Do Residents of Low-Income Communities Trust Organizations to Speak on Their Behalf? Differences by Organizational Type

Abstract

Low-income people of color in urban communities have been found to suffer from high levels of political inequality and poor political representation. To make policy more responsive and accountable, neighborhood organizations are often solicited to serve as informal community representatives in local decision-making processes. Given this reliance on nonelected representatives, we ask, Do community residents believe neighborhood organizations are legitimate representatives of their interests? Using survey data from residents of the South Side of Chicago, this article demonstrates that residents’ trust in organizations as representatives varies significantly by organizational type. Specifically, community organizations, religious congregations, and schools are rated as more trustworthy to speak on behalf of the community than local elected officials. These findings hold relatively constant across a variety of individual- and community-level differences, implying that this preference is widespread and may extend to other vulnerable urban communities in the United States.

Bringing Organizations Back In: Multilevel Feedback Effects on Individual Civic Inclusion

“…Policy can work through organizations to help them do so. Research shows that policy‐favored nonprofits function as nonelected representatives of disadvantaged communities in local politics and public affairs (Berry & Arons, ; Levine, ) and low‐income citizens view them as good and legitimate representatives of their interests (Mosley & Grogan, ; Park, Mosley, & Grogan, ).…”

De-Implementation of Evidence-Based Interventions: Implications for Organizational and Managerial Research

“…At the same time, unbalanced attention toward one area of organizational scholarship is a concerning trend. Human service organizations have been considered as venues for not just health and social service provision, but civic engagement, empowerment, community organizing, and social change (Hasenfeld & Garrow, 2012;Park, Mosley, & Grogan, 2016). Organizational studies simply facilitating and fueling service implementation and de-implementation can harm the overall missions of the social work profession and scholarship.…”

Fostering Civic Health: An Analysis of the Generative and Mediating Activities of Community-Based Organizations

“…In the area of nonprofit scholarship, a host of scholars have provided evidence that particular nonprofits (CBOs) are uniquely positioned to represent communities, enable civic participation, and foster democratic governance (Alexander, 2011; Chaskin & Greenberg, 2013; LeRoux, 2007; Mosley & Grogan, 2013; Park, Mosley, & Grogan, 2018). CBOs are defined as public or private nonprofit organizations that are representative of a community or significant segments of the community and provide educational or related services to individuals in the community (20 USCS § 7801(6)).…”

“…CBOs are defined as public or private nonprofit organizations that are representative of a community or significant segments of the community and provide educational or related services to individuals in the community (20 USCS § 7801(6)). These organizations were identified as indispensable structures for providing citizens with a voice in community decisions, and particularly for counteracting the representational challenges of marginalized communities (Mosley & Grogan, 2013; Park et al, 2018). For example, a 10-year longitudinal study of a county human service agency’s partnerships with CBOs revealed that neighborhood organizations “fostered the generation of democratic knowledge that informed administrative decision making” and enhanced the public organization’s accountability to marginalized citizens (Alexander, 2011, p. 114).…”

“…This occurs in the interorganizational arena where they articulate the concerns and needs of people who are clients, translating them into the language of policy. Their contribution to civic health is twofold: They create opportunity for citizenship and citizen engagement and they generate a more democratic balance of interests operating in the policy arena, most particularly as they represent citizen groups that lack access to political institutions and/or who lack the requisite knowledge and skills to participate on their own (Berry & Arons, 2003; Levine, 2016; Park et al, 2018). In short, the contributions of CBOs to civic health include both generative and mediating roles that take place as a component of organizational programming, community engagement, policy agendas, and the promotion of organizational values with other organizations and institutions (Fernandez & Alexander, 2017).…”