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RTT’s understanding of change is grounded in research that demonstrates that tipping point change is often less about mass participation than catalyzing the right people with the right tools—building will and skill within groups; forging relationships across groups; and reaching wider audiences through storytelling and narrative change.
TV shows, news, and other media have unique potential to reshape our perceptions of our societal counterparts and collective imagination at scale. From award-winning journalists to TV showrunners and writers on popular shows such as Grey’s Anatomy, Handmaid’s Tale, and Star Wars, we provide training and consultation to the people who shape our stories, supporting them to replace animosity, caricature, and contempt with recognition, curiosity, and connection across lines of difference.
Studies show that in many populations, faith leaders are among the most trusted leaders in America today. We support faith leaders and communities to become exemplars of the productive deliberation that our democracy needs. We partner with an exceptional diversity of national and regional denominational bodies and faith-based convening institutions to disseminate bridge-building mindsets and tools, from conservative evangelical to historic Black church, mainline Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish communities.
The Israel-Gaza War intensified existing fault-lines in higher education and caused many campuses to boil over with toxic conflict, including an alarming surge in antisemitism, anti-Muslim bias, and hate. We equip leaders on campus (deans, DEI directors, chaplains, etc.) to defuse tensions, strengthen relationships and trust across lines of difference, teach and spread bridge-building skills, and restore universities to their core mission of open inquiry and investigation of disparate ideas.
Philanthropic leaders are charged with addressing our most pressing, shared challenges in a time when our nation, communities, and philanthropy itself are incredibly divided and collaboration across differences feels nearly impossible. We build capacity in the philanthropic sector to explore disagreements while strengthening relationships, trust, learning and collaboration, harnessing the potential of philanthropists to model and catalyze bridging differences and counteracting toxic conflict.
Leading conflict transformation scholar John Paul Lederach highlights the significance of “critical yeast”—the power of a small number of unlikely partners coming together—over “critical mass” in transforming intractable conflict. He also highlights the importance of reaching norm-shapers who hold the social capital and trust to influence their own constituencies. Sociologist Damon Centola—who studies the spread of behavior and ideas—similarly emphasizes that achieving large-scale social change and “social contagion” requires activating influencers within communities, rather than simply expanding reach.
RTT’s strategies are grounded in this research on how social change occurs, empowering and equipping multipliers to actualize healthy engagement across differences within their spheres of influence.
