Together for Tomorrow and Foundation for Inclusion Announce Merger
Combined organization will help changemakers collaborate to solve complex problems
■ WASHINGTON, DC, December 11, 2017 — The Foundation for Inclusion and Together for Tomorrow are pleased to announce they have joined forces into a single organization dedicated to giving changemakers the tools and networks they need to achieve large-scale, positive change in divided societies.
Together for Tomorrow, an open platform for education, civic engagement, and healing, was founded by entrepreneur and lawyer Jonathon Beninson in late 2016 after an election that had severely divided the country. “Citizens, nonprofits, and corporations, whether they were liberals, conservatives, independents, or unaffiliated, were all concerned about the direction our country was going,” Beninson said. “I wanted to create a platform to help them join forces. Individually, we had the pieces we needed to ensure a safe, clean, and inclusive future for every American. By working together, we knew we could go farther faster.”
To lead the organization, Beninson recruited Andrea Lee-Zucker, who was Director of Engagement at NEXUS, a global movement bridging communities of wealth and social entrepreneurship. Lee-Zucker announced the launch of Together for Tomorrow at the NEXUS USA Summit in Washington, DC, in March 2017. “We’re in a time when it’s important for us to use our positive energies as effectively as possible,” Lee-Zucker said. “I believe the solutions we create together are better than the ones we make in our silos, and it’s important not to reinvent the wheel. Together for Tomorrow saw the need to channel our collective efforts into more consequential change.”
The Foundation for Inclusion was founded out of similar motives by Bob Lamb, a former strategist for the Defense Department and Army and a scholar and consultant on complex problems.
“I’ve spent 20 years studying how societies fall apart, and the things I started seeing in our own country two years ago really bothered me,” said Lamb, who leads the combined organization as CEO and Chairman. “There were already hundreds of thousands of people working to fix social problems. But there was no comprehensive view of the problems and players involved. That meant there was no way to know if everyone’s work was adding up to ultimate success and no systematic way to fill gaps in their collective efforts.”
Lamb had done significant research on what it takes to achieve large-scale change, so he designed the Foundation for Inclusion as a strategy hub and impact incubator to experiment with more effective ways to solve problems at larger scales. “Methods exist to synthesize knowledge and experience about social problems into strategies to address them. Techniques exist to map out who has influence in society. And tools exist to scale up influence. We’re combining those methods, techniques, and tools into new processes and platforms so people trying to solve hard social problems can be collectively more effective.”
The Foundation for Inclusion was incorporated in Washington, DC, in October 2016 and awarded tax-exempt status in April 2017.
Discussions about joining forces with Together for Tomorrow began in July 2017 when Lee-Zucker and Lamb met for coffee and realized the organizations they led both shared two key interests: a relentless focus on large-scale change and a desire to give changemakers access to powerful tools to scale their influence. “I feel great admiration and respect for Bob, and I’m excited about how bringing together our tools and perspectives will strengthen our shared vision,” said Lee-Zucker.
The merged organization will use the Foundation for Inclusion’s legal structure and name; Lee-Zucker and Beninson will join its board of directors; and Together for Tomorrow’s advisers will join the merged organization’s advisory council.
“Between the fantastic vision and network Andrea and Jonathan have built, and the depth of expertise in the tools and networks Bob has built, I think the possibilities are endless,” said the Foundation’s Treasurer, Theresa Flores, a corporate lobbyist whose charitable work builds grassroots movements for social change.
The organization is planning to raise $1.5 million in donations and contracts to hire more staff and expand its work in 2018. Its staff and fellows are already building an “impact accounting” toolkit to help changemakers measure and optimize their social performance and impact. Its Inclusion Incubator is experimenting with automated tools to inoculate online communities from misinformation and trolling, and it is designing a platform for experiments in self-governance by marginalized populations.
The Foundation for Inclusion is seeking values-aligned partners whose work can be enhanced by the organization’s capability to build high-level strategies and track collective progress on issues ranging from extreme polarization, racial bias, and sex trafficking to inclusive capitalism and effective peacebuilding.
For more information on how to collaborate with the Foundation for Inclusion or support its work on any of these topics, visit foundationforinclusion.org or contact CEO Bob Lamb at +1 202-316-2699 or bob@foundationforinclusion.org.