Bringing People Together in Divisive Climates with David McNair of The ONE Campaign

This week, your host, Matt Barnes, sat down with David McNair, Executive Director for Global Policy at The ONE Campaign, to explore how the nonprofit brings people together in the current divisive political climate.

Who is The ONE Campaign?

The ONE Campaign is an international, non-partisan, nonprofit, advocacy, and campaigning organization fighting extreme poverty and preventable disease by speaking up about these injustices. They believe in bringing people together to amplify their voices and hold the people in charge accountable.

They were founded in 2004 by Bono and other activists as part of their determination to fight for a fairer world.

Bringing People Together

ONE has always focused on bringing people from diverse backgrounds together to agree on one core principle they care about.

As politics has become more divisive over the last decade, this has become more difficult, and so they have had to change their approach. It is now far more targeted. They begin by identifying critical decisions and figuring out who the decision-makers are. Then, they deploy their resources towards them. This is very different from their previous high-profile campaign efforts.

“In the past where we'd have massive brands, big concerts, all that kind of thing, we're just much more targeted. It might be the right phone call to the right person at the right moment that shifts the dial on that key decision.”

The divisive landscape can somewhat be seen as a signal that unity is needed now more than ever. Thus, ONE is looking into ways to identify the core issues that motivate people and channel them into political strategies. Often, even the most diverse groups care passionately about the same things.

“There is lots of really interesting work happening in the civic tech space where they're basically different communities that would be seen as kind of polarizing. If you call them on what they care about, often they care about the same things.”

They are further exploring the opportunities posed by better mobilizing the middle both economically and politically. Often, these people are about core issues like climate change but feel they do not trust those in power to work on them. ONE is trying to make it clear that change doesn’t need to be on a global level, as campaigning locally often makes a critical difference.

Want more on ONE’s approach to unifying people? 

Listen to this episode of the Nonprofit Connect podcast to hear the rest of David’s insights into the organization!