Across the country, there are a number of regional and national organizations working to encourage productive dialogue. Learn more about them here (descriptions of organizations taken from their web materials).
- Braver Angels – Leads the nation’s largest cross-partisan, volunteer-led movement to bridge the partisan divide for the good of our democratic republic.
- Citizen University – Builds a culture of powerful, responsible citizenship across the country by designing gatherings, rituals, and workshops for people who are searching for new ways to strengthen civic culture in their hometown.
- College Debates and Discourse Alliance – Teaches students to honor ideological diversity, foster civil discourse on college campuses, and cultivate student and faculty leaders to carry the movement forward.
- Difficult Dialogues National Resource Center – Facilitates transformative change among higher education institutions and its partners to address the persistent challenges to justice, equity, and a healthy environment.
- Engaging Differences, A Program at the National Institute for Civil Discourse – Engages in conversations across the divide, opening doors to finding common ground and moves our country toward a more perfect union.
- Greater Good Science Center, University of California, Berkeley – Studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society.
- Interfaith America – Operates based on the idea that religious difference should serve as a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division.
- Institute for Citizens and Scholars – Ensures that young people gain a deep understanding of our history, culture, government, institutions, and current affairs from diverse sources and perspectives.
- Kettering Foundation – Works to inspire and connect individuals and organizations to advance thriving and inclusive democracies around the globe.
- Living Room Conversations – Connects people across divides – politics, age, gender, race, nationality, and more – through guided conversations proven to build understanding and transform communities.
- National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation – Brings people together across divides to discuss, decide, and take action together effectively on today’s toughest issues. Serves as a gathering place, a resource center, a news source, and a facilitative leader for this vital community of practice.
- National Issues Forum – Creates a framework for the deliberative process to ensure a careful, nonpartisan way of presenting alternatives and welcoming different views.
- Project Pericles – Project Pericles is at the forefront of civic engagement and social responsibility in areas including faculty and course development, curricular coherence, and research into best practices.
- Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Agora Institute – Brings together scholars and practitioners from a variety of disciplines to help strengthen global democracy through improved and expanded civic engagement and informed, inclusive dialogue.
- The American Association of Colleges and Universities – Advances the democratic purposes of higher education by promoting equity, innovation, and excellence in liberal education.
- The Better Arguments Project – A national civic initiative created to help bridge divides – not by papering over those divides but by helping people have Better Arguments. In this sense, arguments don’t have to drive us apart. Better Arguments can bring us together.
- The Constructive Dialogue Institute – Works with institutions across the education, for-profit, non-profit, and public sectors to help them communicate across differences and build inclusive cultures.
- The Human Library Organization: Unjudge Someone – The broad selection of books provides readers with ample choice to challenge their stereotypes and so more than a thousand readers took advantage leaving books, librarians, organisers and readers stunned at the reception and impact of the Human Library.
- The Village Square – A non-partisan public educational forum on matters of local, state and national importance dedicated to maintaining factual accuracy in civic and political debate by growing civil discourse on divisive issues, and recalling the history and principles at the foundation of our democracy.
- Unify America – Creates experiences that reduce political polarization, teach critical civic skills, and give people across the country a chance to make their voices heard. Includes practice grounds like the Unify Challenge College Bowl, which has connected thousands of students across the U.S. for respectful conversations about hot-button issues and shared goals, and civic engagement opportunities, like the Citizens’ Assembly in Montrose, Colorado, that bring communities together to solve their own local challenges cooperatively.
