How We Work
This entity applies the structure of a nonprofit with a mission-driven purpose to the pursuit of projects, programs, and resources that address a domain of human connection, with the ability to grow, launch, or sunset any one of them without requiring the whole entity to be rebuilt. Failure is a part of research in all its forms. This research does not need to be destructive, but complementary, conversational, and a tool for those who want to wield it with their own words as descriptors.
Structurally, this is being built as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, with governance designed from the start around stewardship instead of complete compliance. We are designing our own metrics alongside protecting our own mission of reimagining human connection. This requires structural accountability to the communities this work serves — reserved governance seats, advisory input, and opportunity in the domains we address, alongside the clinical, legal, and organizational expertise required for board development.
In practice, this works as a logic model:
The Logic Model — click a stage
In practice, using a logic model, this looks simple: research, practice, lived expertise, and creative work are inputs that feed programming, member projects, and policy work across the domains above (activities). Those activities produce published research, member-built projects, running community programs, and policy recommendations as outputs — though in reality, the outputs are endless. Over time, the goal is measurable movement in how affirmingly the institutions, discourse, and individuals with the biggest stake treat human connection: in policy, in work shaped, and in people no longer having to hide how they connect (outcomes).
A First Piece Already Built: A Modern-Day Needs Assessment
One piece of this infrastructure already exists: a community and knowledge-sharing platform with chat-based forums organized around the subdomains of human connection, built for professionals, researchers, and those speaking the language in their own way to share materials and talk across topics. It is already developed and currently being stress-tested, entirely without outside funding. It is designed to attach directly to the back end of the website once the mission, vision, and values in this memorandum are solidified, and it will likely be the first concrete program this entity offers as proof the model works, before a dollar of outside funding is asked.