Civic infrastructure, organizational civic capacity and service learning: A community capacity-building model

All across the American landscape efforts to rekindle a spirit of community have failed to produce significant changes in our increasingly fragmented and compartmentalized world. Many argue that modern community, as a politically constitutive entity, has disappeared from the landscape. When the means to constitute community disappear so goes the health of our local systems of democratic governance. This study looks to the leadership of organizations with high civic capacity to reach beyond their narrow missions to off-set the corrosive effects of fragmentation. It argues that students in service learning programs can contribute to the civic capacity of organizations.;This study uses qualitative inductive methods to develop a preliminary Model of Community Capacity-Building. At the core of this model are the dual concepts of "organizational civic capacity" and "civic infrastructure", which are given operational definition through reliance on extensive case studies. Civic infrastructure is defined as a transformative community-held network of organizations, characterized by broad, capacity-building, durable relationships among entities engaged in joint deliberation and action that is focused toward the common community good. Organizations with high levels of civic capacity are characterized by a clear commitment to public ends and an alignment of their internal processes, leadership and external relationships to achieve these ends. The findings of this study are significant for three reasons. They provide political leaders with a strategy for integrating fragmented communities. They provide organizations with a strategy for leveraging scarce resources toward activities which carry sustainable community outcomes. Finally, they provide volunteers, especially students, with important information about the kind of impact they are likely to have as a result of volunteering their labor in various kinds of organizations.;This research furthers an understanding of the importance of politically constitutive forums to sustain a shared commitment to the community good over time.