bridging and Division.”

Piece 1 (Kristen Cambell)
Piece 2 (Wendy Feliz)
Piece 3 (Andrew Hanauer)
Piece 4 (Claudia Cummings)
Piece 5 (David Eisner)
Piece 6 (Eric Ward)
Webinar
Executive Summary

Summer 2021: To continue “Complicating the Narrative,” PACE joined the Reagan Institute in hosting a private roundtable with Megan Phelps-Roper, author and activist who left Westboro Baptist Church and became an advocate for the people and ideas she was taught to despise. In late 2021, PACE hosted a talk with Amanda Ripley, author of High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out.

September 2021: PACE’s Faith In/And Democracy Project Reaches $1M in Grants to Faith-Inspired Initiatives Committed to Democracy/Civic Life.

March 2022: PACE refreshed and expanded the Civic Language Perceptions Project and made data accessible via an interactive dashboard.

Spring 2022: Began a slew of new analysis of Civic Language Perception Project data, as well as hosted a series of six “deep dive” sessions to explore the impact of race, religion, gender, age, political party and ideology, and civic education on Americans’ perceptions and associations of civic language:

Deep Dive on Civic Education – Watch the recording | Read the recap
Deep Dive on Religion – Watch the recording | Read the recap
Deep Dive on Millennials and Gen Z – Watch the recording | Read the recap
Deep Dive on Race – Watch the recording | Read the recap
Deep Dive on Gender – Watch the recording | Read the recap
Deep Dive on Political Party and Ideology – Watch the recording | Read the recap

October 2022: PACE conducted four focus groups to ask deeper questions about Americans’ relationships with civic language terms and complement the quantitative data with a qualitative component.

PACE also drafted two mini-papers which focused analysis on two questions: (1) What does the data tell us about how media consumption might form perceptions and associations to civic language? (2) What opportunities might exist to brand or rebrand terms, based on perceptions and associations?

PACE also distributed mini-grants, which made $500 stipends available to anyone in the civic field who was interested in analyzing the data and creating something customized with it. This program supported 19 projects in exploring a variety of topics of interest to researchers and organizations across the country.

PACE also designed an infographic series, which presented various analyses in a visual format, including highlights on each of the 21 civic language terms, major takeaways from each of the deep dive sessions, and headlines from oversample data.

Info
Infographics for demographic groups
Infographics for terms
Infographics for Massachusetts and SW Michigan

Finally, PACE published a report synthesizing our most compelling insights after six months of analysis of the Civic Language Perceptions Project data.

Report
Report findings presented in three categories

December 2022: PACE published a paper which draws on the wisdom and insights shared by 60+ civic funders and practitioners about how they are navigating specific civic language challenges.

Paper
Six examples of guidance to highlight

February 2023: Recommitment to our strategic plan to operate as a philanthropic laboratory.

YEARS IN REVIEW:

2020 Year in Review
2021 Year in Review
2022 Year in Review