It’s not often that our fearless leader, Be the Change, Inc. CEO and Founder Alan Khazei, shows up in the same paragraph as Paul Revere and Edwin Land (inventor of the Polaroid camera). But Ira Jackson, dean of the Drucker School of Management, manages to pull it off in a thoughtful Boston Globe op-ed titled “What Makles Boston In A League Of Its Own”.

Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, was the first to understand that we live in a knowledge economy. Drucker might have seen Boston today as the equivalent of a factory of the future, where smart people use their minds, fueled by investors who match ideas with market needs, producing green, clean, and sustainable products for the world.

Drucker also said that “the best way to predict the future is to create it.” Boston’s been creating the future for four centuries. The Legatum Center at MIT, founded by Iqbal Quadir, a former investment banker turned social entrepreneur, is just the latest version and incarnation of Edwin Land (Polaroid) or Paul Revere (patriot, who also was the first public health commissioner in America) or Alan Khazei (who co-founded City Year). Dreamers and doers, pioneers and inventors, taking risks, sounding the alarm, harnessing technology - and potentially changing the world.

In the piece, Jackson tries to figure out why Boston is so exceptional when it comes to producing pioneering ideas and personalities. His least convincing (tongue-in-cheek) theory is that there is something in the soil. But the rest of his ideas are well worth considering as the United States faces a period of time in which we all need to be thinking carefully about the catalysts of innovation, creativity and success.

The blog The New Service has some sage advice for any corps member or prospective corps member suffering from anxiety in this unstable economic climate. The website also lays out some useful links. My favorite suggestion they provide:

5. Live simply. Here are some of the biggies: live with roommates; borrow books and movies from the library; ride a bike whenever possible — going car free saves a lot of money; cook at home and have friends over for pot-luck dinners; forgo internet access and cable television at home; shop at thrift stores and swap clothes with friends; cut down on expensive drinks like beer; reuse, reduce, recycle.

The New Service doesn’t sugarcoat when talking to future corps members, but interested parties should pay attention to the advice:

If you haven’t yet joined a corps, have confidence that hundreds of thousands of people have participated in service corps and made it financially.

That said, do take a hard look at the numbers and make sure you can afford to live on a stipend. Take into consideration student loans (qualified loans can be deferred or put into forbearance during the term), child care expenses, rent/mortgage payments, car payments, etc. Service Corps programs, local nonprofits and government agencies may be able to offer help with certain expenses, so be sure to ask. It’s not impossible to thrive on the stipend, but a term of service isn’t worth ruining your credit history or incurring deep debt.

Visit The New Service for the entire post.

WASHINGTON — In the wake of John McCain and Barak Obama’s unified call for an increase in public service and volunteerism last week at the Service Nation Summit in New York, the focus now shifts to Washington, where former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will address leaders of the country’s major volunteer and civic organizations as they convene at the annual National Conference on Citizenship on September 22 to discuss ways to continue civic involvement after Election Day.

The National Conference on Citizenship just released its third report on America’s civic health. There’s 38 pages full of readable, nuanced information, including, “The 2008 survey finds that Americans are actively engaged with this year’s presidential election; however, not many people expect to work on the issues raised in the campaign after Election Day.”

Download the report here to read it all.

In response to a misleading op-ed, ServiceNation staff Ethan & Kent, along with Harvard student Mark, write back in the Harvard Crimson:

Robinson suggests that we already have enough volunteering available in America. How then can you explain the fact that there are more than 3 applicants for every available AmeriCorps slot, or that Teach For America had 24,718 applicants for 3,700 positions? You can bet the residents of the Gulf Coast, Davenport, Iowa and other regions hit by national disaster wish there were more AmeriCorps members to fill the gaps left by the private sector, and FEMA, in response to natural disasters.

However, the crux of Robinson’s argument seems to be that the purpose of “nationalistic” programs is “not service for its own sake, but service as a way to strengthen people’s ties to their government.” This is an unfortunate misconception of the entire service movement. The point of voluntary service—paid or unpaid—is to free citizens from reliance on government programs and solutions, provide ways for Americans to dedicate their time to helping others, and unleash citizen energy on pressing, persistent problems in education, our environment, and disaster relief. The growth of the service movement, in fact, is a reflection of the reality that big government bureaucracies haven’t always been very successful or efficient. Community and national service is not just about painting over graffiti or picking up litter, but about creating pathways for citizens to help address big social challenges.

Read it all here.
We always try and clear up any major misconceptions when we’re aware of them by discussing what ServiceNation actually supports, rather than what some individuals say we support. We’ve never supported mandatory service, or anything like that. What we do support, and always have, is the power of ordinary citizens volunteering to make an impact in their community, their country, and their world.

Lately, our news has focused on tropical depressions maturing into monster hurricanes that leave devastation in their wake—and I’m not just talking about Gustav and Ike. Today, we face a perfect storm of financial devastation, notable for the enormity of the greed that generated it and the somnolent response of our government in helping Americans left devastated in its wake. [...]

Today, we desperately need to tap a similar ethic of service to country. The parlous health of our communities, our rickety infrastructure, and our increasingly rickety country demands nothing less.

from Mother Jones

Hear, hear!

On the back of my laptop, I have two ServiceNation stickers.  One reads, “Of. By. For. The People”; the other says “Ask me what I do”.  I’ve found there’s no better conversation starter.  I use my laptop in class, at work, and at Starbucks.  People respond to the prompt and, well, ask me what I do.

That opens a great conversation - I tutor kids, and am also involved with the Urban Debate League, a program that provides debate as an extra-curricular for DC’s less privileged middle and high schools.  I also work for ServiceNation - and this is where I explain what that is.

I wouldn’t say my service testimonials are particularly inspiring, and I don’t talk about them because I think they make me really great.  I serve because I can help others.  But when the random stranger at Starbucks asks me, “What do you do?”, I get a chance to talk ServiceNation.  And even if I don’t convince anyone to serve, I’m trying to get the word out.

So, Change/Wire readers: What do you do?  And how do you tell others about the power of volunteering?

And - what are you doing on September 27, the Day of Action?

Alison Carl White, executive director of Seattle Works, attended our ServiceNation Summit in NYC, got inspired, and went home to write a fantastic column for the local paper. Here’s the crux of what she had to say:

As the summit continued, players from all points of view affirmed that we must seize this moment. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg encouraged us to work to “make America as good as its promise.”

Adm. Michael Mullen advocated for the need for a “civil-service counterpart to our military.” Sen. Hilary Clinton, D-N.Y., called on each of us to find the way that is uniquely “suited to your time, talent and passion to give back.”

The list continued — from pop stars such as Jon Bon Jovi, Usher and Alicia Keys, to Harvard’s David Gergen to shoe designer Kenneth Cole, corporate CEOs from Deloitte, GE and Goldman Sachs and even Oprah’s Dr. Oz. Each of them suggested that, as Americans, we have a collective responsibility to personally engage in making our communities stronger and more vital.

In hearing their words, it hit me that I am one of those “ordinary citizens,” and I can’t help but be inspired by the bipartisan, cross-sector, multifaith effort to take action. A movement is being born.

You bet it is, Alison. And thanks for being part of it. Because a movement just ain’t a movement without people like you. You can read Alison’s full column here.

White: “As we say at Seattle Works–Do Something!”

Here’s some notable blogging about the Summit. I know I said I was probably done with summit round-up posts, but there’s some spectacular writers out there.

Through the Eyes of a Marketer: ServiceNation’s Summit

You see, this event was not a debate because this event was about uniting us all around something on which we all agree: the need to place service, in its many and myriad forms…spanning improvements to education to bettering our nation’s health to eradicating our plummeting levels of poverty…into a place of more prominence in our country, to garner more participation from the public and the need to shift many of our existing perceptions around service.

David Berkowitz has a Kyte post of an interview with Columbia students post-forum.

David Reich asks us to “imagine what can be accomplished”.

And a series of posts from Britt Bravo of Have Fun, Do Good:
One: Being the Media at the ServiceNation Summit…
Two: September 11th Presidential Forum on Service
Three: Love Thy Neighbor: Governor David Paterson
Four: Sen Kennedy and Sen Hatch Introduce Serve America Act
Five: More Groovy Service Acts at ServiceNation Summit
Six: Senator Hillary Clinton at ServiceNation Summit

A Wall Street Journal opinion piece that focuses on Obama

CBS opinion piece

Newsweek’s blog opines on the news coverage of the forum

NY1’s coverage of Friday

CNN, MTV, and NonProfit Times on the forum

Boston Globe article on the Bentley / City Year partnership (see the Lunch Liveblog)

Boston Globe on the Kennedy-Hatch bill, which was announced Friday morning by Caroline Kennedy and Sen. Hatch

And the blogs (I know I’m missing a lot of people - let me know if you blogged the Summit and I’m not linking you):

The Student Conservation Association has 7 posts on us!

Amy from The New Service and Idealist.org (I’ll be the first to tell you how absolutely spectacular Amy is)

A plethora of links:
Encore Leadership Interview with Alan Khazei
Nonprofits Launch Effort on 9/11 to Boost Volunteerism, Christian Science Monitor
Service group wants to change meaning of 9/11, Denver 9 News
Carnegie Corporation Calls for Rekindling Citizen Obligation to Society, PNN Online
Brodhead to speak in NYC about service, education, Duke Chronicle
This 9/11, a unified call to service others; Minneapolis Star Tribune
Obama, McCain take City Vacation from Partisanship, NY1
Civic-Minded Stars Join ServiceNation, Columbia Spectator
Carnegie Corporation’s Gregorian Calls for Rekindling Citizen Obligation to Society, Carnegie Corporation

Remember: ServiceNation Forum with Senators Obama and McCain, tonight, 8pm EST, CNN!