About Beyond the Choir

To join the conversation (i.e. to comment on other people's posts, and to start posting your own "User Diaries"), just create an account in the User Menu box to the right.

Thinking beyond the choir is about not settling for the usual suspects. To make the kinds of progressive changes we imagine, we need the involvement of millions more people. Going beyond the choir is about engaging and activating potential energy — not just working with the forces already in motion. When only five or six folks show up to a meeting, we see a lot more than those five or six individuals; we see their places of work, their places of worship, their friends, their families, their social networks — all as potential energy.

The purpose and hope of Beyond the Choir is to contribute to a broader strategic conversation that examines constraints and barriers to progressive social change, that looks for openings, and that notices and celebrates breakthroughs.

How to post (and what to post)

There are three ways to join the conversation: user diaries, quick hits, and comments. To do any of these three things, you first have to set up an account (User Menu box in the upper right corner).

Comments: pretty straightforward. If you read an article that you have thoughts about, you can post a comment at the bottom of the article. You can also post a comment after another person's comment. The option to post a comment will only appear when you are logged in.

Quick Hits: A "quick hit" is a short blurb you write that briefly describes and links to a pertinent article that you've spotted somewhere else (on another site).

User Diaries: A user diary is an article that you write and post. We recommend not actually composing the article online (you might lose it!), but rather copying and pasting it into the fields. What kinds of articles should you post as user diaries? Well, there's no hard and fast rule, but the general thread here is more how-to (as advice or as a genuine question) than news and views. There are lots of great sites that provide breaking updates and editorials on important progressive issues. We're less about pointing out what the government or corporations should do, and more about strategizing about how we, as progressive change agents, are going to make them do it.

our team

The Beyond the Choir team doesn't just write about social change. We're also all organizers and trainers. Every year we partner with a few grassroots social change organizations to support their campaigns (e.g. through tailored strategy and skills training workshops, or through direct campaign support like message development). To inquire about Beyond the Choir campaign support, email info[at]beyondthechoir[dot]org.