Jeffrey Kursonis
Bio
Participation2
Jeffrey Kursonis built and co-built quite a number of non-profits in New York City, including The Haven, an arts and altruism collective with 300 people gathering weekly for ten years in Manhattan. A multicultural and altruistic faith community in Harlem, still going today. The New York City New Sanctuary Movement, one of two main hubs of the national network of faith communities giving sanctuary protection to undocumented families being pursued by Federal Immigration Law Enforcement. It’s a long list that formed a network of sorts.
After my work in NYC, a nascent national organization, Emergent Village, tapped me to lead their early growing network of local cohorts seeking to organize progressive religious leaders. I formed a team and we built it up to over 100 US cities, as well as many regional gatherings and other movement training and organizing (extremely similar to CEA). This “emerging church” movement changed the face of American religion by directly moving thousands of religious leaders and their congregations to the left, spawned a whole publishing genre, helped elect Obama, helped influence our Federal same sex marriage legal structure and sadly became a focal point of the conservative backlash unleashed by Trumpism. This is the second and biggest network I built.
My third network requires some discretion as it was built across a major authoritarian country and ended after a combination of Covid and government crackdowns.
As a side note, Jeffrey is no longer religious but still deeply appreciates the proven training ground religion provides. Here is a video we produced about the national cohort network, note my name as producer in the end credits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-oaU29Z4dg
Jeffrey has been an active EA’er for over two years now, doing the Intro and Advanced Fellowships and working as a Meta-Moderator for Virtual Program trainings for new facilitators and actively posting on the forum. I recently applied to be on the CEA Virtual Programs new Advisory Board.
The very active EA Anywhere #role-film-and-tv group has been meeting weekly or biweekly with a number of subgroups working on various projects. It's become something of a mini incubator already producing a number of new org's and other smaller projects. Jeffrey has been an important organizer and momentum builder in the group. Expect to hear of a number of new inititatives arising out of the group.
How others can help me
I have a long career in the religious world, and now I'm no longer religious so I'm rebuilding in the regular world, it's a challenge. Religion is very good at movement building and at persuading people to change their views two things EA has always been doing...in the internet boom of the 90's the term "evangelist" became popular for basically marketing pro's communicating their companies vision. Many EA's might be surprised to learn that the word charity simply means love...in older English versions of the bible, like the King James, verses that we now use the word love for would then use the word charity. To give with no expectation of return benefit, the very core of EA, is essentially the act of charity which equals an act of love. These less scientific and more artful human kind of expressions are more my style. Because I agree with the core EA notion of bringing scientific method into charity work, I want to see that happen, but implementing it can still be a very human and social and creative thing. We are all evangelizing EA messages. :)
How I can help others
If you are a young EA and have any anxiety in your work and life, I've been a lifelong coach and mentor to young activists. Feel free to message me.
Posts 5
Comments87
This is so good, looking forward to it. I had a great time sharing at the last one about our MH startup Lateral, which happened to take place while I was at EAG Bay Area. It's so important we all get to know each other and see what's going on in the space, please come and say hello in the EA Gathertown mingle time if you have an interest in MH research and/or scaling local community teams in SE Asia or South America (remote or in the field or both), we will hopefully be hiring soon, and could also enjoy getting to know you in our current pre-funded era. We really need thinkers who want to figure out how to reach the Billion people who have no MH care near them. (Also, it might be helpful to make sure you can figure out how to get into EA Gathertown in advance if you've never been there before :) Thanks to the organizers.
So glad Consequentialism is out, and we can finally follow our feelings!! it feels so dang good. I love being a human with feelings. All these years denying it to follow mathematical algorithms like a robot was tiring. Feelings are super effective!! I suppose we'll need a new introduction course where we explain to smart people what feelings are, and how they are already included and fully installed in us but we just need to put a check mark in that one box to turn them on, and boom when you do that suddenly you see a whole new world and there's lots of art everywhere too. Finally EA will have some art, coz us feeling humans of course demand it.
This is fantastic. I've seen movements be greatly helped by this kind of central information mapping. It makes a huge difference...we will remember the times before this map and everything after will be different.
I encourage everyone to read Happier Lives Institute final report on lay therapy in LMICs recently released after a long wait.
Engin, as an animal advocate to have this clear of thinking and publicly write it, when it might seem to go against your own people’s goals is astonishingly noble. The thoughtfulness is so strong, I look forward to following your thinking in all areas in the future. All the people and all the animals owe you a tribute.
This is great work Stan, as a former religious network builder, now not religious and entering the space of scaling of lay-therapy in LMICs, I can see developing partnerships with religions and parachurch networks in LMICs to give use of their properties for community Mental Health Care (MHC), as well as helping them further their own versions, usually called spiritual counseling, in line with good science. In the USA this marriage is common and a significant percentage of the total MHC given the entire US population is done by religious org's, a reality not well understood by secular professional communities. This won't be my main modality, but leave no stone unturned.
I'm interested in many new therapeutic methods not even included in your report, that are just yet to be invented or perfected. I'm excited about the recent Australian BMJ Meta Analysis of Exercise interventions for depression that found dance to be more effective than any of the exercise types, as well as beating both SSRI's and CBT...unfortunately a small sample size that needs more study, but still amazing. We will certainly run pilots on that in our new work.
Jeffrey Kursonis
Wow Nayanika, great report from a person in the field. I guess the challenge is where are people in their mindsets with altruism...are they interested in it? I'm guessing some people who's own income has recently gotten better might not yet be thinking about helping others...that is something I'd like to hear more about from you.
Most of the EA movement are in wealthy countries where people already have long traditions of philanthropy, and EA offers a new way of thinking about doing it more effectively. I know in other highly religious communities philanthropy often happens through the religious structures...how does EA fit into that and in the ways young people may be looking for new ways to express themselves socially outside of religion? Could EA ideas influence religious philanthropy?
I have watched India rise over 40 years, and it's exciting how many are now influential in so many fields globally, and how incomes within India have risen dramatically...it would seem now is an important time to build an effective philanthropic mindset in India, and hope EA Kolkata can be more supported and engaged in conversation with other EA's to continue pushing forward. Thanks.
ps. Nayanika and I know each other through our EA Anywhere Slack group that meets bi-weekly and has become an informal mini-incubator starting a number of new org's.
This is so good Alex! You know the journey went well because your home team that sent you forth decided to hire you and bring you “home”. An experienced field person will be of great value to them, and you’ll be able to help all the future younger versions of yourself flung into their new positions.
Always important to remember the great truth; You made it in New York and, “If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere”!
It seems quite simple. EA is:
Charity Evaluator/Fundraisers: need more donors
Research Think Tanks: need more readers
Charities: Need more donors
CEA/infrastructure: Need more people in local groups
All of these, like any kind of human org, simply "need more" to be worth existing and better to be effective.
Take think tanks as an example. They don't charitably help a single soul, they don't raise money, all they do is research&publish...the only end point is a human reading their reports and being influenced in a good way. That's it. The reports don't get in hands by magic, there is a creative human process of communication, networking, public awareness, industry group relationships...and marketing is one plank in that process. It's org 101. But the only reason EA doesn't have it is because philanthropic funding has allowed EA to not "live in the real world" and do what every org in the real world always does or it will go bankrupt.
I describe it this way: Compare EA to Tech a similar population of STEM minds. Tech has a backroom where the STEM's make great stuff. Then it has a frontroom where arts & humanities creatives communicate the stuff to the world. That's how it works. EA has only a backroom and no frontroom at all, leaving massive value on a table that never goes out into the world as the donors expected it to. It's true good stuff will be found, EA has made an impact, but so much more could be made if they created frontrooms to communicate to the world.
If the clear goal that most would agree with is to be able to lay around on the ground and still be able to feed yourself, strawberries are clearly the future. Or anything reachable by the average human arm length from the ground to the fruit, maybe bushes seem the best here.