A Brief History of the Project on Civic Reflection

The Project on Civic Reflection was established at Valparaiso University in 1998, with support from Lilly Endowment Inc., by Elizabeth Lynn. She had noticed that despite increased talk about the importance of service and philanthropy in American life, people involved in civic activity rarely have a chance to think carefully about the values that drew them to the work or the choices they have made in service of those values. Begun as a local experiment in Northwest Indiana, the Project has evolved into a national presence with a reputation for excellence and expertise in civic reading and conversation.

Among the resources that the Project on Civic Reflection offers are a seed grants program; an extensive electronic resource library; an online forum in which facilitators share their experiences; expert training in facilitation; individual consultation with Elizabeth Lynn and other Project staff; and anthologies of readings that provoke significant discussion about civic activity. The Civically Engaged Reader, edited by Elizabeth Lynn and Adam Davis and published in 2006 by The Great Books Foundation, includes more than forty such readings by authors ranging from Moses Maimonides to Toni Morrison, along with discussion questions and tips for facilitators.

In addition to providing seed grants, the Project develops partnerships with organizations that have high potential to spread the practice of civic reflection. Partners have included the Nonprofit Center of Northeast Florida, the humanities councils of Maine, Florida, Illinois, Maryland and New Hampshire, the Association of Small Foundations, More Than Money Institute, the Great Books Foundation, and the Chicago Public Schools. If you are interested in bringing civic reflection to your group or network, contact the Project on Civic Reflection today.

Friends and Funders

This website, www.civicreflection.org was originally developed in special partnership with the Maine Humanities Council and funded through the generous support of Lilly Endowment and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our fantastic web design firm is Portland Webworks in Portland, Maine.

Projects represented on this site have been supported by Lilly Endowment, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Kettering Foundation, and the Jessie Ball DuPont Fund, among others.

The Project on Civic Reflection has benefited from the wisdom of a special group of mentors and colleagues in philanthropy, education, and public humanities who laid the groundwork for civic reflection through their own work.

In the early 1990s, the Leadership Education Committee of Lilly Endowment, guided by Susan Wisely and Craig Dykstra, began to ask, Just as we are helping nonprofit leaders develop management and fundraising skills, how can we also help to stimulate the moral imagination of these critically important leaders ?

In 1996, the Tocqueville Seminars was launched in direct response to that question. This national experiment in seminars for civic leaders was directed by Amy A. Kass at the University of Chicago and funded by Lilly Endowment.

In 1999 the Federation of State Humanities Councils began a project called the Art of Association, under the direction of Esther Mackintosh, with funding from Lilly Endowment and the Kettering Foundation. This project introduced civic reflection to the boards of state humanities councils.

Soon thereafter, the Maine Humanities Council launched three civic reflection projects with support from the National Endowment in the Humanities: Literature and Medicine for hospital staff and trustees; Regional Philanthropy Seminars for philanthropists in the New England states, and Thoughtful Giving to spur reflection on giving by citizens in Maine, Utah and Georgia.

In 2005, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Illinois Humanities Council introduced The Meaning of Service, a three-year national effort to develop civic reflection programs for AmeriCorps volunteers. The Illinois Council has become something of a civic reflection laboratory, extending the practice to nonprofit leaders, neighborhood associations, teachers, and others.

This web site contains insights and examples from all these projects and their leaders, as well as from many other colleagues, among them Mary Kennedy, Dorothy Schwartz, Erik Jorgensen, Victoria Bonnebaker, Peter Aicher, Mark Schwehn, Charlie Walker, Bob Woodbury, Chérie Isakson, Michael Cobbler, Leslie Peters, Susannah Quern Pratt, Adam Davis, Doretta Kurzinski, Catherine Tufariello, Janice Simsohn Shaw, Katie Miller, Dorothy Warner, Sarah Werner, Cynthia Rutz, Katie Benjamin, and Dimitra Tasiouras.