Disguising Social Change: The Role of Nonprofit Organizations as Protective Masks For Citizen Participation

The following paper is an attempt to further knowledge of citizen participation efforts in the U. S., particularly those where the effort to build participation is in its early stages of development. The research begins to explore the indirect role (the mask) of nonprofit organizations—governing nonprofits—in creating viable citizen organization and participation structures in governance. The paper builds on preliminary research, conducted in a city in the Midwest, which described a nonprofit organization's attempt to build citizen participation at the neighborhood level. As result of this preliminary research, the author suggests that community organizers, through the use of nonprofit organizations, are able to mask social change efforts and create “incubators” for the fostering of citizen participation—creating the necessary foundation for a “robust citizen participation structure” (Berry, Portney, & Thomson, 1993, p. 53). This paper explores the role of nonprofit organizations as a tool for social change and describes a community's effort towards encouraging citizen participation/involvement.