(gentle music begins) - Funding is foundational.

If you don't have the resources so that every student in Rhode Island has access to a high quality public education, the rest of it becomes impossible.

People said, "Could the Rhode Island Foundation do more to help bridge some of the divisions, reconnect people to their neighbors, and build a sense of community?"

Because Rhode Island, like most places, is seeing a lot of division, a lot of polarization.

- Welcome to "One on One," I'm Ian Donnis.

For more than a century, the Rhode Island Foundation has worked to address the state's most pressing needs.

Last year alone, it awarded nearly $100 million in grants.

But Rhode Island's biggest challenges often defy solutions.

Is the foundation investing in the right priorities?

Rhode Island Foundation president and CEO, David Cicilline, joins us to answer that question and more.

(gentle music continues) President and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation, David Cicilline, welcome to "One on One."

- Thanks for having me.

- Before we begin, a quick disclosure.

The Rhode Island Foundation is a financial supporter of Ocean State Media.

Let's go back to when you announced your decision to leave Congress in 2023.

You said you were attracted to your present opportunity by the chance to make a bigger impact in Rhode Island.

You also said you would take the Rhode Island Foundation to a new level.

Have you succeeded in doing that?

- Well, we're in the middle of that.

The Rhode Island Foundation is the second oldest community foundation in America.

We have been around for 110 years, and we have, because of the generosity of so many Rhode Islanders, have an endowment that allows us to do significant grant making and to be the largest funder of nonprofits in the state of Rhode Island.

Last year we gave grants out of about $93 million, the highest grant making we've ever done.

We're also particularly involved in some important issues of housing and education, where we really engage in some advocacy.

So we developed a five year action plan when I got to the Rhode Island Foundation that really identified the five community priorities.

After a very long 18 month process, really hearing from Rhode Islanders about what they saw as the greatest opportunities and the greatest challenges in their lives, we developed a set of priorities that really came from Rhode Islanders.

I didn't want it to be my priorities, or even the great team at the Rhode Island Foundation, I really wanted to be informed by Rhode Islanders.

And we spent a long time in community gatherings, and polling, and focus groups, and individual interviews, community dinners.

- Let me hold you there, if I could, 'cause we'll talk about some of those priorities, but we have a lot of ground to cover.

As you say, the Rhode Island Foundation gave out almost $100 million dollars in grants last year.

A lot of money.

At the same time, we know that Rhode Island has struggled for many years with a series of key challenges.

Improving public schools, making a better economy, healthcare and so on.

Is the foundation doing enough to try and create change on these key challenges in Rhode Island?

- Absolutely, look, the Rhode Island Foundation, again, because of the generosity of Rhode Islanders for over a century, has the ability to really have an impact in all of those areas.

And so, for example, we're doing a significant amount of work in the housing area.

We paid for a study to really understand the challenges in the housing market.

We then took that information and began to make investments to produce more housing.

We're about to launch a housing accelerator fund to really accelerate that work.

We led the campaign for the passage of the state bond that produced $120 million more dollars to produce affordable housing.

So we've had a real impact.

In the area of education, we've made a lot of investments in education in improving teacher quality, principal leadership, after school programs.

But most recently, we led an effort to revise and improve the school funding system for the state of Rhode Island.

- I've got a question for you about that.

- [David] Sure.

- This, as you say, the Foundation did convene a commission that recommended four changes to how Rhode Island funds education.

We can look to Massachusetts, which changed its funding formula in the 90s and led to a significant improvement in the quality of public schools there.

But going back to before the time when you first became the mayor of Providence in 2002, we've been talking in Rhode Island about the crucial need to improve public schools, and it seems like the needle has barely moved at all.

What is holding the state back from making more progress on that?

- Yeah, look, I think there are people who have real expertise, and there's a lot of different opinions about this.

But in my view, funding is foundational.

If you don't have the resources to do the work, and it's not allocated in a way that's fair and adequate so that every student in Rhode Island has access to a high quality public education, the rest of it becomes impossible.

So the Rhode Island Foundation played a really important role 15 years ago when Rhode Island, I think was the last state to have a school funding formula.

But that was 15 years ago, and I think everyone recognizes the current formula is broken and in real need of improvement in a comprehensive way.

And I will say, of all the many things I've been involved in in my public life, co-chairing the Blue Ribbon Commission with all of these stakeholders that are impacted by the school funding system at the table, sometimes people that didn't often agree with each other, to reach, after a full year, consensus on those recommendations that then were presented to the General Assembly was really one of the most gratifying things I've ever been involved in, and I think one of the most important, because we have to get this right.

It's not just important for the students, it's important for our economic future, for the health of Rhode Island, for our economic wellbeing.

So this is an urgent priority, and it's something that's gonna remain a priority of the foundation.

- You say funding is foundational.

How do you see the outlook for the state adopting the recommendations recommended by the Rhode Island Foundation?

- I think the prospects are excellent.

We had hearings both in the House and the Senate, we received tremendous responses from the General Assembly, the coalition that was part of the Blue Ribbon Commission, all the different stakeholders have remained very active.

We've had terrific support from mayors, and RIPEC, and principals, and teachers unions, and charter schools, really this whole coalition.

The House passed budget includes a provision that kind of takes the next step for the implementation of the Blue Ribbon Commission recommendations, asks for a report back with very specific information.

So I think that's a really good sign.

And they also increased the provisions, the Student Success Factor, which was one of the recommendations of the commission.

So I think there's a lot of momentum.

My hope is that the General Assembly will take it up early next year.

But I think we've laid the groundwork in this session.

- David, as you said a little bit earlier, the Rhode Island Foundation currently has five priority areas.

The one that got the largest amount of your grants last year, 37%, was building strong and healthy communities.

Tell us a little bit about where that kind of money is going, for what kind of efforts, and what kind of difference that makes.

- Yes, and strong and healthy communities is many different things.

Some of it relates to healthcare, some of it relates to our civic health work.

But we focus on particularly the social determinants of health, because that's something that we can invest in.

And so the Rhode Island Foundation has invested significantly in organizations that are really, you know, things like the free clinic, and other kind of community-based health organizations that are ensuring that people have access to quality care.

But also that prevention is an investment we really make, to make sure people stay out of hospitals and stay healthy.

So really focusing on the social determinants of health has been part of our health strategy.

- When we look at the website for the Rhode Island Foundation, one common phrase is civic health.

A lot of people might not be sure what that refers to.

How would you define that?

- Yeah, civic health was something we heard a lot about during that 18 month kind of conversation with Rhode Islanders.

And people said, "Could the Rhode Island Foundation do more to help bridge some of the divisions, reduce some of the polarization, reconnect people to their neighbors, and build a sense of community?"

Because Rhode Island, like most places, is seeing a lot of division, a lot of polarization, people feeling isolated and not connected to their neighbors.

And so that really means everything, from civics education, to supporting local journalism, to media literacy, to learning what are responsible, trustworthy sources of information.

So that civic health work has actually led to the Rhode Island Foundation, along with the National Civic League, and an organization called CFLeads, that I sit on the board of, which is the only national community foundation organization in the country.

We are leading a coalition of community foundations across the country.

We've had over 200 community foundations participate that are committed to investing in improving the civic health of their communities, and this is a coalition that's growing almost every day, 'cause people don't wanna live in communities where they're constantly battling with each other, where they don't feel that they're connected to their neighbors, where they're feeling a deep sense of isolation and polarization.

So civic health is really a priority for the Rhode Island Foundation.

We built a toolkit to help Rhode Islanders participate in improving the civic health in their communities.

That's on our website.

But this is a really important priority, and we've used our work in this area to really lead this national coalition around improving civic health.

- Are you seeing a difference in civic health in Rhode Island from the foundation's efforts?

- Absolutely.

And one of the things we're investing significantly in is supporting local journalism.

We became a press-forward chapter.

This is an effort by the MacArthur Foundation that's investing half a billion dollars in supporting local journalism.

We became a chapter, along with the van Beuren Charitable Trust in Newport, so that we could continue to do grant making, and increase our grant making in supporting the ecosystem of local journalism.

And did some research that found Rhode Islanders really rely on local news.

Many have difficulty finding trustworthy, reliable sources of local news.

And 80% of Rhode Islanders recognize disinformation as a serious problem.

So this is evidence that investing in local journalism and making sure Rhode Islanders have access to trustworthy, reliable news is an important investment.

And it's really foundational to civic society.

If people don't have good information, they can't make good decisions about important issues in their communities or in their state.

So you'll see more investment in that area as well.

- As a reporter, I say amen to that.

I expect, I think the Rhode Island Foundation is gonna announce some grants later this year or next year as part of that effort to support journalism.

What kind of efforts do you anticipate will get funded?

- Well, we've been funding efforts to support local journalism for a number of years.

But we're lucky in Rhode Island to have a group of really robust, great local journalists, most of them nonprofits, that are really working together in a coalition.

Helping them kind of figure out how they sustain that work will be critical.

There's a number of them that have already received funding from the Rhode Island Foundation, but we'll have proposals, and it's really about how do we sustain that work, and particularly reach underserved communities, particularly in rural areas that often have difficulty accessing local news.

But we're lucky that we have a number of organizations already doing this work, ecoRI, the Providence Eye, many others, Ocean State Media, another great example.

But we wanna be sure that we're doing everything we can to support the growth and the sustaining of good local journalism.

People want it, they trust it, they need more of it.

And as you know, local journalism is facing big, big challenges.

- If one wants to find political polarization, it's certainly out there.

But there's also a school of thought that most Americans are going about their lives, caring about their families, doing their jobs, and not engaging with their partisan enemies on social media platforms, and that the degree of polarization is overstated.

What do you think of that?

- No, I actually, you know what, you might be right with respect to political polarization, but what civic health was really talking about is ways that people are connected to one another, the way citizens feel like their voice is being heard, that they have some say over important decisions that affect their lives.

So it's more than just politics.

It's being connected to your neighbors.

It's knowing who your neighbors are.

It's being connected to organizations that serve your community.

So I think we are seeing an unprecedented period of isolation where people are kind of disconnecting from communities and from neighbors, and really focusing on social media platforms, and getting more and more isolated.

So there's a lot of evidence that that's happening, and people don't like to live that way.

People wanna live where they feel part of a community, where they feel connected to their neighbors, where they feel like their voice is being heard, that they have a say in what's happening in their lives.

So this is an area where community foundations across the country are playing a much bigger role than we have historically.

I think historically community foundations have focused on education, and healthcare, and economic mobility.

We didn't really think about civic health because we lived in America.

- Yeah, let me ask you about that.

It was 20, 25 years ago when the landmark book "Bowling Alone" documented the decline of fraternal and civic organizations, leading to the kind of epidemic of loneliness that you describe.

And we know from health professionals that loneliness can be as hazardous, or more so, to one's health than smoking or something like that.

So what role does the Rhode Island Foundation see itself playing in helping Rhode Islanders who are lonely to overcome that?

- Yeah, I mean, so we created, in our five year action plan, one of the community priorities is civic and cultural life, and civic and cultural life were put together because we support lots of arts organizations, because art and music and theater are really important parts of a community, and they add to our lives in so many ways.

But they are also great civic opportunities.

You go to a concert in Roger Williams Park and you may sit next to someone who has a completely different political view, someone you don't know at all, and you have a shared artistic experience that allows you to recognize your common humanity.

So we put those two things together, but we identified civic health as a real priority.

And that is investing in organizations that are helping to bring people together, to reconnect people with their neighbors.

And we will continue to fund organizations that are helping to promote civics, and civic education, and connectedness.

And we've just done a Catalyst Grant that Generation Citizen is a lead on that's doing a lot of this good work.

But we're gonna invest in organizations that are helping bringing people together in a variety of different ways.

There's an organization called the American Exchange Project that was started by David McCullough's grandson that basically does what you used to do in the old days, go out to Europe for a semester if you were in college or high school, but it's actually going to a place in America for a week or two as an exchange student.

A kid from Rhode Island goes to Iowa, and a kid from Iowa lives with a family in Rhode Island, and in just a week really learns about a different part of the country, and builds relationships with a family that they find last for a lifetime.

And so those kinds of things are just ways to bring people together, to learn about each other, learn about different parts of the country, to reduce some of the polarization in that way.

National Neighborhood Day, we wanna bring that back, where you basically fund just once a year, every community having a barbecue where people for the first time are meeting neighbors they lived across the street from for five or six years and don't even know.

And just helping to create those occasions where you're just reconnecting.

What we're doing today, what we'll have done over the summer, of these Together RI gatherings.

We're inviting Rhode Islanders just to come to have a meal and talk about what they think the Rhode Island Foundation should continue to focus on in our five year action plan, what they see as their greatest dreams and aspirations, and what they're most worried about.

Just bringing people together.

- Let me stop you there.

One more question about polarization before we move on.

I remember talking to you a number of years ago when you were still a member of Congress about how our system in primaries, congressional elections, kind of forces or results in polarization with more extreme choices at both the liberal and conservative and emerging and kind of exacerbating the problem of polarization.

Do you see any way to address that?

- Yeah, I mean, I think the work that we're doing in terms of investing in improving civic health, and connecting people to each other, and to the institutions in their communities is all about building relationships and building trust.

And we have done a significant amount of investment in this as Rhode Island's only community foundation.

But as I said, community foundations didn't often think about this, because it wasn't, 20 years ago people didn't talk about polarization, and isolation, and loneliness.

It's a real issue, and it's in part, I think, driven by our politics, but also driven by the growing presence of social media, and AI will make it even more challenging.

So it's easy to disconnect from people in your community, and get all your information digitally, and sit in your house on your phone or on your device, and not go outside and have a conversation with a neighbor.

So we're combating those forces.

And so investing in organizations and strategies that help reconnect people.

It's where people wanna be.

People don't want to feel disconnected from their community, unheard, alienated and lonely.

So people are really interested in this work, and really responding to the investments that we're making to help bring communities back together.

- Nonetheless, we live in a time when some people are having relationships with virtual beings.

So, a brave new world, scary new world.

During your time in Congress, you were one of the loudest critics of the most powerful Silicon Valley companies.

You warned about the dangers of that kind of monopolistic power.

You hired for your staff, Lina Khan, later the commissioner or the Federal Trade Commission.

Some of the legislation that you supported to address that moved ahead, but most did not, and the big tech firms spent hundreds of millions of dollars to oppose that legislation.

Now you have a very different role, but the online world is very much with us.

What are your greatest concerns in this moment about the monopolistic power of big tech?

- Yeah, no, you're absolutely right, and when I left Congress, shortly after I left, Ken Buck, who really co-chaired that effort with me, who was a Republican member from Colorado, and he and I became great friends.

And what I think was really exciting is we did build a bipartisan coalition that really understood the urgency of reigning in the power of big tech.

But I'm seeing that play out in all of our civic health work.

I mean, the dangers that that kind of monopolistic power present continue, and they've made, I think, communities more isolated, more the subject of disinformation, and misinformation, and alienation, and division.

And so it makes the civic health work even more important, because if you have a relationship with a neighbor or someone in your community, it's harder for that person to be vilified or to accept misinformation online about the person, 'cause you know them.

So this is a direct response to that.

I think it has to be accompanied by responsible regulation at the federal level.

I hope that will come, because it's really important that there will also be limits on, particularly in AI about guardrails so that there can be protections.

There's a lot of exciting things that are gonna happen with AI, but we also need to have some regulations that ensure the kind of most dangerous things are also prevented from happening.

- There's some signs that more young people are adopting dumb phones as a strike against the kind of surveillance society that's present with smartphones.

Do you think we'll see a wider and more populist tech backlash?

- Yeah, it's a great question.

There's a company I was reading about recently, started in Brooklyn by a couple of young guys, and they've created this beautiful new phone, and it's a phone and a clock and that's it.

And the whole idea is like, the phone should serve you, you shouldn't serve the phone.

That's sort of their marketing, and they're right.

I'm hoping you're right that young people are realizing that this is not good for them.

It's not healthy.

These machines are surveillance machines gobbling up all kinds of information and monetizing it.

I hope it's the beginning of kind of a change.

- It was a high point for gay politics in Rhode Island when you won election as Mayor of Providence in 2002, as more recently we see there's something of a backlash at the national level, particularly against transgender people.

How do you see the outlook for gay rights in America in this moment?

- Well, I think if you look at the history of civil rights in this country, it's not a straight line.

There's progress, and then there's pushback, and there's progress.

But I don't have any doubt that we will continue to work toward being a country where every single person is valued and that we don't discriminate against people based on sexual orientation, or gender identity, or race, or religion, or any of these issues.

And I don't think there's any doubt that we're in a period of challenge, with many elected officials and other leaders in the country retreating from their prior commitments to advancing equality for the LGBTQ community.

But I also don't have any doubt that we will ultimately be in a country where it is not lawful to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

- You were such a political animal in your many years as a state representative, mayor of Providence, and Congressman.

I have to ask you, after, I think we're just about at the three year anniversary point of your new role as president and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation.

Do you miss politics?

- Well, we still live in a democratic society here in Rhode Island and in this country.

So I'm an observer to politics, but I have loved the last three years.

I mean, I miss some of my friends.

I had great friendships, and although we maintain the friendships, it's different when you don't work with folks every day.

But I've loved being in Rhode Island, and I've loved being at the Rhode Island Foundation in this period because this has been a particularly hard time for so many of the organizations that are doing really important work in Rhode Island.

And while I don't have the ability to have an impact in Washington, I have the ability to really lead an organization that's having an enormous impact in Rhode Island on things that we all care about.

And I feel really privileged to be in this role, and it has been great.

And when I was contemplating taking this position, one of the things that was articulated to me was that you could have more impact in this role over the next several years.

And I think that that turned out to be absolutely right, that I'm able, in leading the Rhode Island Foundation, to really have an impact on the organizations that are doing really critical work in Rhode Island and at a very challenging time.

And again, none of this would be possible, but for the incredible generosity of Rhode Islanders, who, every time we go to them and say, "This emergency exists, organizations need legal counsel, we need to raise money, or organizations need help with food insecurity."

Like Rhode Islanders responded.

We created the Community Partner Resilience Fund, an emergency fund to do that.

Rhode Islanders responded.

So it gave me an opportunity to really make an impact in the state that I love, in a community that I really care about.

So it's been great.

- You mentioned this being a challenging time.

How does the hostile stance of the Trump administration toward Blue States like Rhode Island affect the work of the Rhode Island Foundation?

- Well, it's been a great challenge for many of the organizations who are our grantees.

We all witnessed what happened when the government suspended temporarily SNAP benefits.

It really produced a serious hardship from so many Rhode Islanders.

We created a specific fund to respond to that.

I went to my board and I was authorized to use half a million dollars from our reserve, and we raised another $800,000 to give emergency grants to food pantries and the food bank to respond to that.

We created the Community Partner Resilience Fund because we learned from a number of organizations that didn't have a lawyer on their board, or had counsel as part of their staff, that they were being told, "Your grant is canceled."

And they didn't have any way to challenge that.

And so we supported the Rhode Island Lawyers Committee when they created the Nonprofit Legal Protection Project.

It produced incredible results, not just for Rhode Island, but for the country in freeing up prior grants that had been frozen.

- Let me stop you there if I could, because we're short on time.

I just wanna close on a lighter note.

- [David] Okay.

- You grew up in Narragansett, one of Rhode Island's great summer towns.

What is top on your summer to-do list and top on your reading list for this summer?

- Summer is definitely to spend time at the Narragansett Town Beach.

It's my happy place, and I've been going there for 50 years, so I try, you know, we endure tough winters in Rhode Island, so we have the privilege of enjoying summer.

So I try to not go anywhere but Rhode Island in the summer.

- How about anything top on your reading list?

- I'm reading right now "The Great Dissenter" about Justice Harlan.

Really cool book about a really important historic figure.

And I started "The AI-Driven Leader," which I'm in the middle of, I've gotta finish that.

But about how leaders, particularly of nonprofits and other organizations can use AI to become more impactful and have a greater impact on the communities you serve.

- President, CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation, David Cicilline, thank you so much for sitting down with us.

- Thanks for having me.

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