What words resonate with us and inspire us? One of our national partners, Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE), sought to better understand public perceptions of language associated with civic engagement and democracy.

PACE, a philanthropic laboratory for funders seeking to maximize their impact on democracy and civic life in America, released the first phase of its Civic Language Perceptions Project. Fetzer Institute, a CMF member, supported the project to include oversampling data in Southwest Michigan.

Kristen Cambell, CEO of PACE, said the impetus for this research came from PACE’s membership, from members who were struggling with how to communicate about their work.  

“The words and phrases that we use in civic engagement and democracy work can often feel very academic, elitist and conceptual. There’s always been this kind of challenge of the language of how we talk about this work feeling academic and a little disconnected from how the people we seek to inspire might talk about or think about this work,” Cambell said. 

PACE is using a three-phased approach for the roll-out of this project over the next few months. The project is currently in phase one, data and exploration, and is guided by the question, “What disconnect(s) exist between the language of the civic philanthropy field and the rest of the world?”

In partnership with Citizen Data, PACE conducted an online survey in November 2021 from a nationally representative random sample of 5,000 registered voters to poll 21 terms commonly used in civic engagement and democracy work and to understand how people perceive and associate them.  

The 21 terms that were surveyed included: activism, belonging, bridge builder, citizen, civic engagement, civic health, civic infrastructure, civil society, civility, common good, common ground, democracy, diversity, justice, liberty, patriotism, pluralism, privilege, racial equity, social justice and unity. 

Cambell shared that these words were chosen because they are open to interpretation.

“They are usually not literal action words like voting or volunteering. They’re largely conceptual values and ideals that mean a lot of things to a lot of people. They’re not necessarily literal and direct at all times and that’s part of what makes communicating about them, particularly to diverse audiences, challenging,” Cambell said. 

For each term, survey respondents were asked three questions:

•    How do you feel about the term?

•    Who do you associate the term with?

•    How do you feel about the people you associate the term with?

PACE created an interactive dashboard allowing users to increase the complexity of the data for each term around demographics like race, age, gender, household income, religion, education level, political ideology, political party and type of community, whether respondents had civic education courses in school, who they voted for in 2020, where they get news and activities they think are important to ensure democracy works. 

Topline findings are featured on the dashboard and highlight the 10 terms that most commonly received a positive association and the 10 terms that most commonly received a negative association. It’s important to note, as Cambell pointed out, there are words that appear on both lists due to respondents feeling both very positively and very negatively. 

As with language, there are many nuances to the research, as different intersections of identities and ideologies had varied responses to terminology.

Topline Findings

•    Some terms like justice, patriotism, diversity, democracy and common good were on both lists, suggesting that survey respondents felt both very positively and very negatively. 

•    Most positive perception ratings: Unity, liberty, citizen, justice, democracy, diversity, common good, belonging, patriotism and civility. 

•    Most negative perception ratings: Privilege, social justice, racial equity, activism, justice, patriotism, diversity, common good, civic infrastructure and democracy. 

•    For the most positively rated term, unity, 51.4% of respondents said they associated the word with Black people, 46.8% with Hispanic people and 46.4% with White people. Privilege was rated most negatively among the words. 45.2% of respondents associated the word with White people, 43.2% with the “upper class” and 32.3% with liberal or progressive groups. 

During a national webinar last week, Cambell urged those reviewing the data to resist seeing any lists as a definitive finding or as a recommendation about what language to use. 

“Data is a way that we listen but it’s not the only way that we listen. Data is the input that’s going to help us dive into larger streams of inquiry that then hopefully will result in some recommendations, but we don’t want to get there too quickly. Data can only tell us so much,” Cambell said. 

PACE is offering $500 stipends to support people and organizations interested in analyzing the data to surface new findings and advance their work, to continue to explore the survey data in creative ways and help others in the civic field learn.

As a leadership organization that puts equity at the center, and racial equity imperatively, CMF recognizes questions or concerns may arise from the findings.

“Some may see this preliminary report as a reason to make a case for moving away from a focus on equity, justice or diversity based on some of the ‘negative’ perceptions these terms carry among some respondents. Moving away from the language doesn’t solve the underlying challenges.  At CMF, we see this challenge as a useful tool to shape engagement across perceptions—underscoring the continued need for philanthropy to commit fully to this work. To succeed we all have to carry forward through the discomfort of polarization. CMF will continue leading, strengthening and supporting Michigan philanthropy in the critical work of creating spaces for discourse and community conversation,” Kyle Caldwell, president and CEO of CMF said. 

We look forward to continuing to unpack the data with our members as PACE rolls out the next phases of this project.

Want more? 

Learn more about PACE’s Civic Language Perceptions Project. 

Sign-up to access and explore the interactive dashboard. 

Learn more about PACE’s mini-grants.