Charlie Brown
Executive Director of the Trust for Civic Life, a grantmaking collaborative that supports locally led civic efforts to bring people together, strengthen civic participation, and build trust in communities. Brown is a design strategy and community engagement leader with prior work in democracy grantmaking, social innovation networks, and strategy for philanthropic and corporate partners.
Trust-Building Was Framed as Funded, Measurable Community Work
The 2026 Trust in Practice Summit highlights present trust-building as practical civic work that needs funding, tools, measurement, and local leadership, not simply a sentiment to be restored. Hosted in Chicago by the Alliance for Social Trust in partnership with Allstate, the summit convened more than 250 leaders and announced $1 million, $500,000, and $100,000 awards to 11 nonprofit collaborations across 10 states. Speakers argued that institutions should support community leaders, measure trust at a local level, and focus on the ordinary problem-solving through which trust is built.
Trust in Practice Awards Fund 11 Local Trust-Building Collaborations
The 2026 Trust in Practice Summit, convened in Chicago by the Alliance for Social Trust with the Aspen Institute and Allstate, presented trust-building as practical local work that requires funding, measurement, institutional listening and community relationships. Speakers including Daniel Porterfield, Tom Wilson and others argued that pluralism and institutional trust depend less on national messaging than on leaders embedded in communities, while the summit’s awards and Trust Map were offered as tools to support that work.