After the Merger: Getting to “Yes” is Only the Beginning
The integration process following a merger agreement is essential to achieving success.
The integration process following a merger agreement is essential to achieving success.
With its professional management class and army of consultants, the nonprofit sector can sometimes seem isolated from the messiness of civil society, and a new Philanthropic Beltway may have sprung up. But it wasn’t always that way, and it may be time to reclaim an earlier identity as the “volunteer sector,” which is inherently democratic.
How a business built on shared values between company and consumer can use those values to help navigate difficult social justice discussions and drive progress.
Like all of civil society, the American nonprofit sector is a living thing. Its recent evolution has created a large and diverse force for good, but faces distinct challenges ranging from identity to sustainability.
Emily Arnold-Fernandez, executive director of the nonprofit Asylum Access, makes the case that better policies in host countries can enable refugees to rebuild their own lives and contribute to host economies.
Impact investors are figuring out how to integrate impact throughout their investment process in ways that are efficient, effective, and authentic.
Discourse and dialogue have always been the hallmarks of civil society, but when the power of government is used systematically to divide and exclude, it is the stinging conversations and actions at the leading edge of civil society that will reestablish the democratic ideals of an equitable democracy.
The history of America’s Hispanic community shows how civil society can create a refuge for those excluded from society at large. But allowing such demarcation lines is never good enough. For a civil society to be effective, sustainable, and worthy, it must tie together all who reside in that society.
In both the conservative and progressive imagination, civil society is valued—for opposite reasons—as an arbiter between the individual and the national state. But by viewing civil society as the core of America’s social life, we can see our way toward a politics that might overcome some of the dysfunctions of our day.
Culture is born of values, and civil society is where people live values most urgently. Amid growing social isolation in the United States, a new set of values is emerging around community, healing, and belonging, and they will likely define an era.