Why fund our work?
We are looking to raise $3,000, spilt roughly equally between Arts for America and Let's Be SVL.
For Arts for America, funds are for the following:
- Staff time to run the program, including outreach, choosing participants, and training and guiding the students during the workshop
- Stipends for interns to make social media content on the @ArtsforAmerica_ Instagram handle to attract these participants to the workshop, and promote their artistic content they develop throughout the workshop
- Stipends to workshop participants
- Costs associated with displaying final content in a public forum (e.g., university setting, library).
For Let's Be SVL, funds are for the following:
- Staff time to coordinate with the student leader on Vanderbilt's campus, and to seek opportunities to expand efforts beyond Vanderbilt
- Stipend for the student leader at Vanderbilt, and ideally leaders on other campuses going forward
- Printing and other costs to distribute materials with messaging on campus.
How do we measure success?
Most relevant to Arts for America, More Like US is working with Harvard University and UMass Amherst to test political social media videos.
This involves testing both the factors that make some more viral than others, and the extent to which watching the videos affect variables important to the political environment. We derive questions from the Strengthening Democracy Challenge led by Stanford, which tested interventions of eight minutes or less on factors including anti-democratic attitudes, support for political violence, and partisan animosity.
For Let's Be SVL, the student leader is working with Vanderbilt professors on an evaluation program for the effort. - Additionally, we are working with other professors to test effectiveness. For our lesson plan about Perception Gaps that is also highly relevant for college students, More Like US is working with the Civic Education Research Lab at Georgetown University. To test the impacts of integrating data from Similarity Hub into news articles, we are working with a professor at the University of Florida.
Where do we work?
We are a national organization, but efforts such as Let's Be SVL at Vanderbilt are conducted in the localized setting of a college campus.
Why are we featured in Strengthening Civic Spaces and Trusted Information and Institutions? Tell me more!
Strengthening Civic Spaces: We work on college campuses. While we don't directly create opportunities for dialogue, we motivate it. Dialogue increases when people realize that those across the political spectrum are better in many ways, which reduces anxiety about having conversations.
Trusted Information and Institutions: We share data about Perception Gaps and commonalities, such as with Similarity Hub (similarityhub.org) that we've built with AllSides.
Follow Us On Social Media
Are you still building your Civic Exchange Portfolio?
Head back to the main page and check out some of the other incredible organizations and initiatives working to make the civic health ecosystem a vibrant and engaging place! Click the photo below to head back and keep engaging!
