“The world is more dangerous and divided, and this moment calls for a renewed focus on strengthening the bonds that hold our society together. As Canada’s population becomes more diverse, fostering community and civic engagement and a collective sense of belonging is becoming increasingly important.” This is a statement from a federal media release announcing a new Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion. “The new [Council] will help build a more inclusive and united Canada; one grounded in our shared values, with a strong focus on community involvement, and rooted in the belief that far more unites us than divides us”, says the federal Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture.

There is a lot to agree with in this statement. The suggestion of shared values. The focus on community involvement. The idea that we are more united than divided. But is this perspective shared by the many people and by organizations across Canadian civil society who have been working for years to build stronger relationships and more trust and cohesion in our communities? Are their efforts bearing fruit? We hear more about the divisive than the cohesive forces: the negative impact of social media, isolation and loneliness, hate speech and racism, polarized politics, eroding trust in the media, in business, in democratic processes. While we may seem more united as Canadians these days in the face of political and economic threat, does this paper over some deeper cracks? There are clearly divides in Canada along geographic, socio-economic and identity lines, to name three. Will they worsen in spite of our current resolve?

And what can foundations and their community partners do to close the gaps and build more cohesion? Some foundations in Canada today are paying more attention to the need to strengthen our democracy. This can mean countering the forces of hate and division. This can mean building stronger information systems for public benefit. This can mean strengthening public service and safeguards for fair democratic participation. Ultimately, all of this involves building and reinforcing trust in our systems, our leaders and our fellow Canadians.

Yuval Harari the Israeli historian has said: “Democracy runs on trust. Dictatorship runs on fear. The moment trust erodes – whether in institutions, elections, or truth itself – democracy crumbles.” Trust is fundamental. And, as many have noted, once lost it’s not easily regained.

Some years ago, Liz Weaver, a former leader of the Tamarack Institute, and a deeply experienced leader of community-level collective efforts to solve complex social challenges, wrote a thoughtful paper on Turf, Trust, Co-creation and Collective Impact. In this paper she unpacked trust as an emotion, and as a multi-dimensional practice. As she noted then, “our cities are trying to solve increasingly complex issues. These complex issues require us to collaborate across sectors with people we have not collaborated with before. At the same time, levels of trust between citizens and groups in society are declining. Citizens are expressing a lack of trust in leaders, institutions and systems”. Citing Adam Kahane in his book Collaborating with the Enemy, Weaver talks about the ‘enemyfying syndrome’. People who do not agree with one’s own point of view or perspective become ‘the enemy’. But, she says, “creating enemies does not lead to co-creating communities. It leads to increased turf, isolation, alienation and a blindness to the needs, challenges and aspirations of others. Kahane urges us to embrace our enemies. To embrace enemies, we must understand how to foster trust.”

This remains both true and difficult. While Weaver goes on to sort through the ways in which one can understand and build trust, it is not easy or short work. It takes time, skill, personal commitment and opportunity to build empathy and common purpose.

Again, what can philanthropic funders do to help build trust within communities and among people? Weaver and others point to the interpersonal and local levels as the places where trust must begin. Funders do frequently work with community and local partners but more often in one-to-one relationships. Is there a role for them that goes beyond support for individual organizations? A timely set of suggestions are presented in a report from the Freedom Together Foundation, a US foundation working on democracy, justice and belonging. This report, A Bigger We, offers a strategy to strengthen belonging, bridging, and collective agency in the American (and our) democracy.

A Bigger We pinpoints agency – the act of exerting our will to remake the world around us – as the key to overcoming alienation and conflict. The lack of agency experienced by many people is, in the view of the report authors, not a crisis of demand but a crisis of supply. People want to participate but don’t have the civic structures and leaders to create opportunities for participation. Collective agency and shared leadership are required, they say, for sustained engagement in public life. They go on to say that philanthropy has a critical role to play in cultivating collective agency. The report suggests that funders can support the development and training of community organizers who can foster agency, fund research and data collection work at local levels to measure community agency and make long term and flexible funding commitments to community organizers.

We have some extraordinary resources for Canadian funders interested in strengthening community trust and agency at local levels. The Tamarack Institute is an excellent Canadian resource for funders. The Shorefast Institute is another. MakeWay and other intermediaries for funders provide opportunities for collective funding. But there is still a gap that Canadian philanthropy can think about filling as they consider how to support efforts to provide both agency and a sense of belonging across the country. It’s a gap in support for developing and supporting the movement leaders and capacities that will drive sustained trust-building within communities. We have some excellent leaders and thinkers already in this field like Adam Kahane and Paul Born who has given us yet another terrific guide to community organizing with his recent book Breakthrough Community Change.  Perhaps a discussion topic for funders now contemplating how they can play their own part in building cohesion across our country?