Article by Kristen Grimm: “Trust for institutions across society is declining. This is not a theory but a fact, affirmed by leading experts like the Edelman Trust Barometer, Gallup, and General Social Survey by NORC at the University of Chicago.
This growing trust deficit is a serious problem. It erodes a high-functioning pluralistic democracy, compromises public health, and makes it impossible to solve collective problems like climate change. Trust in institutions is necessary to create and improve the social contracts that govern democracy and allow communities and the nation to strike sustainable civic bargains. Trust doesn’t just happen. It is earned person by person, moving through large segments of society.
American civil society institutions have an important role to play. From nonprofits advancing dignity and rights, to academia creating space to explore the issues of the day, to community organizations building confidence in our elections—each contributes to the expansion or decline of social trust. Trust-building is actions aligned to values—it’s not just communicating about what matters, but doing it.
For leaders of civil society organizations, earning, rebuilding, and maintaining trust is a complicated but doable and essential undertaking to achieve their mission. They need to understand the context in which they are building trust across diverse groups of people, from staff to partners to the people they serve to society at large.
The job is made harder by bad actors in society who deliberately undermine trust. Those who are pitting communities against each other and sowing misinformation are harnessing faster and fancier tools to do their worst. For civil society leaders to reverse the growing trust deficit and use social trust to bridge rather than divide society, leaders need to be equally well equipped…(More)”.
