Acceptance Comments: Roseanne Mirabella, November 22, 2024
I am deeply honored to receive the lifetime achievement award for distinguished achievement and leadership in recognition of my dedication to scholarship, teaching, and leadership in the nonprofit field.
As many of you know, I have spent the better part of my academic career studying nonprofit management education, developing a census of university-based programs in the United States while later extending this work to a more comprehensive global approach in partnership with regional scholars. While my work in this regard is well known, I would imagine that many of you are not aware of the almost twenty-year career I had working for government and nonprofit organizations prior to joining the academy. In many ways, these experiences—in community-based organizations in my hometown of Newark, New Jersey, in New York City’s Office of Management and Budget, in the Commissioner’s Office of New York State’s Department of Social Services, and in New York City’s Human Resources Administration steering policy and budgeting—made an indelible imprint on me as I came to understand how the inequities and oppression facing citizens in our local communities were often reinforced by the very policies we were charged with implementing. While my academic training equipped me with the skills and knowledge to be successful in these settings—and I was often able to challenge traditional approaches through advocacy for initiatives challenging the status quo—I came to see how ill-equipped I was to bring about significant social change for those living on the margins. This is due mostly to the management education offered to most of us both then and now in colleges and universities.
I have often been critical of the traditional approach to educating future nonprofit leaders for its principle focus on teaching students how to run organizations—to manage people, fundraise, budget, undertake program evaluation, etc.—with much less focus on educating our students to understand and craft solutions for the wicked problems facing our communities. In my estimation, our increasing over-reliance on market-based models, such as social entrepreneurship and social innovation, can and quite frankly has overshadowed the social and community-driven missions of civil society organizations. My critique in this regard is central to the remarks I have prepared for you today.
There is no way to stand before you and ignore the elephant in the room regarding the anxiety many in this space are experiencing in the aftermath of the presidential election. Those of us who work with civil society groups, particularly those serving vulnerable populations, are deeply concerned. Advocacy organizations—those serving or advocating for immigrants, formerly incarcerated people, LGBTQ+ people, women, and other vulnerable marginalized groups—fear they will be attacked. And rightly so as the rhetoric of the election is soon to become reality in many communities.
As someone you being recognized today for a lifetime of leadership in the field, it is my responsibility to deliver this message to you. Now is not the time to give up. Now is not the time to retreat. Now is not the time to turn inward to families and friends. Now is not the time to abandon the causes we have advocated for throughout our professional lives. Now is not the time to declare we are just too exhausted to continue the work. There are those in power who hope we will, who hope we will feel defeated, who are counting on us to retreat.
But now is not the time. As I have argued elsewhere, now is the time for educational programming that is more robust so that we can further emphasize the importance of democracy and participatory governance as missions central to nonprofit and voluntary studies. Now is the time to invigorate the nonprofit and philanthropic sector as a bulwark against growing trends towards anti-democracy, to reclaim the values of civil society. Towards this end, I would like to propose three transformative pedagogical approaches nonprofit educators can embrace to equip our students with the knowledge and skills necessary to become leaders of nonprofit organizations, and in civil society more broadly.
My first proposal is to challenge traditional views of nonprofit organizations as mere service providers, instead framing them as dynamic actors that shape and are shaped by societal forces with the ability to bring about social, economic, and political change. Our nonprofit education programs must better equip students to carry out the advocacy function of nonprofit organizations in our communities. This revised curriculum will instruct students in approaches to advocacy and lobbying that will empower our students to capably serve citizens in their community, familiarize them with the vocabulary of social movements as complex organisms that can be drawn upon to shift narratives and rules of the game, and provide a more balanced approach to nonprofit education between efficiency and equity, prioritizing inclusivity and collaboration over competition. Many programs have begun to move in this direction, but most students studying in nonprofit programs are offered this curriculum solely as elective courses if at all. We must do better.
My second proposal addresses ways in which we currently study and teach about social media and civil society, which I suggest examining with an eye to revamping. For example, the chapter penned by Joel Gehringer in our recently published Critical Perspectives Handbook identified three threats to civil society posed by internet communication technologies in the postmodern era. Hyperreality, the first of these threats, is the distortion of our lived experiences through reproduction and multiple sharing in online platforms. The second threat, liquid modernity, encompasses limitations on the “authentic public sphere” resulting from the rapid change in online apps and platforms rendering the everyday citizen unable to engage with and challenge the elite status quo. The last way in which civil society is disrupted and threatened is through ‘fabrication of the people’ giving elites the ability to define who counts as the people—who will be heard and considered—erasing or ‘de-personing’ actually existing individuals. Our students need to be fully aware of who sets the policy agenda through internet communication technologies, the ways in which this will impact their work as civil society leaders, and how these narratives relate to nonprofit work and social justice.
Therefore, I propose the adoption of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of social media and civil society. We must add critical media literacy to our nonprofit toolkit enabling us to better understand how media constructs reality, reinforces ideologies, and shapes power dynamics in third spaces. Gehringer suggests several ways to accomplish this. First, while many nonprofit and voluntary associations utilize internet communications for fundraising and public relations, we must encourage our students to be skeptical of social media particularly as it may distort or abuse their message. Next, in recognition that authentic collective organizing must go beyond online discourse to be effective, we must reclaim actual civic spheres in our communities. Finally, we must rebuild a shared reality by bringing together individuals who face oppression by elite power structures to rebuild a public sphere and a civil society grounded in ‘fact and truth.’ This education is essential for countering the effects of disinformation and polarization and will foster informed civic engagement, bringing people together rather than tearing our society apart.
Finally, my third proposal and the one I am most excited to share with you today, concerns the practical application of our theories and knowledge into the community. I have been a lifelong advocate for strengthening partnerships between universities and civil society to enhance social impact. Having directed an institute for community engaged research and learning for almost thirty years, I have seen firsthand the impact these partnerships have on our students, our community partners, and on faculty incorporating these pedagogical approaches into their classes. Quite frankly, I would not be here today as a nonprofit scholar had I not participated in a year-long internship in a local community organization as an undergraduate. It was indeed life changing for me as it has been for others. Moreover, these partnerships are essential now more than ever as community-based organizations brace for what is to come in the months and years ahead.
For the past four years I have been involved in an initiative with local community partners addressing violence as a public health issue. The goal of the initiative is to break the cycle of violence through the provision of resources in the community, employing a grassroots approach to violence prevention, intervention, and treatment programs for trauma recovery. For example, students in my capstone class this semester are working in partnership with community practitioners on a variety of grassroot initiatives. Take a look at this:
My partners in this work are here with us today, Dr. Jamila Davis and Mr. Angelo Pinto, and our fellow ARNOVAn Dr. Juan Rios. Please thank them for their dedication to these community activists and to violence prevention and recovery work. In addition to undertaking this work in our region, they are actively engaged with community practitioners across the country, all of whom would be eager to engage in this violence prevention and trauma recovery work with you and your students. Now is the time to engage in this work to support participatory governance and democracy in our communities. If any of you are interested in becoming part of this initiative, please reach out to us to learn more.
In closing, I would like to acknowledge those ARNOVAns who nominated me for this prestigious award, many of whom are former students or mentees. And I am forever indebted to the ARNOVA critters who invited me into the critical perspectives family with open arms and gave me the vocabulary I needed to pursue this work. Thank you.
I would like to thank my family, without whom none of what I have accomplished in my career would have been possible, and from whom I have drawn so much inspiration. To my children, most of whom are able to join me here today, Lee, our golden girl, who was the first one to call me mommy; Anna and her wife Elisabeth who were not able to join us today, Anna, who I always say was born older, wise beyond her years, an accomplished writer in her own right who has proofread so many of my manuscripts, presentations and today’s remarks! and Elisabeth, my go to person for figuring out everything with her creativity and ingenuity; our daughter Kate, who just earlier this month successfully defended her dissertation in media literacy at Rutgers University and from whom I have learned a great deal about critical disability theory—look for our co-authored chapter in the Handbook of Critical Perspectives—and our youngest Tatiana joining me here today with their fiancé, Chase, who graduated with their Masters in Social Work last June, and on those long very early drives to swim meets has always been a great source of nourishment for my soul. And of course, Jamie Rose, our granddaughter, the absolute joy of our lives. Grandmotherhood. The best thing ever!
And at the top of the list is Mike, my husband and partner of almost thirty-eight years who has made everything possible from helping me pass my Italian proficiency exam, supporting me in my work, holding down the fort as I took on various leadership roles in the academy and in our local community, and being there to listen as I problem solved (or not!) through it all. Thank you for always being there for me and for all of us. My academic career would not have been possible without you. Finally, to my mom and dad, forever grateful.
Again, thank you to the ARNOVA community for this recognition and for giving me this platform to share a few forward-looking proposals with you. Thank you.