Mission & Vision
No one flourishes alone.
In support of institution builders
The Center for Social Flourishing promotes solutions to social and material poverty animated by local agency and led by families, associations, and businesses. Our center engages institution builders, entrepreneurs, and local leaders across the United States who are intent on making their communities places where people thrive.
Through film, research, conferences, and a partner network, the Center spurs new thinking, collaboration, and innovation across sectors, including education, health care, technology, and financial and social services, and in the role churches play in their neighborhoods.
Our Vision
Poverty is not simply a lack of money. Homelessness is not simply a housing problem. A good human life constitutes more than abundant material goods: Even the affluent can experience spiritual poverty and alienation.
We believe that human and social flourishing depends on the health of certain institutions integral to human development including the family, the church, local associations, and businesses. Civic and political action should support these institutions, not replace them, especially in communities of need.
Many of the dominant humanitarian approaches to poverty over the last decades have been grounded in a mechanistic worldview that sees social problems primarily as technical difficulties to be solved through social engineering, public policy, and service programs. This approach has focused too much on material deprivation often at the expense of economic independence, personal agency, and individual and community development.
To truly promote social flourishing, we need to put the human person at the center of our thinking about poverty, prosperity, and society.
Principles
- THE HUMAN PERSON with dignity and creative capacity is the subject of his or her own story of development. A person is not an object to be manipulated or engineered but a subject to be respected.
- THE FAMILY is the fundamental social, cultural, and economic unit in which individuals grow and flourish. Supporting families is essential to social healing and sustained development.
- CIVIL SOCIETY institutions are the essential mediators of community. Encroaching on their functions or independence weakens social capital and harms local agency.
- COMMERCIAL SOCIETY with clear rule of law is the normative means for escaping poverty. Creating the conditions for widespread economic opportunity is an essential aspect of social flourishing.
- THE PRINCIPLE OF SUBSIDIARITY holds that any matter is best handled by the closest competent authority. It should guide all social organization and must inform any attempts to address poverty or other social problems.
Why is any of this important?
The technocratic paradigm of large-scale social services has disrupted the natural communities in which people flourish.
Top-down, centralized, and individualistic approaches to social problems have dominated over the last century. Siloed programs designed to solve particular aspects of poverty often ignore the key role that participation in the family household, local institutions, and commercial society play in building a complete human life. Poverty, in all its manifestations, is not a technical problem to be solved but a human problem that requires human solutions rooted in relationship and reciprocity.
What do we do?
The Center for Social Flourishing seeks to activate, support, and convene local and regional leaders seeking innovative solutions to challenges in their neighborhoods and cities. We do this through film, research, conferences, and a partner network.
Film & Media
We are producing a feature-length documentary film on social and material poverty in the United States, besides other educational media.
Research
Affiliate scholars employed by the center contribute to a growing body of knowledge about what makes individuals and communities flourish.
Conferences
Our conferences, lectures, and workshops form leaders and reframe thinking about poverty, shifting mindsets from combatting poverty to promoting the conditions for justice, flourishing, and prosperity.
Partner Network
We foster collaboration between individuals and organizations across sectors—convening, educating, activating, and supporting leaders intent on making their communities into places where people thrive.
