Jeff Yost

Jeff Yost talks to John McKnight and Peter Block about the Nebraska Community Foundation: a way to educate, train and initiate conversation between community members. He discusses how philanthropy can create jobs and help sustain community for generations to come, rather than only for the current generation.

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For ten years following the 2010 publication of their book The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods, John and Peter hosted conversations with neighborhood activists on their community-building work.  All their ideas are still at work and continue to be influential for anyone engaged in creating the future in the present. The transcript here has been edited for length and clarity.

 

The Hometown of Your Dreams:

Conversation with Jeff Yost

 

January 14, 2015

 

John McKnight: Welcome everybody. We are going to have a real treat today because I want to share with you a discovery I made and some of you may have made it too. A couple of years ago, I found out that in one of our states, and in over 250 small towns, mostly in smaller cities, there had developed organizations of people whose insight was that there was a lot of wealth and that wealth could be identified and invested in ways that would shape the future and define the communities possibilities. It is a movement that has spread so far that I could hardly believe it.

 

So, today we are joined by Jeff Yost who is one of the people at the center of getting this initiative started. So, Jeff, welcome and I wonder if you could let us know a little bit of what the antecedent was to your focusing on local wealth. I know there was a study that got you started. Could you tell us about it?

 

Jeff Yost: Absolutely. First of all, John and Peter, thank you for having me and thank you for inviting the Nebraska Community Foundation to be part of this conversation. We are certainly honored to be here alongside Asset-Based Community Development and all the terrific work that is explored within your book The Abundant Community –– these have been the undergirding principles of our work for the last 20 years or so. It is just an honor to be here. Thanks.

 

The Nebraska Community Foundation got started 20 years ago and we are just celebrating our 20^th anniversary with the whole idea that in so many ways communities had changed and really didn’t have the same type of discretion that they had previously. Certainly, within the context of Nebraska we needed to find different ways to have a more positive narrative about the future. We wanted to have a more positive conversation between parents and their kids over the kitchen table and between adults and youth in communities, and also to try and attract that next generation in wanting to be a part of all of this work.

 

So, much of the underpinning for this work started with the tremendous outmigration that we have seen over the decades and through many rural places over Nebraska and throughout the northern Great Plains. How do you help in creating even greater pride in place? How do you help people to craft a narrative where they are talking in positive and opportunistic terms about the future of their place? This has been a work in progress over time, but one of pieces we started with is that in many places around the country, community foundations have gotten started and we are certainly interested in the whole idea of how to use local charitable giving as one more tool within that community development puzzle. I think we have found that it is even more powerful than we thought it might be.

 

To start, I want to talk about how we define the Nebraska Community Foundation. We always talk about the Nebraska Community Foundation as being a community development institution that uses philanthropy as a tool. We are not a charity. We are not in the business of doing things for people. We are in the business of figuring out how we can be a value-added partner to community leaders to help them build the community of their dreams.

 

A few years into this work there was study done at Boston College called “Millionaires and the Millennium” in which Paul Schervish and John Havens explored the whole inter-generational transfer of wealth and the magnitude of that. If you are in a place like Nebraska, a lot of the next generation had in fact migrated to someplace else. Not only was the population of many of these places shrinking, but also the demographics of these places was aging because the people that were leaving were, of course, younger people and people early in their careers. So, it is not a very long walk to figure out if there is this massive transfer of wealth that is happening between generations and if the next generation doesn’t, in fact, inhabit that same place, then not only are you losing all that human resource capacity, if the next generation doesn’t return to that community and live and work there, you also are going to potentially to lose much of the extraordinary financial wealth that has been built up, especially since World War II.

 

So, over the years we have done few of these transfers of wealth studies. We always knew the transfer of wealth was huge. I am an economist by training, and I honestly didn’t have any clue that it was going to be of this magnitude. Nebraska is about 1.8 million people. It is a very large geography. There are actually 532 communities within the state . It is about 500 miles from end to end if you go from northwest to southeast. For those 1.8 million people in that reasonably large geographical area, our estimate, and we think it is reasonably conservative, is that some 600 billion dollars will transfer from one generation to the next in the next 50 years. Those are staggering sums.

 

A longtime colleague of mine, a gentleman who is the co-director of the Center for Rural Entrepreneurship, is Don Mackey. Don and I are the primary authors of the original study. Don has gone on to do this type of analysis in many, many other places around the country. In the context of Nebraska, we have used it not only in understanding the large macro-economic opportunity, but for the 93 counties in Nebraska, we actually figured out a methodology for creating an estimate for each and every one of those counties. We even break it down proportionately to help community leaders to begin to think of endowment building within the context of that transfer of wealth.

 

So, let’s say there is a particular county where the transfer of wealth over the next 50 years is estimated to be one billion dollars. Part of what we will talk with community leaders about –– and help them go through a vision and action planning process and ultimately a goal setting exercise associated with endowment building for their place –– is, what if just 5% of that transfer of wealth were given back to the place where it was made and accumulated? So, 5% of one billion dollars is 50 million dollars. If that is endowed, and you assume that you are going to get a 4 or 4½% rate of return or a payout from that particular endowment, 50 times .045 is over two million dollars annually that would be a perpetual income stream to benefit that place.

 

We all know the money is important, but at the end of the day communities are made up by people and people being in relationship with one another. People really trusting one another and having an opportunistic vision of what they can build together. So, if you can connect those sorts of relationships with that vision and with that capital and especially if that capital is unrestricted in nature, there is a lot you can get done.

 

Suppose you think about that philanthropy within the context of how does that philanthropy really serve as a margin of excellence for the future of our place, and assume that much of what we already do we will continue doing –– that is, to help people in need and to provide government services and these sorts of things. If you think about it that way, that endowment being put into place for the future of that particular geography, and then that endowment payout being used to do something above and beyond what we are already doing, it becomes a pretty exciting thing to be a part of. What could we use that on? How could we use that for youth engagement, business development, entrepreneurship, leadership development, and intergenerational conversations?

 

All these sorts of things we know help to build the social fabric in our place and we are using philanthropy to try to build a whole series of economic opportunities as well. As John mentioned, we are now networking in about 250 communities around the state. The network looks different in every one of those places. It has been a really fun journey so far.

 

John: Take us to one community and give us a little snapshot of what you might have done to trigger the local folks who became engaged in identifying and collecting this wealth. How do you start that?

 

Jeff: The first part I start with is that communities can only be built and sustained by the people who live, work, and sleep there. So, this is a very decentralized system. We are interested in being somebody’s value-added partner. So, one of the premises here is that this has to be community driven and everything has to be on a willing partner platform. So, to start with, we are interested in working with people who are interested in working with us.

 

The first thing that would happen is somebody wanted to create an affiliated fund within the context of the Nebraska Community Foundation. Let’s take my little hometown of Red Cloud. Those of you that are fans of American literature know that it is the home of Willa Cather. So, you have an extraordinary cultural asset in Red Cloud, Nebraska, and Red Cloud has about 1,000 people. It’s about 60 miles off the Interstate. So, it’s a rural agrarian place and a fair way away from the traditional economic corridor that goes across the state.

 

Red Cloudvstarted an affiliated fund and those community leaders decided that they wanted that affiliated fund to just concentrate on Red Cloud and the trade area associated with it. So, in other places community leaders may decide they want a community-based affiliated fund to cover a county or a community-based affiliated fund that is going to cover all of the communities within their school district. Within our system, all of those are locally governed issues and things that can always morph and evolve over time.

 

In the case of Red Cloud they started their affiliated fund. They raised some money for various projects over time. At one point, a resident who had grown up there, and was also serving as a member of the Nebraska Community Foundation statewide board of directors, made a challenge grant to help those community leaders to begin to build an unrestricted endowment for the future for that community. It was a $100,000 challenge grant that the community needed to match one to one. So, that got started.

 

About six years ago we helped them go through a really intensive process of vision, mission, and values identification and to begin to think through what are the strategic opportunities within this particular community. Of course, in this case you have the incredible cultural asset. So, how would you use heritage tourism as one of the primary drivers for that? This action-driving process ultimately led the advisory committee and community leaders to determine they really wanted to concentrate on heritage tourism as an economic development strategy, with early childhood education and childcare as their two primary pieces. Those community leaders have made tremendous progress. There are donors that have stepped up in reasonably significant ways to help some of this come true from a programming standpoint and a facilities standpoint.

 

All the while what we are always interested in is how to engage more and more people within your community. Not only in being engaged in that conversation, but ultimately investing their time, talent, and treasure within the context of that fund in that community to help continue the building of all that future.

 

That’s a quick story and we’ve got dozens of those. It’s really fun to see all the amazing work that is happening.

 

Peter Block: Your discoveries of the existence of this wealth are quite amazing. How is it different from most every city that has a community foundation? What would you say is unique about your thinking or your approach to what you are doing?

 

Jeff: I think it is always important to talk about all of this stuff. None of this is ever a good or bad. It is what we have discerned as making the most sense here, in our place and our circumstance with our people.

 

Peter: What is the essence of that?

 

Jeff: Community foundations are incredible community development tools. I’ve got wonderful colleagues all over the country that are helping to run and build community foundations and they all look different. Within the context of Nebraska, I would say there are three things that are very different about the Nebraska Community Foundation.

 

First, the Nebraska Community Foundation in itself is not a grantmaker. All our grantmaking actually happens in the context of affiliated funds. That is very intentional because, ultimately, we want communities’ leaders to be very honest with us about what the opportunities are, what the needs are, and what all the things we need to work on are as we partner with these communities to help themselves. So, the Nebraska Community Foundation is not a grant maker. We are primarily an educator, a trainer, a facilitator, and in some respect a connecting tissue.

 

John: You also manage the money, don’t you?

 

Jeff: We do. When you talk about the Nebraska Community Foundation, there is just one corporation, and there are about 225 affiliated funds within that one corporation. There are probably 850 or 900 sub-funds within those 225 affiliated funds. There is a very substantial financial and investment management infrastructure. So, part of the management is understanding that for a community leader, especially within the context of a small town or neighborhood, how we have all been to those organizing meetings where we want to get something done. The critical question is, who wants to be treasurer? We are trying to help to take some of that burden off local leaders so they can really focus on mission fulfillment and not just all of the administrative machinations associated with having a non-profit organization.

 

John: So, you basically are the investment manager. Then on an annual basis the local group gets its proportionate share of whatever the growth is.

 

Jeff: Yes, sort of like that. It’s all segregated by fund and by donor intent. Then it’s helping those community leaders to really pursue not only having resources, but also connecting those resources with a vision and engaging members of their community. What do they want to do next for the future of that place?

 

Peter: There are some large cities in Nebraska or concentrated populations. Have you seen where an affiliated fund would be actually organized around a neighborhood?

 

Jeff: We have had a few neighborhood associations with affiliated funds over time, but historically most our work is within regional trade centers and small communities around the state, plus we do a fair number of efforts that are either regional or state-wide. So, there is a Lincoln Community Foundation. There is an Omaha Community Foundation. Great people doing great work. They are certainly not organized in the same way as the Nebraska Community Foundation is, but there are lots of opportunities to work together and to support one another in our work.

 

If I might, I want to circle back around to that prior question for just a moment in terms of what’s the other thing that differentiates the Nebraska Community Foundation. John, this is something that you have witnessed a couple of years in a row. We are really invested in peer learning. In helping adults to have experiential learning, but also having those community leaders really be in conversation with one another. I am absolutely of the opinion that people hear something differently from a peer than they do from someone who is professionalized about their approach to it or being paid for doing that work.

 

A tremendous amount of our training and education is actually done within the context of peer learning and peer mentoring. From one affiliated leader from one community helping affiliated leaders from a community down the road to understand their story, but also to help them work on what is next in their community. In Nebraska there is this game called “Six Degrees of Separation of Kevin Bacon.” Have you heard of that before?

 

John/Peter: Yes.

 

Jeff: In the context of Nebraska, we are only separated by two degrees. If you don’t know somebody, you know somebody that knows somebody.

 

A big part of our work is being connected and being in relationship with lots and lots of different people. The interesting thing about using philanthropy as a community development tool is that you can’t make anybody do anything. All we can do is motivate and inspire people, but who ultimately is in the best position to do that are the people who are already in relationship with one another.

 

So, that is much of what we are trying to do: to help community leaders to become comfortable and confident to be able to talk to their friends, neighbors, and people that they have deep trusting relationships with about what a difference that the person they are talking with could make in the future of their place. That conversation obviously ranges all over the place. Sometimes, it is about making a charitable gift. Sometimes, it’s about becoming a leader of that fund. Sometimes, it’s about volunteering their time and talent to help to get something done. John, you have been so articulate over the years about how important invitation is as part of community building. We really try to help community leaders to understand just how important and profound that invitation is within the community building process.

 

John: Give us an example of how the fund is manifested by the activity of how many people ––4, 5, 6, 20, 50? And how are those people identified and coalesced?

 

Jeff: You are absolutely right in that we have affiliated funds that have leadership groups. We call them advisory committees. Those funded advisory committees might range between five community leaders and maybe twenty. In some funds they will have a really active and robust sub-committee structure. So, the membership of those sub-committees might then total up to maybe forty or fifty people, just depending on the context of the place. Then you might have other things happening where literally hundreds of people are part of helping to build and manifest that. Those groups are in fact self-perpetuating groups.

 

Some might say that’s not the way to do it. What I would say to any of that is that within the context of Nebraska, we found that is the structure that works best for community building here. People who are already in relationship with one another and looking around the table and then asking who else they need to connect with or what other opportunities are there. So, in some communities they have entirely local leadership. In some community-based affiliated funds there are alumni and expatriates that participate as a part of that.

 

We are interested in educating, training, and sharing effective practices, but ultimately we are not interested in telling people that they have to do it one way or another. A longtime colleague has a little quip: Community building isn’t like rocket science, we actually know how to put a man on the moon. We are constantly learning and evolving what we are doing here. One of the things we know is that communities that are doing really well in this work are communities that are figuring out how they are engaging dozens and hundreds of their neighbors in conversations about the future of their place and inviting them to be a part of that.

 

So, again, it’s much of what you have written about and theorized about and practiced over the years in terms of how important that active invitation is.

 

John: You also have observed the difference between the kind of present-day function of an elected body like the city council, the village board, and the affiliated fund. Could you say a few words about that distinction?

How you could think about local place and needing people collectively to get things done. The city council is often thought of as a group to get things done, but the affiliated fund is a different group of people getting things done. What’s the difference?

 

Jeff: I think the difference is a couple of things. One is the fact that in using philanthropy as one of the primary community development tools you can’t make anybody do anything. So, that in and of itself fundamentally differentiates government because we are not assessing taxes or fees from anyone. It’s all willing partners and people willing to be engaged. The second one is, and this is a generalization, but I think to a large extent that governments primarily focus on now and the very near term. I would hope that our affiliated funds, especially those that are building endowments for the future of the place, are really more focused on the future. Or more focused on what sort of place do we want to have 10 and 20 years from now as opposed to 3 to 5 years from now.

 

Again, that is a generalization because government does do work that has generational impact, through infrastructure, technology, and other things. Still, I think that one of he key differentiating factors is that government is primarily focused on now and the short-term.

 

The Nebraska Community Foundation is an organization that isn’t really focused on relief. We are an institution that is focused on development. So, sometimes you will have a tragic circumstance happen in a place and the people in that place need relief. We have got lots of incredible partners out there that are really good at that work. So, we’ve decided that is not our work. Our work is to help people focus on the future and what things help to build and ultimately magnetize this community so that people say, That’s where I want to live and work. That’s where I want to raise my family. That’s where I want to have my business.

 

So, the Nebraska Community Foundation and its affiliated funds is not all things to all people. I think we have done a nice job of helping lots of community leaders focus on the future in ways that they hadn’t previously.

 

John:  You also in some of these places find that the local people engage a significant number of the local citizens in discussions that would result in their joint dialogue and thinking together about the future rather than four or five or ten people that are on the affiliated fund itself.

 

Jeff: Absolutely. A big part of what we are trying to do is to help people to not only envision but also to plan for the future, and a big part of that entire process is figuring out how we can have a community-wide conversation about that future and what all of us collectively desire. In many cases we will have a community wide envisioning session. Or we might have several of those. In the community of Norfolk, we helped to facilitate six of those for constituencies like middle school students, high school students, the Chamber of Commerce, non-profit executives, elders, and people that were already investors in that affiliated fund. A variety of different constituencies.

 

We help start the conversation and then figure out how to connect some of those conversations because many times –– and we’ve all seen this many times –– people accidentally end up talking past one another as opposed to talking with one another. Sometimes within these sessions we are just helping people to make those connections to make more competent assumptions than they had previously.

 

Peter: I have one question. There is a lot of conversation about poverty and wealth inequality. I am sure that Nebraska is hit by that. How do you think about that? Have you seen affiliated groups, for example, actually capitalize or start small businesses? I know that there are a lot regional efforts, like you mentioned about your town becoming a heritage tour destination to get more tourists that way. Talk about that.

 

Jeff: There are a couple of pieces. Let’s start with the individual piece, in particular. One of the things we have always tried to look at, within the context of Nebraska and especially the outmigration of young people, is what things can you do to create greater economic opportunity as well as greater opportunism and optimism about the future? A part of that might be helping to build a collective economic development infrastructure. We have helped to do that in some of the communities and counties that we have worked in. For example, amalgamate federal, state, local, and government dollars along with philanthropy dollars to have economic development professionals. Then how do those economic development professionals really focus on the things we can do to not only increase economic opportunity in this place, but also to change the conversation with young people about where they want to live and work as adults.

 

Much of our work is around supporting both an entrepreneurship curriculum as well as entrepreneurs. Connecting that with leadership development and skills associated with group dynamics. Having that conversation in as many ways possible with young people about where they want to be and what they want to be a part of. Then ultimately the philanthropy ends up being the glue that helps hold all that together over time in comparison to grantmaking. We have all been through the process where you apply for a state or federal grant, you start doing some of that work, but the grant period is three years. Well, what happens in the fourth? Many times, those people end up spending their time just trying to sustain the small institution they started as opposed to really getting to concentrate on their mission.

 

The other one that I will list is what we refer to as non-traditional scholarships. In some of our community-based affiliated funds they have identified one of the most effective ways of helping people that are currently working part-time service sector jobs is to help them return to school and maybe get an associate degree or an additional certificate or whatever the case may be. So, these scholarships are for things like helping an LPN return to school and become a registered nurse. Helping a high school educated mechanic to become a certified diesel mechanic. Helping a paraprofessional within the school system become a certified teacher. All this transforms part-time service sector working people into people who are clearly members of the middle-class.

 

We have seen a lot of terrific work happen with that approach and I think it has also changed the conversation around scholarships in general. If you are going to invest these community resources, then how do you invest them so the community and the individual both benefit?

 

John: Because a lot of scholarships invested in getting people to go to the university are really an investment in their leaving town.

 

Jeff: Yes, and we are certainly not in the business of saying we shouldn’t be sending people off to college. We know that in this economy we need everybody to have more than a high school degree. That doesn’t mean you have to cut off your nose to spite your face. Certainly, we can set up scholarships and we have done dozens of these, whereby preference is given to students who say they are interested in returning to that community or their region after they complete school.

 

Most important, it is not about holding somebody to some rules around this; it is the opportunity to have a conversation about what they want and how what they want, in fact, coincides with what is best for the community and that it isn’t different from that. How do you begin and sustain that conversation with people: that you are a member of our community and we want you to continue to be a member of our community?

 

Peter: Some people are writing in the chat. I don’t know if you can see it.

 

Jeff, are you able to see the chat happening?

 

Jeff: Yes, I’m looking through them now.

 

Maggie Rogers: Okay, great. It sounds like you have already answered one of the questions or even a couple of the questions. We also have a caller.

 

Debbie (caller): I’m from Austin, Texas, and a lot of people in Austin have been talking about the Nebraska effort, which prompted me to dial in. I thank Jeff for giving us more context, information, and background about your study and what it has meant to you because here we have a new head to our community foundation who is trying some new and innovative things. So, potentially we will be following in your footsteps.

 

Peter: Thanks, Debbie. Anyone else in line, Maggie?

 

Michelle Strutzenberger (caller): I am calling in from Peterborough, Ontario. Thanks, Peter and John, for hosting this conversation with Jeff. I‘ve seen that the Democracy Collaborative in Ohio recently released a report on Innovative Community Foundations. They shared the stories of 29 United States and 1 Canadian foundation. One element they mentioned is a growing exploration of something called impact investing by these foundations. So, you mentioned that the Nebraska Community Foundation in itself is not a grantmaker, but its 225 affiliated funds are. What possibilities do you see for these funds engaging in this sort of impact investing or social finance type work?

 

Jeff: By impact investing are you connecting it to things like mission related investment and program related investments?

 

Michelle: There is an expectation of both a financial and a social return. So, there is that sort of blended idea.

 

Jeff: Well, certainly the point of having any of these resources is to be able to help people create community impact in their place. I am a big believer that when you have seen one community then you have seen one community. Making generalizations around what is a good investment and what is not can be a really dicey proposition. That’s part of why we try to focus on how you connect the grantmaking with the process of engaging lots and lots of people in building that collective vision through a planning process. Creating priorities because we know we are not going to have enough resources or enough leadership or enough time to be able to do all these things at once.

 

Part of what I think you are working on within that process of engaging people and continuing to funnel down toward moving from lots and lots of things being important to a few things being priorities is the opportunity to see something change. The connecting piece to that –– and I am hopeful that many of you are familiar with it –– is the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy. Over time I have become a big believer that a community has a self-fulfilling prophecy just like an individual does. All these process things that we are discussing today are about how you help that community to identify where they are at as it relates to their self-concept and their self-fulfilling prophecy. How do you help them to continue to discern how to make that better and how to make that more optimistic? Grantmaking can certainly be a key tool within the context of that.

 

The final thing I will say on this question is that sometimes within the concept of when we have an intersection between community and philanthropy, we end up putting too much emphasis on philanthropy and not enough emphasis on community. I’ve become very comfortable saying over time that money is an important tool, but it is only one of many tools required to do good community building.

 

At the end of the day, and the transfer of wealth studies were all intended to help make this point, the limiting resource here isn’t money. We are an extraordinarily wealthy country. We’re an extraordinarily wealthy society. We can pretty much choose to do what we choose to do. So, the question is, how do you choose to focus on community building, creating opportunities, and creating more just outcomes for more people? To me this is more a function of leadership and more a function of vision and more a function of engagement than it is a function of capital. They are all important, but within the context of community building I’m convinced that money is not the limiting resource to getting things done. It’s going to be lots of other pieces. The vision and the leadership and the engagement are in place. I’ve now got years and years of evidence that we can figure out how to access the money to help get that done.

 

Peter: I think the question is whether you feel that a lot of people like venture capitalists and people like that were turning things upside down in alignment with what you are talking about. Saying we are going to invest, but the question of return is secondary or third. Where we want to invest is in new ventures that have a social justice component or social impact. The impact investment in something called SoCal. It’s just not the community foundations’ philanthropy, it’s also local people with all the same goals that you have of keeping it here and building a place and changing the criteria of what constitutes a good investment. Your thinking about that is in aligned with that very much.

 

Jeff: There are a couple of notes here on the questions that people have asked that I think might be interesting to connect to. Is that okay?

 

Peter: Sure, we’ve got about five minutes.

 

Jeff: There is  one saying that a good related resource for trust oriented grassroots relational organizing is The Network Weaver Handbook. I think that is absolutely correct. A woman named June Holley from Athens, Ohio, created Network Weaving, and I find it to be extraordinarily useful work. She has been working on this for a couple of decades and doing a terrific job. I’m actually having a series of conversations with John, Tom Mosgaller, and others around how to connect network weaving and asset mapping within the context of a particular place, helping them not only to fully articulate their vision and move that from plan to opportunity, but also how to use this to be an even greater connection with all of these people that care and are willing to step up and lead and support. So, that’s  another piece of building up this ecosystem.

 

John: Any other questions in the chat that you want to respond to?

 

Jeff: I like the last one and I would be interested in the two of you talking about this a little bit: Local people are being witnessed by you as they assumed dominion over their inner and external resources. It’s a huge discovery of personal power.

 

That’s a really important statement within the context of this work over time. It’s never about the money and it’s always about the people. Helping people to have confidence and knowing that their work is important and honorable and that they are difference makers.

 

Peter: I think that part of the work that you are doing, Jeff, is helping people come to terms with wealth. You could call it the right use of wealth in this consumerist society, surplus society, and accumulation society. Most of us are out of relationship with one another, whether you are poor or whether you are rich. I think that you are trying to bring us into a right relationship with wealth and recognizing it as useful, but that it is not the point. Most people say that, especially at the end of their lives, but I think that you really embody that with the work that you are doing and thinking. What you bring is quite amazing.

 

Jeff: That is really gracious of you to say that and thank you very much. All that credit goes to all of these amazing people in Nebraska. Eighteen hundred volunteers serving as affiliated fund leaders for these various community-based efforts. It has become a very sizeable movement in terms of the number of people and the number of moving parts.

 

John: Jeff, if people want to follow up on this discussion how could they connect with you?

 

Jeff: You can just Google Nebraska Community Foundation and that will take you to our homepage. I am certainly happy to have offline conversations with those of you that are interested in following up on some of this, whether it be on how to use the transfer of wealth or how we have tried to figure out this varied decentralized system. It is a work in progress. The fun is that every day we are building something and helping to be a partner in creating an opportunity or solving a problem or whatever the case might be. It feels good to have the opportunity to wake up to this every morning.

 

Peter: Also, you call them volunteers, but what you are really doing is creating citizens. You are co-producing something because most volunteers are for someone else’s stake. It’s a co-production and co-creation in the way you talk about it. It’s what citizenship is about. So, thank you for that. We are pretty near the end oof our time today. Any final words that you have?

 

John: It makes me think over and over again that when you think about money as wealth what we are learning here is that if you are really concerned about community, it isn’t about grants: Money is the bait, not the fish. What’s going on here is a wonderful recognition that always keeping the relational aspect of community at the forefront is critical. How do we use money in such a way that it is a precipitant of wisdom and more intentional community life? We all know that there are places, often low-income places, that have become grant economies. There, in the philanthropy and government world, you can lead people to think you can’t do anything without a grant. So, grants go two ways. They can either be wonderfully concipient or they can be disabling in the long run. What we are hearing here is the way to think about wealth as a real community builder. It’s a wonderful thing that you have done, Jeff.

 

Jeff: Like I said, it’s hundreds and hundreds of people focusing on this and it’s an honor to be a part of it. So, thank you, John. John has been a wonderful inspiration and an additional content provider for us here in Nebraska for the last couple of years. I just want to thank you for doing all that.

 

John: It’s great to learn from you.