The American dream holds that anyone prepared to work hard and be self-disciplined can prosper and rise from poverty to affluence. How is that dream faring today?
Overall, social mobility between generations in America is lower than it once was and is continuing to fall. Fewer poor and middle-class people are making it to the top.
But there are places that are proving resilient, succeeding where other areas with different cultures and social arrangements are failing. One such place where the American dream is alive and well, where human flourishing is the norm, is Salt Lake City, Utah. It is a model with a focus on an open and generous heart.
According to a 2014 study by Harvard University that combined IRS and Census Bureau data to track millions of families over decades, people born into Salt Lake City families in the bottom fifth of the income scale still rise to the top at rates similar to previous generations.
The author of that report, economist Raj Chetty, explained that it was not just individual effort that helped Utah’s biggest urban area to stand out. Quite the opposite, in fact. What made the difference was the willingness of members of the community to be there for one another, to lend a hand, to help each other upward.
“I think of the old adage that it takes a village to raise a child is a way to think about what social capital is: Will someone else help you out even if you’re not doing well?” Chetty said. “And so as best we can measure it, we find that places with higher levels of social capital tend to have higher levels of upward mobility.”
The success of Utah’s biggest city is not about one religion or any religion — it’s about what we all need as humans to grow and thrive. Strong and successful communities share similar attributes that help everyone, bringing a positive impact to people from a wide range of ethnicities, political backgrounds, and religions.
Chetty found that places with high levels of involvement by civic and religious groups allow the people who live there to thrive.
Such places can be a model for others. Cities, states, and other communities big and small can see and learn what works. In the following feature, Bridport Prize-winner Stephen Wunderli explores Utah’s long tradition of generous volunteering and asks why more communities can’t copy its success.
— Washington Examiner
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U.S. News & World Report recently declared Utah the top state in the nation overall, including the No. 1 economy. Why? Is it unprecedented job growth? Is it the fact that high-tech companies are flocking to Utah? Is it the highly educated population? Yes, to all the above.
Yet there is an underlying factor in this strong economy causing other states and scholars to take notice. Volunteerism. Utah’s energetic governor, Spencer Cox, put it succinctly: “In Utah, we have more volunteers per capita than any other state in the nation; that contributes to our low crime rate, our success in the classroom, our overall well-being.”
Taking care of one’s neighbor is a cultural pillar in Utah. Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor and best-selling author of Love Your Enemies and co-author with Oprah Winfrey of Build the Life You Want, teaches that the most prosperous societies are made up of individuals who look out for each other’s needs. Of the theories on prosperity and happiness out there “the No. 1 thing that works is serving and loving others.” Brooks spends a fair amount of time in Utah. He knows the culture and compares it to the thriving cultures he has spent years analyzing.
In his book Everyday Freedom, Philip K. Howard summarizes a solution to our angst-ridden and divisive culture: “For most of American history, the power and imperative to own your actions and solutions — the concept of individual responsibility — was implicit in the idea of freedom.”
With the decline of religion, associations, clubs, and even higher education, we no longer have sages “inducing us to self-actualize, to rise above our more natural tendencies,” Brooks offers.
Models of success are needed. Individual accountability is needed if we are to break the cycle of selfishness. Getting out of our fortresses of self-truth requires stepping into the humanity to which we belong — visiting neighbors, listening to different points of view, helping someone with the basic needs of life. “We don’t need bigger government to solve all our problems,” Cox said. “We need bigger people.”
Volunteerism
Volunteerism is at the core of Utah culture, but there’s something deeper. It is loving your neighbors enough to see them thrive. “When you reach out to people struggling, you reduce crime,” Cox continues.
“When you get your hands dirty, you create a bond with your neighbor and help fight loneliness and mental health issues. It’s more than giving, it’s lifting.”
The heart of Utah volunteerism began beating when Brigham Young stood at a makeshift pulpit under a bowery where the Tabernacle sits today. He had called for volunteers before to help bring in straggling pioneers from the plains, and on this day he told members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to load their wagons and head into the bitter winter Wyoming plains to rescue hundreds of stranded migrants. They answered the call. They still do. Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall says: “If it’s an emergency or a planned welcoming for the world’s future games, Utah always shows up.”
This was borne out by the actions of Mendenhall, three hours before sunrise when the temperature dipped below 15 degrees. She was walking the streets, escorting the homeless into temporary shelters. She defers attention and says: “There were already volunteers there to help at 4 a.m.”
The Tabernacle Choir is an emblem of oneness, of each member doing his or her part, and of the joy of community. The strains of music offered at the end of a workday are the bonds that soften the soul and reminders to aspire to the higher ideal of putting others first.
On a cold February evening, the historic Tabernacle, an acoustically perfect structure the shape of an inverted boat, seems suited for the persistent rain. Stand among the trees patient for spring and you can hear the harmonies drawing you forward.
Open the doors and you see 450 singers and orchestra members in elevated seats, casually dressed: young parents and highly successful business leaders, schoolteachers, and tech executives; each volunteering on average 20 hours a week. Conducting from the platform is Mack Wilberg. His shirt has come untucked in the passionate aerobics of leading the most recognized choir in the world through the weekly rehearsal. He shares a laugh and kindly calls for a little more nuance from the altos. He raises up and the refrain is breathtaking. “Yes, that’s it,” Mack says.
The otherworldly harmony is achieved from a part-time, all-volunteer choir. The orchestra, the hosts, the ushers: all volunteers. Even the president who oversees choir operations is a volunteer. That president is former Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt. In 2002, he led a successful effort as governor to recruit thousands of volunteers for the Winter Olympics. “We asked for 29,000,” he recalls. “We got over 75,000 applications.” Turns out running the choir is much like running the state. You get everybody on the same page, and it runs itself.
Up the hill from the city center is East High School. Volunteers stock the food pantry before students arrive. Ann Orton helps collect the needed supplies. Ann is a lively 78 years old and has spent much of her adult life as a volunteer and mentor, a community organizer, and now as an ambassador for students in need.
“I got my grandkids together and we assembled 100 backpacks full of school supplies for refugee kids. I’ve been with members of different religions and organizations. The feeling is always wonderful.” She arranged for a rancher to donate hundreds of pounds of meat to the pantry, sewed masks during the pandemic, and now helps with a teen resource center. “Life is a circle. Sometimes you are receiving and sometimes you are giving.”
Camille Johnson is the Relief Society general president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She outlines the mission of the Relief Society while sitting in Brigham Young’s office in the Tabernacle. The strains of the choir rehearsing accompany her. Paintings on the wall depict early life in the valley, farmers and shopkeepers, tradesmen, and wagon masters.
“The purpose of the Relief Society from the beginning, since 1842, is to bring the relief of Jesus Christ, both temporal and spiritual, to our brothers and sisters around the world.”
To this end, women in the early days of the church established hospitals, organized blanket and food drives, taught school, and cared for the sick in their homes. They often took in families newly arrived in the valley until housing was built and fields furrowed. Today, the Relief Society has 8 million women worldwide. It is the largest women’s organization in the world and the first one established in this country.
“The mission hasn’t changed,” Camille says. “We assess needs globally, we try to take a world view of the needs, but we take care of people one by one by one.” Mack Wilberg pauses the rehearsal to add a compliment. “Well done.”
Mindy Butler, a member of the choir, is a mother of four children and a nondenominational chaplain at the local air base. Every Thursday evening, she drives 30 minutes to rehearse and again early Sunday morning to perform.
“I am so grateful to be part of this choir. I feel deeply connected to eternity when I’m singing. The sound fills your whole body, and the lyrics are filled with hope. Music is delivered right to your heart,” Mindy says.
In her work helping airmen process intense feelings and trauma, she is creating a volunteer choir. “Something about being on the same page, about breathing as a group and singing together helps them realize they are not alone, that they are loved by their creator. It helps, it helps a lot.”
Down the street from the Tabernacle is a building owned by the Knights of Columbus. Inside, Ukrainian refugees perform The Gift of the Magi. It is the first time the Ukrainian Youth Choir of Utah has performed.
Scattered in the audience are displaced parents from Ukraine and Russia and community volunteers from various business sectors who have helped relocate families and facilitate employment. There are no borders, only the emotion that comes with the harmony of youth. Utah is on the list of preferred destinations for refugees. The valley boasts communities of Ecuadorians, Congolese, Russians, Ukrainians, Somalians, Sudanese, Iraqis, Afghanis, and more. Jeff Swinton got a call from his local church leader 26 years ago.
“He asked me if I would save the inner city,” Jeff remembers. “There was no budget, no resources, no formal leadership structure. Just get to work.” Jeff was a busy attorney and father. He visited the congregations, the resource centers, the people in their homes. He spent months building a list of needs. Then went to work matching volunteer resources with each need.
Jeff’s volunteer services spreadsheet is filled with auto mechanics, plumbers, handymen, accountants, mental health counselors, attorneys, teachers, and more. Today there are over 1,500 volunteers in the city guiding residents in need to 100 volunteer services. They teach life skills and provide rides, help fix cars, and arrange dental appointments. “We’ve seen hundreds of people improve their lives and move to better circumstances,” says Heidi, Jeff’s wife and partner in the effort. “And they become volunteers.”
Community impact
Crime rates are down in the worst neighborhoods. And in lower-income neighborhoods struggling to survive, there is a newfound hope. Mendenhall has watched 37 community councils self-organize. “They care about their neighborhoods, the school their kids go to. They identify problems they want help with: safety, affordability, transit. We have 110 languages in the city. There’s a lot of diversity, but there is also a lot of unity.”
One of the mayor’s favorite programs is My Hometown. Neighborhood representatives get to know the residents on their block. They hold meetings and assess needs. They coordinate the many service projects and organize volunteers. “We’ve painted 850 houses since the program began. And we plant 2,000 trees a year as well as maintain seven community gardens,” Mendenhall says. “Volunteerism is baked into the culture here.”
Chris and Erlynn Lansing, directors of Church Hosting, are from Virginia, where Chris’s business is. They love listening to the choir in the historic Tabernacle. They moved to Salt Lake City over a year ago as part of their volunteer service. “I put in more hours now than I did before I retired,” Chris jokes. “But we love it,” his wife adds.
The Lansings coordinate visits from high-ranking officials and foreign dignitaries who want front-row seats to a performance and get a behind-the-curtain look at the volunteer machine.
“Last week we had the ambassador from Mongolia,” Chris says. “Next week we have ambassadors from the Czech Republic and Malaysia. Sunday, we have a group from the Naval War College.” Erlynn leans back and reflects.
“Over the years we’ve had close to 2,500 ambassadors, heads of state, and high-ranking officials visit, including the former prime minister of England. They all want to know how we do it.”
Many of those visitors are from the world’s largest charities. The Red Cross, World Food Programme, and major religions: Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim leaders, as well as evangelicals, Sikhs, and the Indonesian leader of 100 million Muslims.
“We love taking people to Welfare Square,” Chris says, motoring around the half-a-million-square-foot Bishop’s Storehouse in a golf cart. The floors are so clean the tires squeak.
“We show them the bakery where we bake up to 6,000 loaves of bread a day.” There are massive grain silos and the capacity to process 200,000 pounds of grain a day. The cannery is supported by a vast network of food producers and church-owned farms in North America. The Bishop’s Storehouse is one of six such facilities the church runs in the U.S., distributing food across the country where it is shared via smaller facilities that look like grocery stores and through meeting houses.
Over half of the food distributed by these Bishop’s Storehouses, roughly 70 million pounds a year, goes to local food banks and charities with no religious stipulation.
The lobby of the state-of-the-art warehouse is adorned with paintings of Jesus administering to the poor and a central statue of the Good Samaritan.
“Ninety-seven percent of the people you see in this warehouse are volunteers,” Chris says. “They come in shifts from congregations, clubs, local businesses. We had the NBA All-Star organization down here helping out last year and the University of Utah women’s volleyball team along with a youth group last week.”
The latter packed 4,000 boxes of food for emergency relief in one day. All the food, emergency cleaning supplies, hygiene kits, clothing, bedding, even rakes and shovels for residents after disasters are free to the recipients. The storehouse itself is supported by the financial donations of the 17 million-member church.
“We take them to Deseret Industries, where clothing, furniture, and kitchenware are upcycled, refurbished, and sold for a few pennies on the dollar,” Erlynn adds. The bulk of workers at Deseret Industries are refugees. The employment plan is to offer more than a paycheck. English teachers teach classes three times a week, and there are mental health counselors, life skills coaches, and very patient supervisors.
One woman from the Congo had never driven a vehicle. They taught her to operate a forklift, a process that took three months. Associates sort through donated clothing and learn how to merchandise, organize a store, wait on customers, and prepare for full-time employment.
Randy Foote, the operations manager, smiles as he oversees processing of 60 million pounds of donated clothing a year. “Everything that goes through here is used in some way,” he says. It’s sold at the thrift store, donated to villages, or broken down and recycled. “We are processing product while developing people.” The goal is to guide those people to self-reliance.
Health of society
Visitors to the storehouse remember the smell of fresh-baked bread when they return to the Tabernacle for a concert, a reminder of having been in the beehive of volunteer work that is the core of Utah culture. A culture that attracts thousands of youth volunteers who are hungry for purpose in their lives.
“The bottom line is this: Givers are healthier, happier, and richer in this country — and probably around the world,” says Arthur Brooks, whose course on happiness at Harvard has the longest waiting list on campus. Volunteering heals the emotional scrapes and cuts in developing lives inflicted by unrealistic expectations through overexposure to social media.
Chris Crippen is the director of service and learning at Brigham Young University. He coordinates 16,000 engaged volunteers a year on campus who mentor at elementary schools, serve in elder care facilities, and become the boots on the ground for local charities.
“Service is preventative medicine,” Crippen says. “It helps students emotionally, spiritually, as well as academically.” According to the Journal of Medical Internet Research, “Problematic social media use in youth is linked to higher levels of depression, anxiety, and stress.”
One of the counters to anxiety is helping others in the ways that Chris is leading. “Rumination on social media is a real problem,” says Brooks. “The fastest route to greater happiness is giving and volunteering.”
Volunteering also helps students over the hump of homesickness, making friends, and adjusting. “They overcome their lack of confidence,” says Crippen. “They develop attributes of joy and patience. They dig a little deeper, it brings clarity and peace of mind.”
Ron Gunnell, envoy for the Presidency of the Choir, has spent the last 26 years volunteering with the choir. He is tasked with bringing international talent to the annual Christmas performance. Ron is a successful businessman and a serial entrepreneur. His engaging demeanor and genuine kindness make him the perfect person to procure international talent.
But he has no experience as an agent or manager in the music business. He loves the mission to elevate humanity through music. He maintains lifelong friendships with the guests and genuinely loves them: Kristin Chenoweth, Angela Lansbury, Gladys Knight, Roma Downey, the Muppets, Andrea Bocelli, Katharine McPhee, David Foster, Walter Cronkite, and many more.
“Music is the golden thread that binds us all together,” Ron says. “It provides relief in hard times. It connects us to the divine.”
Good governance
Good government can be harmonious even with diverse points of view, if it creates a framework citizens can trust, knowing they can flourish as individuals yet encouraged to be responsible for their own communities formed around mutual values.
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This is the model for a high-functioning society. It requires our best people to be regularly involved with our most challenged communities. From the doctor teaching literacy at an elementary school to the college student enrolled in weekly service at the food bank, the health of a society is determined by the internal forces in that community. “When we do something for somebody because we want them to do better, that’s the most effective type of social capital a society can have,” Brooks says. “It’s not just providing a handout,” Chris Lansing adds. “It’s providing a hand up.”
As casual patrons file out of the Tabernacle, the rain is still misting the landscape. The moon is hidden behind the clouds. It is dark. Streetlight halos mark a procession across the visitor square. “I loved it,” a woman says. “I love seeing how they work on each musical bit to make it perfect.” She is joined by her friend from Azerbaijan, “It was amazing. They really love what they are doing, don’t they?”
*This piece was originally published in the Colorado Springs Gazette.
Stephen Wunderli is a freelance writer for the Foundation for a Better Life and the Denver Gazette. He is the recipient of the United Nations Time for Peace award and the Bridport Prize in literature.
