Aug 11, 2026 · 57 min · 12 segments
Rabbi Michael Holzman sits down with Rich Harwood, founder of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, to explore what civic culture actually means and why rebuilding it starts smaller than most…
Rich HarwoodGuestMichael HolzmanHost
Honestly, we need it in the country and we need faith leaders and and people of faith to step forward in the country, which I know we'll talk more about.
You know, as I've been doing this work for about 40 years and in communities and across our work has spread to all 50 states and 40 countries and.
You know, everyone thinks that the most important things we need to focus on are strategies, programs, and initiatives.
But in the 40 years of doing this work, what I've learned is that the biggest predictor about whether or not communities, communities of any size, it could be a congregation, it could be a neighborhood, it could be a side of town, it could be an entire geographic community.
that the biggest predictor of whether or not communities move forward is not their strategies, initiatives, and programs, but their civic culture.
And when you, just a quick example, I was with 40 funders last week in Sarasota, Florida, and they told me the exact same thing that every community tells me that we work with when I ask them, what are the things that are actually holding your community back? and inevitably they say we don't have enough leaders who have the community in their line of sight.
We don't have constructive norms that enable people to interact together and work together.
We don't have enough organizations that catalyze change in our community and enable us to move forward.
We don't have enough informal networks that bring people together, not to take credit for things we didn't do or make ourselves feel important, but to share ideas, to innovate together, to spark things, to spark our imagination.
And what's interesting, last thing I'll say about this, Mike, what's interesting about this, particularly when I was working with funders last week who were interested in giving out grants, that's how they measured their effectiveness.
I said to them, well, to create the civic culture that you just named, all the things I just talked about that were too fragmented, were too siloed, were working apart from one another.
Honestly, we need it in the country and we need faith leaders and and people of faith to step forward in the country, which I know we'll talk more about.
You know, as I've been doing this work for about 40 years and in communities and across our work has spread to all 50 states and 40 countries and.
You know, everyone thinks that the most important things we need to focus on are strategies, programs, and initiatives.
But in the 40 years of doing this work, what I've learned is that the biggest predictor about whether or not communities, communities of any size, it could be a congregation, it could be a neighborhood, it could be a side of town, it could be an entire geographic community.
that the biggest predictor of whether or not communities move forward is not their strategies, initiatives, and programs, but their civic culture.
And when you, just a quick example, I was with 40 funders last week in Sarasota, Florida, and they told me the exact same thing that every community tells me that we work with when I ask them, what are the things that are actually holding your community back? and inevitably they say we don't have enough leaders who have the community in their line of sight.
We don't have constructive norms that enable people to interact together and work together.
We don't have enough organizations that catalyze change in our community and enable us to move forward.
We don't have enough informal networks that bring people together, not to take credit for things we didn't do or make ourselves feel important, but to share ideas, to innovate together, to spark things, to spark our imagination.
And what's interesting, last thing I'll say about this, Mike, what's interesting about this, particularly when I was working with funders last week who were interested in giving out grants, that's how they measured their effectiveness.
I said to them, well, to create the civic culture that you just named, all the things I just talked about that were too fragmented, were too siloed, were working apart from one another.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
