Center for Spirituality at Work (CFSAW)
Vie Thorgren, Founder and Executive Director
$25,000 operating support

CFSAW, a community-based, educational and human services organization, acts as a bridge uniting diverse people for spiritual transformation and social justice. Its Making Choices program, serving incarcerated women at Denver Women's Correctional Facility since 1999, provides healthy and supportive relationships to female offenders in the criminal justice system. Offering life-planning and decision-making skills in combination with individual mentoring from professional women in the community, the program prepares 80 to 100 women offenders annually to rejoin society as contributing members and, in so doing, to break the generational cycle of incarceration that exists today.
www.cfsaw.org

Common Sense California (CSC)
Steve Weiner and David Wolf, Co-Founders
$25,000 operating support

CSC is a new citizens organization whose mission is to serve as a civic bridge between the state’s citizens and its elected officials. With a bi-partisan board of directors and an organizing committee featuring leaders in the nonprofit, business, educational, and government sectors, CSC ‘s goal is to engage a diverse network of Californians hailing from different parts of the state in citizen dialogues and citizen assemblies. By utilizing these and other deliberative democracy practices and tools, CSC hopes to increase citizen participation in the democratic process, inform and amplify the voice of citizens , and ensure that policy leaders hear and heed that voice.

Decision Education Foundation (DEF)
Marcy Conn, Executive Director
$25,000 operating support

DEF’s broad mission is to improve people’s lives by improving the quality of their decisions. Launched in 2001 by a team of academics and business people with ties to Stanford University and the decision analysis community, it currently focuses on teaching decision-making literacy to teenagers. DEF programs reach more than 600 at-risk, troubled, high-achieving, and mainstream high school youth in three states. In 2004, DEF launched its Whole School Integration Project, which develops partnerships with select schools and features DEF Summer Institutes (teacher professional development and training workshops). Partners in The Whole School Integration Project include independent and charter schools seeking an alternative approach to secondary education.
www.decisioneducation.org

Dialogue Center
Sonoma State University
$25,000 seed funding

The proposed Dialogue Center is envisioned as an institutional home and regional center where dialogue training across all sectors can occur. Drawing on a variety of approaches, it will offer discussion-based training to K-12 students and teachers, university faculty and staff, community members, and members of professional groups. Besides creating and making available an on-line and standard archive of dialogue materials and best practices, it will foster the development of a meeting place to build a community of dialogue practitioners and participants who convene on a regular basis.

Allison Fine, Demos Fellow
$20,000 fellowship support
Demos is a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization committed to building an America that achieves its highest democratic ideals. Its Fellows Program supports scholars and writers developing new ideas and research and engaging in national debates. Allison Fine’s fellowship with Demos focuses on unleashing broad participation in our democracy. Her fellowship will allow her to continue exploring how interactive digital tools can be used for positive social change and how social media can enhance citizens’ self-organizing into strong communities.
www.demos.org



LeaderSpring
Cynthia Chavez, Executive Director
$25,000 operating support

LeaderSpring’s mission is to foster high-performing nonprofits by strengthening and connecting the people who lead them. It awards two-year, on-the-job fellowships to a diverse and highly select cohort of experienced and mid-career nonprofit leaders in conjunction with their agencies.. Retreats, mentoring trips, workshops with seasoned trainers, and monthly leaders circles provide Fellows with opportunities to experience personal transformation and achieve greater impact in the communities they serve. Currently, 30 leaders are actively participating in the Fellowship, and 55 have graduated from the program.
www.leaderspring.org



Mediators Foundation
Mark Gerzon, Founder and President
$50,000 operating support

Mediators Foundation was founded in 1987 to promote education, to address social issues of national and global importance, and to foster a better understanding of global cultures and values throughout the general public. From its inception, Mediators Foundation has served as a an incubator for innovative programs. Its current major project is developing The Global Leadership Network (GLN), a team of practitioners from all five continents representing diverse backgrounds (leadership development, conflict resolution, dialogue, media and related fields) whose mission is to build the global leadership vital to creating and sustaining a peaceful and just, world. The GLN is in the beginning phases of a three-year plan that includes collaborating on a book aimed at fostering cross-border leadership on global issues, developing a training workshop to support young leaders around the world, and connecting young leaders to peers and mentors capable of fostering their growth and extending their impact.
www.mediatorsfoundation.org



The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD)
Sandy Heierbacher, Cofounder and Director
$50,000 operating support

NCDD is a membership organization operating on the shared belief that elevating the quality of thinking and communications in organizations and among citizens is key to solving humanity’s most pressing problems. The organization seeks to use communication methods such as dialogue and deliberation to further the values of justice, innovation, and democracy throughout society. NCDD emerged from the 2002 National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation. Currently, its membership includes more than 600 organizations and individuals. NCDD’s Web site has become a hub for practitioners and scholars in the field to share ideas and information and explore collaborating on projects. NCDD is now spearheading a mentorship program and an internship clearinghouse designed to match new practitioners with established organizations.
www.thataway.org



On the Move (OTM)
Leslie Medine and Diana Gordon, Cofounders and Executive Directors
$50,000 operating support

OTM was founded in 2004 by a group of professionals who had worked in the public sector as executive directors, superintendents, principals, and philanthropy leaders. Its mission is to promote vibrant communities by building and sustaining effective leaders and highly functional nonprofit organizations. OTM’s approach includes personal coaching, skill building, and group reflection. Besides working with 20 schools and nonprofit organizations, it runs On the Verge, a year-long experiential program for young leaders that integrates personal, interpersonal, and professional skills. Based on their extensive experience, the founders bring tested ideas and strategies to bear on the following questions: How do we develop the next generation of nonprofit leaders? How do we strengthen organizations so that they function effectively and creatively in a rapidly changing world? How do we build cross-connections with other organizations to create lasting change in our communities?
www.onthemovebayarea.org



The PassageWays Institute
Rachael Kessler, Founder and Executive Director
$25,000 operating support

The mission of The PassageWays Institute is to motivate, prepare, and support educators, on a systemwide basis to implement its model for nurturing the inner lives of students. PassageWays aims to accomplish its goals through publications and speaking engagements, introducing its model within entire school systems and in individual classrooms, and providing curricula and training to educational institutions from kindergarten through high school. PassageWays’ offerings fall within the general category of educational programs categorized as Social and Emotional Learning (SEL).

PassageWays is set to begin a demonstration and research pilot project with the Poudre School District in Fort Collins, Colorado, working in conjuction the Colorado Partnership for Educational Renewal, the National Network for Educational Renewal, and the Research and Development Center at Colorado State University. Its three-year goal is to build a district-wide model of success and to generate data on the positive impact of the PassageWays’ model on educational outcomes critical to school decision makers across the country.
www.passageways.org



Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE)
Chris Gates, Executive Director
$25,000 operating support

Launched in 2005, PACE’s purpose is to create a community of philanthropy that generously supports active civic engagement and that generates new and effective approaches to encouraging civic involvement. Through local and national dialogues, as well as publications, profiles, and partnerships, PACE aims to build an identifiable network of individual donors and foundations that discusses and works on funding efforts that bring people together across experiences, demographics, backgrounds, and ideology to solve problems, address concerns, and build better communities. Over time, PACE hopes to provide leadership from within philanthropy to the private and public sectors on strategies to encourage dialogue and civil discourse and to reinforce the value of individuals actively participating in the communities and political systems that influence their lives.
www.pacefunders.org



The Society for Philosophical Inquiry (SPI)
Christopher and Cecilia Phillips, Cofounders and Executive Directors
$50,000 operating support

Founded in 1998, SPI is a grassroots membership organization that promotes the use of Socratic Dialogue as a means of developing independent thinking and active civic engagement. Bringing together people of all ages and walks of life, it aims to form and facilitate democratic communities of philosophical inquiry. Currently, more than 300 groups across the country (and some internationally)s meet in venues such as coffee houses, bookstores, libraries, schools, senior centers, nursing homes, prisons, parks, plazas, homeless shelters, and community centers to discuss matters important to them and to society. Twenty-five schools have now incorporated versions of SPI’s model of Socratic inquiry into their classroom or after-school activities. SPI plans to partner with these schools— and others as they join the effort—to create demonstration sites.
www.philosopher.org



Taos Institute
Ken Gergen, Co-Founder and Board President
$5,000 research/clerical support for “A Handbook for Transformative Dialogue”

The Taos Institute, a community of scholars and practitioners concerned with the social processes essential for the construction of reason, knowledge, and human value, explores, develops and disseminates ideas and practices that promote creative, appreciative, and collaborative processes in families, communities, and organizations. Ken Gergen is currently researching dialogic practices used around the world, the basis for his book, A Handbook of Transformative Dialogue. Besides offering practical resources for readers concerned with issues of conflict, Gergen hopes the book will stimulate new developments in both practice and theory.
www.taosinstitute.net

The Touchstones Discussion Project
Howard Zeiderman, Cofounder and President
$50,000 operating support

Incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 1996, The Touchstones Discussion Project provides curriculum materials and instructional programs in literacy, mathematics, and science at the elementary, middle and high school levels. The program currently reaches more than 200,000 students each year throughout the nation. Since 2002, Touchstones has been working with hundreds of teachers in California implementing the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program, a college preparatory program for economically disadvantaged and underachieving students. Touchstones’ core belief is that people can acquire listening, speaking, thinking, and interpersonal skills by engaging in active, focused discussions of short, common texts. Touchstones assists individuals of all abilities to use these skills effectively as they to work together in schools, the workplace, prisons, senior centers, and other learning environments. The program is also used at several sites overseas.
www.touchstones.org



Western Justice Center Foundation (WCJF)
Najeeba Syeed-Miller, Executive Director
$25,000 operating support

WCJF’s mission is to work with children, communities, schools, and courts to promote dialogue, assure peaceful conflict resolution, and improve access to justice. Through efforts such as The Community Dialogue Project and Ecologue, it nurtures collaboration among diverse groups and creates cost-effective partnerships among organizations. WCJF provides services and test ideas in the greater Los Angeles area, and communicates the results of these and other model practices to a growing national and international constituency. Specializing in culturally competent dialogue processes, WJCF is designing a facilitation model tailored to the needs and interests of the West/Southwest communities. It is also developing regional networks and areas of practice accessible to the diverse populations in Southern California.
www.westernjustice.org