Not-for-profit organizations are at the heart of community-building activities. Yet, these special kinds of institutions are not on the radar screens of Puget Sound-area news media organizations. There are many reasons why this is so. Organizational cultures, declining trust, and not-for-profits' weak sense of identity and limited ability to work together are just a few. Not-for-profits generally fail to communicate strategically to media — if at all — about the role of their sector in a free society. The result: Media are missing significant stories, and citizens are deprived of a complete view of community life. People are rarely informed in an ongoing manner about what others are doing voluntarily to solve our region's toughest problems or about the many opportunities to get involved.

More than espresso, more than airplanes, more than software and the ferries, Puget Sound residents' heartfelt acts of service are a central part of our region's character. Every day, in myriad ways, citizens here are engaged in voluntary endeavors that make our communities strong. In fact, our region's legacy of good works is a vital one. Consider:

• Had it not been for Anna Clise, there might not be a Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center. In 1907, Clise gathered 23 of her women friends together and invited them to be her partners in founding a facility to care for destitute crippled children. She was the spark that ignited the community's passion to create a first-rate children's care facility and the guild association whose charitable works support it. Today, Children's Hospital is recognized as one of the country's top pediatric care centers. And, with more than 9,000 members, the guild association is the largest community-based, health care-oriented, volunteer system of its kind in the nation.
  
  
• Those who know her recognize executive director Ruth Velozo, and her tireless advocacy for the needy and disenfranchised, as the fuel that powers Northwest Harvest. Begun in 1967 by a coalition of churches, with Velozo at the helm, Northwest Harvest has grown from a small, debt-ridden, grassroots operation to a statewide network of food banks that bags up 11 million pounds of donated food annually. Each month, an average of 500,000 hungry people are fed — no questions asked. Why? Because "the last thing someone suffering poverty needs is for someone to mistrust them and think they would get free food when they didn't need it... They need help," Velozo said.1
  
  
• The high failure and drop-out rate of African-American children from public schools propelled the Rev. Eugene Drayton, his family, and residents of Seattle's Central District to found Zion Preparatory Academy in 1982. Armed with old, tattered textbooks that had been fished out of public-school trash bins, Drayton and his family opened Zion with $13 in the bank and a priceless commitment to ensuring children's success. Their faith that every child can learn if the environment is filled with love, respect, knowledge and a sense of "family" he or she might not otherwise know has been rewarded repeatedly. The pre-kindergarten through 8th-grade school has graduated more than 3,000 success stories — without a single failure. Many of Zion's graduates have gone on to attend the area's most rigorous private and public high schools before heading off to college.
  
  

Granted, not all good works are on a scale as grand as these, but many are as passionately inspired and all work to sustain the quality of life we have come to treasure. Except for the most awe-inspiring efforts, these kinds of citizen actions are invisible to the community at large. As a result, "ordinary" citizens are rarely informed in an ongoing manner about what their peers are doing voluntarily to solve our community's toughest problems. This lack of information means citizens often have no way to gauge which community-based efforts address their own concern, or which problem-solving alternatives are most effective, or how they might become involved in making our community a better place. Many of our region's grassroots efforts to solve problems take place through the community sector, which is a primary focus of this report. (The authors of this report have elected to substitute the term "community sector" for the more commonly used "nonprofit sector" to describe collectively those organizations that are entitled to exemption from many forms of taxation under Section 501 (c)(3) of the U.S. tax code. The substitution is made in attempt to describe more accurately what the sector is, as opposed to what it is not.)

Community sector organizations support an organized approach to remedying social ills as well as advocating for public-policy solutions. These organizations touch and serve virtually everyone. They comprise a wide spectrum of community activity including arts and cultural organizations, private schools, health and human services agencies, environmental groups, religious institutions and civic associations. These organizations deliver critical services that are often beyond the purview of government or business to provide.

According to Peter Drucker, a prominent management consultant, these organizations are not only the primary vehicles of community building, but they are America's most distinguishing feature.2 Indeed, as democracy spreads throughout the world, more foreign leaders are looking to America to learn how such organizations are created and sustained.

Isn't it ironic that this very important facet of community life — citizen action as expressed through not-for-profit organizations — escapes thoughtful and consistent coverage by mainstream news media? Why isn't the community — that is, the citizen — perspective routinely integrated into news gathering, analysis and editorializing? "Probably because we do not see (these community organizations) as a group as being important to the community," the news editor of a major Puget Sound newspaper told Good News/Good Deeds. "We just don't cover nonprofits."

This editor hardly stands alone among Puget Sound newspeople who spoke to Good News/Good Deeds about their approach to community sector coverage. More stunning is these newspeoples' general lack of knowledge and appreciation for the sector, given the kind of collective influence not-for-profits — and the individuals and organizations that support them — have on community life.