Meeting the Moment
Across the country, nonprofits are doing powerful work to connect people and strengthen communities. Empower Fund’s 2026 Fellowship Program will help them to go even further by adding new tools and approaches to their outreach.
Empower Fund is partnering with select organizations to support a small cohort of staff from each to embed within Empower Fund’s programs for six months of hands-on learning. Fellows will learn how to integrate friend-to-friend and digital organizing strategies into their own models in order to better expand the reach and strengthen the depth of their organization’s community relationships.
Our Approach
Empower Fund prioritizes cultural competency, respect and crucially relevance. Mobilizers are trained not only in relational outreach but also in media literacy, how to detect misinformation and active listening skills. This ensures that conversations are both impactful, factually accurate and grounded in empathy.
Social media and digital platforms also play a vital role in our strategy. Empower Fund provides our mobilizers with training and tools to generate organic content tailored to their communities. Whether through short videos, infographics, or personal stories, our digital outreach complements in-person interactions and helps amplify voices often excluded from mainstream narratives.
At Empower Fund, we are not just an implementer of programs—we are also a learning organization. We invest in rigorous research to understand the evolving dynamics of civic engagement, particularly among historically marginalized populations. This includes qualitative and quantitative analysis of what motivates participation, where gaps in access persist, and how to best support communities in overcoming systemic barriers.
We use a community-first research model, meaning our insights are driven by those most affected. Community Mobilizers collect lived-experience data through conversations and surveys, providing us with actionable intelligence that reflects real-world perspectives.
In an era where disinformation undermines public trust and community cohesion, Empower Fund is also leading the charge in proactive response strategies. Our disinformation resilience program trains trusted messengers to identify, correct, and replace false narratives with clear, credible, and affirming information. These efforts are grounded in best practices from public health and community development sectors.
