Year in Review

Posted by on December 27, 2017 at 11:31 AM

Friend -

This year the Bridge Alliance family added 20 new member organizations. We now have 83 members that are helping to weave the new American Tapestry for political reform. Some of these members were able to meet each other this past April at our 2017 Bridge Summit in Dallas, where they began to collaborate on exciting new projects to promote change and amplify our collective voice.

We also provided our members with news media, social media, and fundraising training, as well as distributing nearly $600,000 in Bridge Action Grants. Our members used these grants to lay the foundation for a broad spectrum of reforms, ranging from creating a website to “mismatch” people with different ideologies, to helping state legislators reduce polarization in their states through civility workshops. Other projects focused on promoting electoral and legislative reforms; developing a program of syndicated radio / TV vignettes; evaluating negativity bias in social media; and encouraging constructive dialogue within different communities.

Finally, we co-hosted the First Annual American Civic Collaboration Awards this past October with Big Tent Nation. The American Civic Collaboration Awards -- or “Civvys” for short -- gave us the opportunity to recognize our members’ tremendous accomplishments. We would like to thank judges Peter Levine, Betsy Wright Hawkings, and David Sawyer for lending their time and expertise to the event; their contributions were invaluable.

We expect to continue to grow and support our members in 2018. In particular, we are excited to boost media coverage of our members; award additional grants; and provide further opportunities to collaborate as we work together to strengthen America’s democracy. More details will be coming soon.

Bridge Alliance

---