About us

Los Angeles-area agency and nonprofit leaders take part in a sample dialogue as part of an Everyday Democracy orientation in 2007.

Everyday Democracy (formerly the Study Circles Resource Center) is a national organization that helps local communities find ways for all kinds of people to think, talk and work together to solve problems. We work with neighborhoods, cities and towns, regions, and states, helping them pay particular attention to how racism and ethnic differences affect the problems they address.

Everyday Democracy was created as the Study Circles Resource Center in 1989 by The Paul J. Aicher Foundation, a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. Since 1989, we have worked with more than 550 communities across the United States on many different public issues.

How our work has grown

In the early years, we focused on developing a better kind of public dialogue, drawing on the ways people talk in their everyday lives. Then, we championed the idea that public talk is for everyone, and helped communities organize to bring all kinds of people into the conversation. Now we’re helping people connect public dialogue to real solutions.

Our relationship to The Paul J. Aicher Foundation

The Paul J. Aicher Foundation’s modest endowment supports the bulk of our work. In addition, we raise part of our operating funds from other foundations to support innovation and long-term work at the community level.