I’m announcing a new national initiative called Engaging Frontline Civic Leaders in Responding to COVID-19. We’re sending this questionnaire to you and thousands of public innovators in our national network. These open-ended questions will help us all to better understand how you and others are responding to COVID-19 and what we need to do to move forward in our communities and as a nation.

Like you, I find myself intensely wrestling with the effects of this pandemic. On so many levels, in so many ways, our lives are fundamentally changing before our very eyes, and it is nearly impossible to predict what will happen in the days and weeks ahead. But here are some things I have been thinking about.

On my office wall, I have a sign from Newtown, Connecticut that I got after my work helping the community respond to its school massacre, which reads: “Our collective strength and resilience will be an example to the rest of the world.”

I am recalling these signs now as panic and fear grips the nation over the coronavirus.