Is County Level of Social, Creative, and Human Capital Associated with Winning Humanities Grants in Kansas?

• Author: John C. Pierce,Bonnie J. Johnson
• Published date: 01 June 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21103
• Date: 01 June 2014

Correspondence to: Bonnie J. Johnson, Department of Urban Planning, University

of Kansas, 1465 Jayhawk Boulevard, Room 418, Lawrence, KS 66045–7626.

E-mail: bojojohn@ku.edu

NONPROFIT MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP, vol. 24, no. 4, Summer 2014 © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc 503

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/nml.21103

Is County Level of Social,

Creative, and Human Capital

Associated with Winning

Humanities Grants in Kansas?

Bonnie J. Johnson,

John C. Pierce

University of Kansas

This article examines patterns of Kansas Humanities Council

grant distributions to organizations in the state’s counties and

then assesses social, creative, and human capital explanations

for the observed patterns. Substantial numbers of counties have

received no grants across a fifteen-year period. Why is that?

The analyses reveal that the presence of statistically significant

relationships depends on the intersection of the type of capital

in the county and the type of grant program: (1) the receipt

of heritage grants is associated with county levels of network

social capital, particularly those networks that are “non-rent-

seeking”; (2) the receipt of “mini” Humanities grants and total

grants are associated with levels of creative capital; and (3) the

level of human capital makes little difference in grant patterns.

These relationships persist under controls for racial/ethnic

diversity, income inequality, and dominant political ideology.

The implications of the results are assessed in terms of strate-

gies for granting agencies to deal with building community life

in low–social capital settings.

Keywords: social capital, human capital, grants, social

network, mission

504 JOHNSON, PIERCE

Nonprofit Management & Leadership DOI: 10.1002/nml

IN THE 105 KANSAS counties, organizations such as libraries and

museums are eligible to apply for heritage and humanities

grants from the Kansas Humanities Council (KHC). The KHC

lists “10 Ways Humanities Programs Benefit Kansans”; the first

mentioned is to “build community” and the second is to “engage

citizens” (Kansas Humanities Council 2008, 1). Yet, from 1993 to

2008, 72 percent of Kansas’s counties received none of the “major”

humanities grants; 59 percent received none of the “mini” humani-

ties grants; and 38 percent received no “heritage” grants.

These figures raise questions as to what may account for the

wide variation in county-level access to KHC grants and how the

KHC or other similar organizations might reach out to a broader

statewide distribution. This article seeks preliminary answers to

those questions by focusing on community context in the form of

the hypothesized roles of social capital, creative capital, and human

capital while controlling for population, county diversity, income

inequality, and political ideology. The answers are important because

it may be that counties already “rich” in social, creative, and human

capital are more likely to access resources that are designed to

enhance capital levels. In this sense, it may be that “the rich get

richer” and those counties with an apparent capital deficit may fall

farther behind (see McClenaghan 2000). If this pattern occurs, then

the grant programs may not be advancing fully the agency’s mission

to build community across the state. The challenge becomes this:

How then does a humanities nonprofit with a mission such as that of

the KHC enable those communities with social, creative, and human

capital shortfalls to engage a process that may help them develop

a richer community life? These questions have significant implica-

tions in the context of declining community life in many rural areas

like those in Kansas. Indeed, more than half of the counties in Kan-

sas have lost population in recent years (Rothschild 2006).

In the early 1970s, state humanities councils were established

by the National Endowment for the Humanities in order to “provide

local access to the humanities through public programs offered in

communities throughout the state” (Munro 2008, n.p.). Although

precise details vary among the states, they generally share a mis-

sion of local program delivery focusing on civic dialogue, heritage

resources, and community building. Yet, little seems known about

the sources of variation in participation rates. Understanding this

variation has implications for “policy feedback theory” that focuses

attention on how policies can bolster or dampen individuals becom-

ing engaged citizens (Campbell 2003; Wichowsky and Moynihan

2008). From Social Security to the GI bill, certain public policies

have been shown to activate citizens politically, but they also can

teach citizens civic skills that they can use in other, nonpolitical

contexts (Campbell 2003; Marston 1993; Mettler 2002).

Knowing that policy can influence “civicness” is encouraging,

but one must also consider the reciprocal nature of social capital and

State humanities

councils were

established by

the National

Endowment for

the Humanities

to “provide

local access to

the humanities

through public

programs offered

in communities

throughout the

state.”