UPDATE: Shift the Country is launching “Fierce Community” as our main focus in summer 2025. Changes to domains and naming are underway. We’ll start fierce community events online (on zoom) in early summer like the zooms in early 2025 but now with more focus. Some of the content on this site will also change.
Shift the Country is a nonprofit promoting activities that increase connection, grow community, build resilience, & empower people to work through problems together in a time of instability. It’s community and civic engagement for an era of disruption and change.
We can help one another. We can work toward a more equitable, just, sustainable, resilient, and caring country. We can hold on to democracy.
This nonprofit’s unique approach is not like anything else out there. In a time of unprecedented risk, we need unconventional approaches. Sign up here —
Get Started
Get going using Shift the Country’s 10 Things for engagement, and the guide and idea lists. Anyone and any group can do this.
The guide and idea lists are to help people and groups do stuff. Anyone can use these materials with proper citation/credit.
Find all our stuff on Linktree, or on this page.
More Shift You Can Do
The more these ideas spread both in-real-life (IRL) and online.… the more shift will happen.
Subscribe to this Substack — for news, for announcements, for sanity, for grounding, & for ideas for navigating political instability, climate change, increased gun violence, and other fast-changing risks.
Get support. Invite Shift the Country to do free speaking, coaching, empowerment, & training online to help your group drive civic engagement & public pressure or to navigate disruption.
Invite Shift the Country to help you or your group with brainstorming, problem-solving, getting creative, building connections, or growing coalitions.
If you know of people or groups who can do neat things with the ideas here, please help them learn about it or to get in touch.
Share our Substack posts here with friends, family, relatives, online, & in-real-life (IRL) groups you’re in who can help get this shift going.
Expand this work by actively talking about it, by recruiting others, by sharing posts, by engaging with it on social media, by connecting this nonprofit with coalitions/groups/influencers, or by connecting this work to potential funders.
Contact Us
Schedule a call to explore options, to chat about ideas, to set up speaking engagements, or to set up coaching for your group.
Call (202) 556-0317.
Email team@shiftthecountry.com.
The Socials
Follow Shift the Country on Facebook.
Join the Facebook Group: Shift the Country – Community Rising (a community space for teamwork, connection, & community to help grow this work).
Follow the founder on Substack “Notes” (Notes is a social media platform on Substack).
Follow Shift the Country on LinkedIn.
Bluesky account coming ASAP!
This Work Needs Money!
The scale, scope, impact, and reach here depend on people willing to invest in this unique work (see below).
Donate here:
Donate via ActBlue.
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Get a paid subscription to this Shift the Country Substack. This publication is FREE. Paid subscriptions help support this nonprofit’s activities.
Donate by mail, payable to: Shift the Country, PO Box 1093, Ames, Iowa 50014
Donations are not tax-deductible. Any person, organization, or business can contribute any amount. Shift the Country is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit. All of our funding so far comes from individual small donors. Here's what your funding supports.
Donors considering donations over $5,000 may prefer to send them by mail to the address below; or to reach out to us directly at team@shiftthecountry.com or (202) 556-0317.
If you’ve got leads on larger funders and funding sources, please let us know at team@shiftthecountry.com or (202) 556-0317.
15 Reasons Why This Unique Approach Is Helpful Now
We can collectively inspire civic action & increase public pressure to hold communities together, to navigate instability, & to move the country in a different direction.
We can collectively promote ideas that people & groups can use to drive the public narrative, to coordinate, & to strategize more effectively.
This work can help people & groups to keep Americans engaged, to be more creative with their approaches, & to better solve problems together during this challenging time. People, groups, & communities fare better in challenging times such as now when they work together in creative ways to take on problems. Countries with authoritarian tendencies fare better when the citizenry stay engaged & empowered over the long term in agile and creative ways that evolve as risks evolve.
This work can help us help one another.
This work can help us work toward a more equitable, just, sustainable, resilient, & caring country. We can leverage public pressure to get government, institutions, infrastructure, & our economy to better serve all the people of this multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy in the short- & long-term. We can collectively advocate for humans, human rights, diversity, equity, inclusion, healthcare, autonomy, & freedom.
The 5 Things approach here can help groups & individuals champion the values, vision, & civil society that millions of Americans & thousands of businesses want.
The 5 Things approach here can help to help re-weave the social fabric in a fractured, unstable society with through efforts to grow connection, community, & coalition-building. People & groups can help each other through this time of intensity, acceleration, disruption, & transformation… with resilience, strength, solidarity, ideas, & problem-solving.
This work can help us all do more with our social networks and group action in-real-life (IRL) & online to drive change, to inspire engagement, and to expand our permeation and reach.
This work can help people & groups drive structural change in the midst of unfolding instability — in our communities, in regions, in states, & nationally.
This work can help catalyze large-scale mobilizations & widespread pressure to help shift the long-term direction of the US. We can leverage public pressure to demand or to maintain systems that help us all be able to survive, prosper, flourish, & thrive in this time of great instability. We can empower courage & take creative action to shift the zeitgeist, the conscience, the character, & the reality of this country.
This work can help facilitate a concerted, coordinated effort to grow a coalition of the US demographic majority — an alliance of Democratic, independent, & other voters in the US anchored in shared values we can agree on for the country we intend to live in.
This work can help us co-create a shared vision, agenda, & direction for this country at every level so we can go about building a better future. A huge coalition with a shared agenda is one of the most effective, proven ways for a country to counter a domestic authoritarian tendency.
This work can help stabilize & hold US democracy together. A more stable US also helps maintain a more stable international world order.
This work can help stabilize & hold governments steady at every level in the US so that they better protect & serve all Americans in the face of increasing instability. Functioning democratic governments are critical to protecting a country’s most vulnerable residents who are the most likely to be hurt or further oppressed in the case of instability , disruption, devolution, or governmental collapse.
This work can help us address climate change. We can use the 5 Things to collectively act to mitigate climate change damage at every level & to collectively respond to the increasing frequency & intensity of disasters at every level.
This work can help people maintain their faith in democracy.
More
Shift the Country is a one-of-a-kind 501(c)(4) nonprofit founded in 2022.
[Coming soon… A “Background” page, more on where this shift came from here, and more on what this shift does].
No artificial intelligence (AI) has been used in any Shift the Country Substack material.
