RFL Live: Resiliency Experience with David Chrislip

Civic Capacity and the Coronavirus

Those who study how communities work know why some respond better than others to disruptions like the coronavirus: they are more resilient because they have greater civic capacity. The COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to enhance the civic capacity of this country’s communities and regions reclaiming the vital role of civic life in shaping this country’s future. In 2019 and 2020, we convened a panel of 34 experts from the U.S. and Canada to help develop our understanding of community-driven change and civic capacity. With the help of this panel, we:

• Created a broader conceptual understanding of community-driven change and civic capacity;
• Defined the civic capacities communities need to respond to challenges and disruptions and what these capacities look like in practice;
• Developed a diagnostic tool, the Civic Capacity Index (CCI), a measure of a community’s ability to make progress on complex, adaptive civic challenges.

The CCI helps inform, shape, and evaluate intervention strategies from governments, foundations, and other civic actors. With the help of the community-driven change framework, civic actors can take advantage of existing civic capacity, understand where it is lacking, and build resilience for the future:

David has spent more than 40 years engaging with the concept of civil society and in the work of civic leadership and collaboration. His career has taken him from the National Outdoor Leadership School and Outward Bound to the American Leadership Forum, the National Civic League and the Kansas Leadership Center. He’s worked with hundreds of communities and organizations across this country as well as internationally and has conducted leadership development programs for thousands of people seeking to exercise civic leadership more effectively. He is Principal of Skillful Means and Senior Fellow of the Kansas Leadership Center. He’s the co-author with Ed O’Malley of For the Common Good: Redefining Civic Leadership (KLC Press, 2013). He’s also the co-author, with Carl Larson, of Collaborative Leadership: How Citizens and Civic Leaders can Make a Difference (Jossey-Bass, 1994) and author of The Collaborative Leadership Fieldbook (Jossey-Bass, 2002). David received his B.A. degree (1966) from Oklahoma State University in economics and history, an M.S. degree (1970) from Wichita State University in economics, and an M.P.A. degree (1982) from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.