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September 19, 2003 |
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Promoting
(and funding) civic service: what’s in it for America?
Quite a lot, say two SPEA professors
who have assessed 50 years of historical data. Promoting
service programs is cost effective.
By Rich Schneider
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Photo by Chris Meyer
Jim Perry, associate dean of the IU School of Public
and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI, and SPEA colleague
and co-author Ann Marie Thomson
What
the authors found was a progression toward more
government involvement in supporting a service
infrastructure, but that doesn’t mean that
government has to get out its checkbook more often.
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In a new book published this month by E.M Sharpe, Inc.,
Jim Perry, associate dean of the IU School of Public and
Environmental Affairs (SPEA) at IUPUI, and co-author Ann
Marie Thomson, a SPEA colleague, answer the question:
what difference does civic service make? The simple answer,
said Perry, is a great deal.
Policymakers need to think about civic service as an important
tool for solving public problems, he said, as they consider
proposals like the one advanced by U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh
(D-Ind.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) to revamp national
service programs and opportunities for Americans to serve
by expanding AmeriCorps to 250,000 members by 2010.
Civic service is deeply rooted in America’s past,
present and future, but the claims of advocates have seldom
been held up to the mirror of empirical evidence. In writing
Civic Service: What Difference Does It Make?,
Perry and Thomson take a hard look at what civic service
has accomplished.
The co-authors examined 115 government reports, journal
articles, books and other sources spanning 50 years. In
doing so, they also identify the attributes of successful
civic service programs.
They conclude that civic service has had an overwhelmingly
positive impact on America.
It’s a finding the authors hope policymakers will
take to heart.
Perry also is Chancellor’s Professor at SPEA-Bloomington
and a leading authority on pay-for-performance and public
service motivation. He is author and editor of several
books, including the Handbook of Public Administration,
Second Edition (Jossey-Bass, 1996). Thomson is an
adjunct assistant professor at SPEA-Bloomington and an
associate faculty member at IUPUI. She was a National
Service Research Fellow in 1998-1999 at the Corporation
for National and Community Service, Washington, D.C.,
and received a doctoral degree in public policy from SPEA-Bloomington
in 2001.
The book is an outgrowth of a sabbatical Perry took in
1999-2000, when he worked as an assistant for the director
of evaluation and effective practices at the Corporation
for National and Community Service. “I committed
myself to work on several projects, one being to pull
together research that was done on national and community
service to assess what affects it has on society,”
he said.
The book examines the short-term and long-term effects
of intensive service performed by relatively few individuals:
people who work at civic service 20 to 40 hours a week
for extended periods of time, ranging from three months
to a year or two. It studies the impact of work on communities,
on non-profit institutions, on individuals who benefit
from the service provided and on the civic servants themselves.
A work camp program of the American Friends Service Committee,
conducted in 1952, was the first service program evaluation
the authors studied. Perry said he and Thomson found outcomes
of civic service to be positive in some 75 percent of
the sources they examined.
Cost benefit studies show that civic service returns $1.50
to $2 for every dollar invested, Perry said.
According to Perry, the history of civic service presents
a crucial finding concerning the role of government.
| “In terms of creating infrastructure and creating
larger service institutions in our society, government
is an essential element of bringing non-profit institutions
and the private sector together with individuals who want
to engage in long-term intensive civic service,”
Perry said. “What we find from a historical perspective
is a progression toward more government involvement in
supporting a service infrastructure.”
That doesn’t mean that government has to get out
its checkbook more often, Perry said.
“That finding does, however, recognize the role
of government as facilitating these relationships between
government, non-profit institutions and the private sector
in making service, particularly intensive service, an
important tool at society’s disposal, both for betterment
of individuals and connections among individuals, as well
as for solutions to important public problems.”
The lessons that can be learned from the study of a half-century
of civic service, Perry said, makes the current debate
and current unwillingness in some quarters, such as the
U.S. House of Representatives, to recognize the public
commitment to service difficult to accept, he noted.
“For those who want to look at the results and ask
if selective investments in civic service are worth it,
the answer is, overwhelmingly, yes,” Perry said.
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IU Home Pages + 400 E. 7th Street. Bloomington, IN 47405 + Phone: (812) 855-6494
Publication Date: August 15, 2003 + Comments: homepgs@indiana.edu
Copyright ©2003, The Trustees of Indiana University
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