History Punctuates Change & Parkway Funding

There is no doubt our state and regional governments are in terrible difficulty—with disagreement as to the cause—but difficulty, yes.

Sacramento County financial woes bode ill for the Parkway—another article about less money for the Parkway is in the Sacramento Bee today, but it is also a moment when great opportunity could be at hand.

Our proposed strategy is to form a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) of local governments to provide base funding for the Parkway and the JPA then create a nonprofit conservancy to develop supplemental funding and provide daily management, which can be read about on our website, Section V of our strategy page.

The relationship between nonprofit organizations and government is essentially a compatible one, with the nonprofit providing independent issue advocacy and fundraising when needed, while remaining a public issue oriented private institution that arose in American society like in no other.

De Tocqueville speculated that the American tendency to associate in nonprofit organizations to advocate for large causes was partially responsible for the American sense of equality:

“It often happens that the English execute very great things in isolation, whereas there is scarcely an undertaking so small that Americans do not unite for it. It is evident that the former consider association as a powerful means of action; but the latter seem to see in it the sole means they have of acting.

“Thus the most democratic country on earth is found to be, above all, the one where men in our day have most perfected the art of pursuing the object of their common desires in common and have applied this new science to the most objects. Does this result from an accident or could it be that there in fact exists a necessary relation between associations and equality?” (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2000 translation by H. C. Mansfield and D. Winthrop. p. 490)

Among nonprofit organizations and government, social entrepreneurship and its innovation and risk-taking are exemplified nowhere else as fully as they are in America and nowhere else in America as fully as they are in California.

Paul C. Light, the renowned nonprofit organizational author, wrote in a recent article:

“Opportunities for grand change come in waves…There is good evidence that socially entrepreneurial opportunities arise during specific punctuations, or focused periods in history. During these periods, the prevailing wisdom weakens, revealing the failure of the status quo to solve problems…Today, the world appears to be experiencing a punctuation of opportunities, which is drawing new funders into the field of social entrepreneurship. No one knows for sure how long these punctuations last—a few years, a decade, or more?—but we do know that these punctuations produce a wave of activity that feeds on itself.” (Social Entrepreneurship Revisited, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Summer 2009, Volume 7, Number 3, pp.21-22)

This could very well be applicable to the current situation with our beloved Parkway and the difficulty it will be facing during the next several years, compounded by that which it has been dealing with for the past several.

While it may be difficult to consider innovative ideas regarding the funding and management of the Parkway during these trying times, it is also perhaps the best time to do so, when what has been tried now for so many years no longer works as well as it once did, (“failure of the status quo to solve problems”) and entrepreneurial risk may not be such a risk after all.

_______________________________

David H. Lukenbill, CFO & Senior Policy Director
American River Parkway Preservation Society (ARPPS)
Preserve, Protect, and Strengthen the American River Parkway,
Our Community’s Natural Heart
2267 University Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95825
Phone: 916-486-3856
Email: Dlukenbill@msn.com
Weblog: http://parkwayblog.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.arpps.org/