Our History

Since 2000, Spirit in Action has supported deep and lasting social change. We work nationally and regionally with grassroots groups, social justice organizations and philanthropic institutions.

Spirit in Action’s Founder, Linda Stout, began her career organizing low-income people in North Carolina through the Piedmont Peace Project (PPP). She realized that, although they were successful on a local level, systemic change required working at a bigger scale.

In 1999, while serving as the Executive Director of the Peace Development Fund, Linda learned through a national listening project that the people most engaged in social change work were enormously frustrated. Activists brought together around similar issues constantly split over strategy or tactics. Social justice organizations, while confronting injustice in society at large, often struggled with internal power imbalances based on race, class, gender, sexuality and age.  These activists wanted, and needed, to understand how to work together more closely and authentically.

Linda believed we could create different spaces and processes to support these activists and groups.  She founded Spirit in Action to envision and implement ways to change the way we do change.