2021 Pulse Check on Shared Stewardship for Thriving Together Across America

The State of Shared Stewardship Across America

Pulse Check contributors expressed a high level of agreement with three fundamental tenets of shared stewardship (see Figure 3):

• People and organizations should use their wealth to create conditions where all people can thrive (92% strongly or somewhat agree)
• Every person should feel they have the power to help shape the world they live in (99% strongly or somewhat agree)
• Purpose in life must be larger than oneself and one’s organization (95% strongly or somewhat agree)

Figure 3: How much do you agree with the following statements? (n=348)

To what extent do these perspectives translate to specific beliefs and perceived actions? We examined responses to 19 additional items (see Table 3 in Appendix 2) that probed five specific areas of stewardship values, priorities, and practices:

• Perceptions of unequal opportunities for all people to live their best possible lives
• Preferences for equitable investment that direct more resources toward those with the most to gain
• The extent to which system change is an organizational goal
• The extent to which the contributor’s organization has internal norms and processes for stewardship
• The extent to which the contributor’s organization engages in collaborative activities with others

Each question had a normatively ideal response—one that reflects the ideals of stewardship for individuals or organizations. For instance, if a contributor said that their organization views system change in its community as its most important organizational goal, that would indicate strong consistency with the premise that stewards should routinely concentrate on the systems that shape our lives. The opposite would be true if the contributor said that system change is not something the organization talks about.

That kind of normative analysis allowed us to create an index of stewardship diffusion that measures the spread and uptake of core stewardship perspectives. A contributor whose answers aligned with the normative stewardship response to every question would have a score of 100. Conversely, a contributor who endorsed none of the expected stewardship responses would have a diffusion score of zero.

The lowest score registered by any contributor was 18, while some scored 100. Across the 348-person sample, the average score was 65 (see Figure 4). Respondents from community non-profits, public health departments, and hospitals tended to score close to the sample-wide mean, while respondents from business associations tended to score lower, with a mean score of 51 (see Figure 5).

Figure 4: To what extent has stewardship diffused across the country? (n=348)

Figure 5: How much has stewardship diffused across key sectors? (n=348)

Taken as a whole, this degree of diffusion is encouraging: it indicates that the values, priorities, and practices of stewardship are broadly familiar and widely endorsed. It also suggests that future efforts to expand stewardship should focus not only on increasing familiarity with the idea of stewardship but also on enhancing stewards’ ability to apply already-familiar concepts more effectively. It follows that strengthening shared stewardship—within individuals and organizations, as well as across networks of organizations—is perhaps the most important thing we can do to advance the movement for thriving together.

We followed the same process to develop a companion index that measures perceptions of alignment within and between organizations. In this instance, we examined responses to 26 items (see Table 3 in Appendix 2) that assessed perceptions of alignment with respect to shared stewardship in their communities. Specifically, the questions probed how contributors perceive:

• The effectiveness of working relationships among organizations in their communities
• The extent to which organizations in their communities are working in complementary ways towards similar aims
• The extent to which the contributor’s organization engages in collaborative activities with others
• The extent to which other organizations in their communities engage in collaborative activities

Like the index of diffusion, the alignment score could vary from 0 to 100. The mean alignment score across the entire sample was 59, with a low of 23 and a high of 100 (see Figure 6). These data show moderately high levels of alignment across contributors (see Figure 7). Respondents associated with community non-profits, business associations, and hospitals gave responses that hovered around the mean. Those associated with public health departments reported a higher mean level of perceived alignment (67). As shared stewardship strengthens across the country, we would hope to see the alignment of organizations correspondingly increase.

Figure 6: To what extent are organizations aligned in their stewardship values and practices? (n=348)

Figure 7: To what extent are key sectors aligned in their stewardship values and practices? (n=348)

We see an unsurprising but notable pattern in the relationship between worldview, diffusion scores, and alignment scores. Whereas nearly all contributors agreed that “every person should feel they have power to help shape the world they live in” (99%), and that “people and organizations should use their wealth to create conditions where all people can thrive” (92%), the few who strongly disagreed scored lower on indices of stewardship diffusion (49% and 45%, respectively) and alignment (50% and 38%, respectively), compared to those who strongly agreed. This finding illustrates the extent to which one’s worldview is tied to one’s uptake of stewardship practices and perceptions of inter-organizational collaboration.

This degree of diffusion is encouraging: it indicates that the values, priorities, and practices of stewardship are broadly familiar and widely endorsed.