Braver Angels’ signature approach to scaling up “the BA experience” is to train and support volunteers to produce events from a catalog of collaboratively-maintained workshop, debate, and discussion formats. Braver Angels Technology Lab collaborates with our event volunteer corps to develop systems that allow for document management, training, participant management, planning, and logistics required for self-organizing teams of volunteers to succeed in staging high impact, depolarizing experiences in local communities across the US. This work leverages custom web applications, cloud automation, 3rd party platform integrations, and databases to achieve a unique fit with the needs of Braver Angels that cannot be readily accomplished with any single pre-existing product.

A scaled, decentralized approach to program delivery creates unique challenges for evaluating program effectiveness. Braver Angels event volunteers need real-time participant feedback on their effectiveness, and our program design teams must work closely with a team of researchers to design valid survey instruments and analysis to quantify the depolarization effects of the experiences we create. This body of work involves implementation of online survey platforms, API integrations, data pipeline and data warehouse technologies, and online dashboard-building environments to allow each Braver Angels event team to gain live insights while also building large, consistent data sets capable of supporting academic research to advance the field of depolarization studies.

Braver Angels supports the formation of local Alliances, which in-turn provide the volunteer leadership needed to anchor and grow our impact within local communities. Alliances are supported by State and Regional levels of national volunteer leadership. Each level within this hierarchy has data, productivity, and communications needs, as well as the need for tech capacity development. This work entails the integration of contact relations management (CRM) tools, mass-emailing systems, and cloud collaboration platforms — as well as the onboarding, training, and support — to ensure that each Braver Angels field unit can be effective in its work.

Building a successful political depolarization movement means winning hearts and minds at the scale of the country. Braver Angels’ 10X Growth Initiative leads work on data-driven efforts to boost participant engagement and ensure our membership reflects the political diversity of America, and to better understand how we convert citizens from followers to ambassadors and volunteers. These projects then drive innovation from systems and tools to marketing and communications.