Hackathon Registration is Now Closed

Why?

We define pluralism as both a worldview and practice that honors every person's dignity, embraces the strength found in our differences, and encourages the negotiation required to solve shared problems. Today, there are a variety of actors working to advance pluralism - from creating spaces that allow people to build relationships across differences, fostering ways for us to work together and engage in collective problem-solving, and challenging dehumanizing language and behavior. Yet, our movement struggles to reach national-level culture change due to a need to innovate and identify 'what works' in different settings and limited resources to spread these insights and practices. Cultivating a pluralism ecosystem is a strategic response to these challenges and focuses on bringing together often disconnected or disparate initiatives and leaders who are contributing to a culture of pluralism across America.  

What to expect

Building on the insights from the 2023 Research to Impact Convening, this Ecosystem Hackathon will focus on four critical areas that were identified as essential for advancing the pluralism ecosystem: 

1. Organizing and Disseminating the Evidence Base
2. Building Stronger Partnerships Between Practitioners and Researchers
3. Raising Awareness of Pluralism's Importance and Meaning
4. Enhancing Collaboration around Measurement and Evaluation

As a participant, you will have the opportunity to join a working group focused on one of these four barriers, each comprising a diverse mix of researchers, practitioners, communicators, and funders. Over the course of a full day, your group will engage in a series of structured brainstorms and design thinking exercises followed by larger working-group discussions aimed at identifying gaps and opportunities, and generating innovative infrastructure solutions - shared vocabulary, connectivity, platforms, resources, toolkits, and programs, etc. - needed to strengthen the pluralism ecosystem and drive change at scale. By the end of the event, our hope is that you have identified tangible ideas that you are excited about and capable of pursuing post-event. 

Following the hackathon, participants will be invited to form project teams and apply for a planning grant from New Pluralists that if selected, will provide project teams with additional time to refine, prototype, and build a sustainable plan around their concept. 

Additional Benefits

Given that this is a work session and has a larger time commitment, below are the additional benefits for Ecosystem Hackathon attendees:

• Ecosystem Hackathon participants will have their hotel covered for the duration of the event (3 days, 2 nights). If selected to participate, the Pluralism in Action planning team will reach out to coordinate booking your accommodations in late October.
• Access to funding opportunity post-Ecosystem Hackathon. Funding criteria, application process, and timelines will be shared with participants before the event.
• Saturday breakfast and lunch.

As a Hackathon participant, you will join one of the following four working groups:

1. Organizing the evidence base: This working group will explore how to better collect, synthesize, organize, and disseminate the broad base of research that speaks to the goals of pluralism, encompassing research on intergroup relationships, political polarization, the psychology of prejudice, conflict resolution & reconciliation, and beyond. Research on pluralism has the potential to inform and strengthen the work of practitioners, communicators, and funders. But you can’t use research that you don’t know about or can’t access. Participants will identify the areas of research that fall under the broad umbrella of “pluralism,” consider how to organize these areas of research conceptually, and devise strategies for making key research findings easier to access and understand, particularly for people who want to apply the research to their work teaching, fostering, communicating, or funding pluralism. This working group’s ideas for “organizing the evidence base” will likely involve a mix of editorial, technological, and marketing solutions.

2. Raising awareness of pluralism’s meaning and importance of pluralism:  This working group will explore innovative strategies to enhance awareness and understanding of pluralism, ensuring its relevance across diverse sectors. Our mission to foster a more pluralistic America faces challenges if pluralism remains obscure or is seen as exclusive to one political party, elites, or select fields and academic disciplines. To amplify our impact, we need to broaden the tent of individuals and organizations who recognize themselves as part of this movement. Participants will identify key audiences to integrate into the movement, consider strategies and messages that resonate across various fields and topical concerns, and identify the communications infrastructure needed to support these efforts. This working group’s ideas for “raising awareness” will likely involve a mix of narrative change, audience and message testing, and creative communications and marketing solutions.

3. Best practices for research-practitioner partnerships: This working group will explore innovative strategies to create a dynamic, two-way collaboration between researchers and practitioners to advance pluralism in the U.S. Researchers offer evidence-based insights into key issues like polarization and intergroup relations, while practitioners bring critical real-world experiences that test and contextualize these findings. However, both sides face challenges—such as differing priorities, communication gaps, and difficulties in translating research into practical strategies or surfacing new areas for study. This work stream will explore how to overcome these barriers by fostering partnerships that allow research to directly inform practice, while also ensuring that practitioners’ on-the-ground insights shape future research questions and priorities. By strengthening these connections, we hope to create a more effective ecosystem where research and practice together can drive lasting change. This working group’s approach to identifying 'best practices' will likely include a range of solutions aimed at building the necessary infrastructure—systems, tools, relationships, and shared vocabulary—to enable researchers to understand what works in practice and identify new areas for inquiry, while providing practitioners with evidence-based, actionable insights. 

4. Facilitating greater collaboration around measurement and evaluation: This working group will explore strategies to refine the ecosystem’s ability to better understand what is and isn’t working. The group's focus can be divided into three broad areas. First, researchers who want to test theories outside of their lab and evaluate real world impact and practitioners who want to rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of their work. How can we support these compatible needs? Second, in the ecosystem of people doing research and practice on pluralism, we need to achieve a shared vision of what core constructs we are all unified around understanding (research) and shaping (through practice). Third, there is a need to establish and disseminate the best standards and practices for thinking about and using measurement to evaluate impact. This working group will help explore these three broad categories and determine what interventions could create breakthroughs for the wider ecosystem.

Is the Hackathon for you? 

Are you ready to help shape the future of the pluralism ecosystem? If you're passionate about collaboration, innovation, and driving real-world impact, read on to see if the 2025 Pluralism in Action Hackathon is the perfect fit for you!

- Passion: You are deeply committed to strengthening the pluralism ecosystem. You care about building the infrastructure, shared purpose, and connections needed to enhance the effectiveness of researchers, practitioners, communicators, and funders working across this field.

- Expertise: You bring relevant experience and expertise that can contribute to problem-solving and advancing the work in one of the four focus areas. Your skills and knowledge will help drive meaningful solutions.

- Capacity: You are ready to fully engage. This includes committing to:

• One pre-event call in December 2024
• Attending the Thursday and Friday convening and full-day hackathon on Saturday, February 1st.
• You are enthusiastic about the possibility of working on a collaborative proposal after the event to advance one or more of these working groups.  

Hackathon Registration is Now Closed