Last March, about 75 high school students gathered one evening at a church in Annandale. They weren’t there for youth group or for choir practice. Instead, these politically minded young people had come together for a poster-making party. The signs they were making? They’d carry them in the March for Our Lives rally, a nationwide march to protest gun violence, organized in response to the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
The evening of poster making and pizza, though centered on a traumatic event, helped build community and focus energy on making a difference—which was the goal.
“It’s really about officially gathering people together for a cause or a candidate you care about,” says Nancy Friedman, a co-founder of Feed Our Democracy, a year-old nonprofit aimed at making political activism easier. “At the core of it, it’s wanting people to be engaged.”
Friedman and her Feed Our Democracy co-founders, Isabel Kallman and Jeannine Harvey, dreamed up the nonprofit post-presidential election. Kallman posted to her personal Facebook page a simple query: “If I were to ask people to organize small dinners around the country to help raise awareness and funds for causes and candidates you care about, would you join in?”
A total of 267 people, mostly women, commented that they would host a dinner. Friedman and Harvey went a step further and messaged Kallman directly, saying they wanted to do more than host a one-off dinner.
And Feed Our Democracy was born.
The three women, including Harvey, who lives in Fairfax, have extensive media backgrounds. Harvey’s resume includes PBS and the ONE Campaign; Kallman has a Wall Street banking background and is the founder of the successful blog, Alpha Mom; while Friedman’s credits include 20 years as a TV writer for clients like Nickelodeon and HBO.
The Annandale event was organized with Feed Our Democracy, Students Demand Action and Moms Demand Action, both offshoots of Everytown for Gun Safety. But all over NoVA and beyond, the nonprofit is offering guidance on being politically engaged.
It works like this: Select a cause you’re interested in. Find a co-host or two. Each co-host invites a few people from their own social circles. This way, you end up with a gathering of 10-12 people with new viewpoints and perspectives.
Feed Our Democracy provides free background information on your chosen cause, as well as a toolkit for planning your party with resources like invitation fliers, conversation starters, even a recipe or two. The “feed” part of Feed Our Democracy can be as involved as a multicourse meal or, like at the poster making party, pizza and paper plates.
Currently, Feed Our Democracy offers toolkits for things like poster making, phone banking and postcard writing. Issues to discuss and support include a broad array from climate change and supporting veterans, to immigration rights and reform and civil rights.
For each issue, Feed Our Democracy offers a succinct reference document that includes background information, statistics and suggested organizations to support.
“I see ourselves as amalgamators,” says Friedman. “What’s overwhelming is how much [information] is out there. We do create our own content, but we also show what other people are doing and put that into one or two pages.”
At a year-old, the organization is growing in both causes and participants. Its most popular toolkit so far has been its immigration tutorial about how to help families at the border, with more than 2,300 downloads.
But, at the end of the day, say the founders, the ultimate goal is to get involved—regardless of the cause you’re passionate about.
“The idea is it’s whatever you want it to be about,” says Friedman. “If you want to raise money for new playground equipment, great. If you want to raise awareness about a charity that’s important to you, terrific. We are just looking to get people more involved in their communities and to make it easier for them to do that.”
And, says Harvey, “Understand that small actions can add up to big change. We can be paralyzed with being overwhelmed with so many things to do, but [Feed Our Democracy demonstrates] that one little thing can make a difference.”
This post originally appeared in our April 2019 print issue. Subscribe to the magazine here.