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
Comments83
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.
Hi Hamish,
Yes, that's a creative literary sentence that would mean the same thing if you just removed the "non" and basically says you're leaving massive value on the table that doesn't get communicated (as you've said). By adding the little twist of saying leaving massive value on a non-table that never gets communicated you're just pushing the idea into absurdity (what's a non-table?) which artistically makes the point that to do so is absurd.
It's a great idea, glad you tried. Here's a few thoughts from a 60 year old with many years overseas and 3 years in Washington, DC. Maybe they can help (given from a USA perspective).
The feeling many activists who really care get after spending any time adjacent to the DC development-industrial-complex is that so much of it is a big political scam...DC is not trying to help the world, they're deploying taxpayers money to increase USA power and influence to the ends of benefiting USA (same for all wealthy countries). That's the DC side, then living overseas for almost a decade of my life I saw the actual aid workers in the field and it's like the newbies are actually there for good idealistic reasons, then as they age and go up the ladder you see them just realizing it's all a scam but it's my job so I just play along or they are just expat types who love living overseas and with a USA salary in a poor country you can live like a king.
All of that is going on, while your holding meetings with individual politicians who may care, but they don't even see the whole big picture themselves because for example State Department priorities and strategies may be opaque to congress members.
The other issue that occurs to me. You are applying to aid what EA applied to charity so successfully...the idea of scientific method for evidence based impact...but the audience who responded so powerfully to EA's charity changing idea was donors deciding what to do with money they control directly...individuals and foundations. But your audience was politicians who are seeking to get votes by doing what voters want, and by needing to follow their leadership. So even though they may be moved by "effective impact" as an idea, the audience they serve - their leaders and voters - are far removed from your efforts and don't hear your ideas, ie. your energies spent at the wrong spot...the solution would be to not only influence politicians but influence the voting public by creative media campaigns in film, tv, youtube and substack and change the zeitgeist, and get the voters to demand a change in how our governments do aid, and start doing it this smarter evidence based way. Now your energies are hitting directly.
But of course, this is not a methodology EA really understands since they don't invite creative media people to the table. They should and more of us are on the peripheries stating the importance of creative media to everything EA does and pointing out EA's blindspot on this. Nobody in lobbying or advocacy would ever imagine effecting a change without creative media to influence the public as a significant part of it...you gotta hit 'em on both sides...inside lobbying, outside changing of minds/votes.
Perhaps another attempt with a combination of more experienced development lobbyists paired with a creative media team also would have a better chance...but of course it would require a much bigger budget.
EA needs to learn from Tech...Tech is a bunch of STEM people like EA...but Tech has a backroom of STEM talent making stuff, and a frontroom of arts & humanities creatives communicating that stuff to the world. EA on the other hand only has a backroom of STEM people and no frontroom at all, leaving massive value on a non-table that never gets communicated to the world it was for. Philanthropic funding artificially enables EA to perpetuate this misunderstanding of how the world works, Tech lives in the real world.
In the USA anybody with center leaning tendencies thinks of "socialism" as all the bad things that happened under communism, but democratic socialism is more palatable since it has private property and voting. I understand this is partly a problem of the right using those words to instill fear based on remaining cold war feelings, but still the challenge here is to educate to show how democratic socialists governments are not Soviet style communists. I personally prefer the hybrid of democratic and some capitalistic aspects being mixed in. I don't think communism can ever work based on the massive experiment we've already had with it that failed. If China is doing well it's clearly because of the capitalism mixed in.
If I were to evangelize for socialism within EA I would definitely stay on using "democratic socialist" language, or it'll get slammed harder. And I'd educate on the private property and voting aspects.
I'd personally like to see EA be less Utilitarian and be able to meet more in the middle with social movement interventions rather than just individuals...that might help democratic socialism to more accept EA also, and for EA to accept 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.