FCNL EDUCATION FUND

The FCNL Education Fund’s education, outreach, and community building programs are designed to sustain, strengthen, and grow our nationwide network of citizen advocates. Active engagement in civic life is foundational to Quaker faith and practice, as is the commitment to relationship-building and mutual respect. We seek to help individuals and communities across the country (regardless of political, ideological, or spiritual holdings) to recognize their power and the crucial role they play in our democracy by sharing their voices, using media to reinforce their messages, and building and maintaining constructive relationships with policymakers. The FCNL Education Fund places a particular emphasis on diversity and young adult training to lift more voices that are needed to carry on this important work.

Young Adult Training: One of the distinguishing marks of our advocacy is that we are in it for the long game. The power and passion of young adults is what will carry our work for peace and equity forward to the future. Our extensive Young Adult Program includes:
• The Advocacy Corps is a 9 month-long program that pays young adults a stipend to organize in their local communities. Advocacy Corps organizers connect activists and leaders with their members of Congress to affect big, long-term change. During the course of this program, participants learn critical organizing skills and put them into practice with hands-on leadership experience.
• Spring Lobby Weekend – A yearly event in Washington, DC for hundreds of students, recent graduates, and other young adults that provides intensive advocacy training and face-to-face advocacy visits with their congressional representatives.
• Young Fellows – The Young Fellows program is full-time for 11 months and pays a salary at the Washington, DC living wage standard with benefits. Fellows work closely with FCNL lobbyists and other senior staff, gaining first-hand knowledge of advocacy, research, communications, and outreach.

Coalition Building: As a prominent voice and trusted resource in the faith-based advocacy community known for our policy expertise and ability to work with policymakers across the political aisle, the FCNL Education Fund serves as the connective tissue between federal decisionmakers and coalition partners. These partners are fellow advocacy and direct service organizations (secular and faith-based), including Circle of Protection and the Washington Interfaith Staff Community, two prominent coalitions that comprise national religious bodies and organizations representing more than 100 million Americans of diverse faiths. We also work within the (secular) Coalition for Human Needs, an alliance of 100 national organizations working to address the interconnected needs of those experiencing poverty.

Quaker Engagement: The Quaker community in the U.S. is known for its historic commitment to peace and social justice. Because there is no centralized Quaker leadership, Friends’ advocacy works locally and regionally through hundreds of Quaker meetings and churches. The FCNL Education Fund acts as a national umbrella to harness and engage the power of this community.

Strategic Advocacy: The FCNL Education Fund provides the training future advocates need to take the next step to partner with our sister organization (Friends Committee on National Legislation) to meet directly with lawmakers. To build their advocacy skills and deepen their civic engagement, we provide experiential programming grounded in storytelling, active listening, respect, and community. Constituents are trained in nonpartisan advocacy; in-depth policy analysis; leveraging media as an advocacy tool; personalizing abstract policy decisions; and mobilizing community solidarity.

Our multi-faceted approach draws on the expertise of our staff in Washington, DC, the commitment and passion of people around the country in our advocacy network, and the relationships we cultivate with executive branch officials and community leaders.

We work with coalitions, community leaders, and constituents to advocate for peace, justice, and a sustainable planet. Our staff and volunteers help thousands of people find the courage, the resilience, and the mutual support to engage with members of Congress even in cases where they don’t agree.

Building community and advocacy from a place of faith is about remaining grounded and not being riled or thrown off track by the response of the government official. It is not about twisting the facts or about elaborate arguments. Engaging in this work means presenting accurate research as fully as possible to give the public as well as public officials access to information not readily available to them otherwise. It is not about promoting self-interest but about advancing government policy to move toward a more powerful, just and whole world.

Accomplishments:
Young Adult Programming:
We hosted our first-ever hybrid Spring Lobby Weekend in March 2022, with 403 attending in-person and 70 people attending programming virtually. Young Adults from 40 states learned from experts and each other and received training to advocate for citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Our attendee rate for those identifying as Latinx rose from 8% to 29%. Advocacy Corps organizers have continued to bring members of their communities around the country together to advocate for the Environmental Justice for All Act. One organizer has already reached their goal of bringing in 30 people, four organizers have brought in over 20 people, and three other organizers have brought in 15 or more people. Our paid Summer Internships reverted back to in-person programming, allowing much more face-to-face interaction with full-time staff.

Quaker Engagement:
We re-launched our Visiting Friends Program through which Quakers who work closely with the FCNL Education Fund visit Friends communities across the country to bring them closer to our work. There is a long Quaker tradition of “intervisitation” which the Covid pandemic severely impacted but, at the same time, opened the door to the opportunity of virtual visits.

Coalition-Building:
FCNL Education Fund continued to serve as the connective tissue between federal decision-makers and coalition partners. With our faith-based partners we worked to ensure that Afghans arriving in the United States on Humanitarian Parole have access to the same resettlement services traditionally reserved for refugees resettling through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program—including medical and housing assistance, English-language classes, and job training. By focusing our efforts on uplifting humane immigration policies that welcome refugees with dignity, we are helping to improve U.S. welcoming culture. We look forward to our continued work with Afghan, Haitian, and Ukrainian populations who are seeking safety in the United States, as well as those resettling through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

Strategic Advocacy:
The Covid pandemic clearly exposed the huge holes in our social safety net, creating a unique opportunity to highlight some of the little-known but long-lived FCNL Education Fund priorities. Topping this list is the permanent expansion of the federal Child Tax Credit, a critical federal-level program that proven to significantly reduce childhood poverty in the U.S. Capitalizing on the moment, we focused our most recent Annual Meeting on training our constituents to become champions in their communities for the CTC. More than 800 attendees participated in deep dive workshops and advocacy skills training on this important issue.

What’s next: The FCNL Education Fund assumed oversight of Friends Place on Capitol Hill, a Washington, DC gathering place created by Quakers in 1966. We will offer programs and training on civic engagement for young adults.