It’s hard not to worry these days about what is happening to democracy in North America. Yes, this worry is particularly concentrated on the United States given the constant stream of news from the USA about polarization, conflict, and outright attacks on democratic institutions. We have not experienced these attacks in Canada. But we should worry about the frittering away of social cohesion in Canada as we too experience the impacts of social media disinformation, social isolation, and lessening of trust in community, which can lead to a lessening of trust in democratic institutions. We need to reinforce our degree of civic empathy. And philanthropy can play a role in this.
I was struck by this term of civic empathy in listening to the Giving Done Right podcast with Stephen Heintz, the long serving President of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Heintz has been a leader in strengthening civic spaces, culture and empathy across America. He participated in the bipartisan Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship which went on a listening tour (well before the 2024 election). As he puts it, “listening is an incredibly important part of the restoration of trust. We need to approach each other with civic empathy as opposed to civic antipathy, which is what is practiced a lot these days. And empathy is more about trying to put yourself in the shoes of the other and understand them and listening to them rather than trying to persuade them. In our information environment, that is a difficult practice, civic empathy, but it is essential. I think we all need to retrain ourselves in this skill and really listen to each other. That happens in community settings.”
Heintz believes that the best way to rebuild trust by listening is to do it locally, in community, around shared interests. This requires the creation of community space and programming to fill that space and to draw people together. His other insight is that national funders can have more local impact when they collaborate. The Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship devotes a section of its final report Our Common Purpose to the importance of the “hyper-local world of libraries, playgrounds, public parks, community gardens, churches, and cafes” which are the spaces that support associational life. Heintz and the RBF worked with other major American foundations to create the Trust for Civic Life, to help build community gathering spaces and to reinforce civic life across rural America.
This idea of civic empathy of course also applies in urban communities. Without mentioning civic empathy directly, Local Trust in the United Kingdom gives unrestricted funding to 150 communities to enable them to transform and improve their lives and places as they choose. People feel listened to when they are given the resources to act. In Canada the Tamarack Institute is proposing a Strategy for Belonging aimed at strengthening communities and “sustaining our democracy by way of community-led involvement”. A more involved and empathetic community is likely to be a community that supports democracy. It is also a community that engages people in strengthening their own economic “nutrition” as the social enterprise Shorefast puts it. The link from trusting community to strengthened economy to engaged democracy is clear. DemocracyXChange at TMU is planning a conference in 2026 to explore these links and how to build an economy that strengthens democracy and “deepens civic trust”.
The idea of civic empathy and its connection to lessening isolation and polarization has been understood for years. Community foundations in Canada know this well and are rallied to the cause of Belonging by their national organization Community Foundations Canada. Local United Ways are also invested in funding community connections. The federal government’s 2025 Budget recognizes the link between a strong economy and a strong community infrastructure and has launched a Build Communities Strong Fund which will help to create more community spaces across Canada, where people can meet through sport, culture and education.
What about the role of Canadian private philanthropy in building civic empathy as a way of strengthening democracy? There are many opportunities to support local community infrastructure and individual foundations have done so. But there are gaps. And this is where more collective action may have more impact, as Heintz suggests. Building civic empathy is a complex challenge. Empathy and listening must work across socioeconomic divides. The places where people gather to work on a common activity, to debate, to meet each other, to read and watch, to garden or to play a sport are all essential. A strategy to build civic empathy can be built around them. Some private foundations have come together in Canada to support local journalism as a way to counter disinformation, and to make connections across all parts of a community. Other foundations have joined together to tackle urban and rural community needs for parks, for cultural spaces, for community gardens, for libraries. These needs are for capital to create and maintain physical space and to fuel the brains that animate them. This is “civic culture”. As the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (sponsor of Our Common Purpose) put it in in their 2025 report Habits of Heart and Mind, “ a strong and vibrant civic culture provides mechanisms to manage collective anxieties about who we are. It makes it possible for people to respect differences, freely exchange ideas, shape institutions, actively engage with diversity and build a more just society.”
In this time when Canada also is challenged to become stronger, a philanthropic commitment to reinforcing civic empathy and civic culture could not be more important.