Listen First Project Mission
Listen First Project elevates the impact of the movement to bridge divides in America. We connect the efforts of 500 Listen First Coalition partners bringing people together across divides. We manage national strategies and campaigns toward social cohesion and collaboration. Listen First Project is the backbone organization for collective impact to save our country from tearing apart.
Listen First Project is animated by the research-based conviction that the interpersonal bridge-building field can, and must, have a much greater impact by working together. The problem of toxic division is far too wicked for any one organization to combat.
Our overarching strategy is to elevate the impact of the movement to bridge divides in America — internally through relationships, communication, collaboration, collective strategies, goals and measurement; externally through co-created, collective campaigns designed for mass scale with representative balance.
Listen First Project was founded in 2013. In 2016, we saw a need for an organization to focus on connecting and organizing the disparate bridging field pieces and catalyze a greater collective impact. So, rather than continue developing our own programming, we built a Coalition (now ~500 partners) and co-created collective campaigns such as National Week of Conversation. We now serve as the backbone organization for the Bridging Movement Alignment Council (BMAC), the Collective Impact initiative focused on bridging divides in America which includes the ~100 top organizations from the broader Coalition who are most invested in collective impact.
In that backbone role, we manage not only internal collective strategy but also public facing collective breakthrough initiatives such as National Week of Conversation, Meeting of America, and America Talks. We also house field-wide strategic initiatives such as the Bridging Movement Goals & Measures Program.
Listen First Project's operational focus thus has three dimensions…
BMAC: Providing backbone support, leadership, infrastructure, and capacity to the Bridging Movement Alignment Council (BMAC) collective impact initiative of ~100 organizations.
Coalition: Growing, coordinating, equipping and mobilizing the broader Listen First Coalition of 500+ organizations.
Collective Campaigns: Catalyze, co-create, incubate and manage collective campaigns designed for mass scale with representative balance, i.e. collective breakthrough initiatives.