Interfaith America (IA)

The group operates on college campuses around the world by hosting webinars, maintaining campus chapters, and creating online and in-person training modules that focus on religious toleration. ³ IA also provides grant funding for individuals and organizations who have participated in its programs and who agree to disseminate the message to as many people as possible. ⁴ IA has also created the university model activities, including online modules, webinars, trainings, grants, and programs to promote its vision in the health care system, workplaces, and civic life and to shape emerging leaders. ⁵

On December 23, 2020, IA announced that it would begin engaging leaders of faith communities to promote vaccination against COVID-19 by harnessing community trust in religious institutions to allay health concerns about the vaccine and to help in its distribution. ⁶ In July 2020, IA received a $6 million donation from left-of-center billionaire donor MacKenzie Scott and vowed to use the donation to shift the organization’s focus from interfaith activities to left-of-center “racial and economic justice.” ⁷

Activities

Education Initiatives

Interfaith America (IA) hosts online trainings, in-person events, and research projects to promote interfaith dialogue. IA hosts the Building Regular Interfaith Dialogue through Generous Engagement (BRIDGE) program, a publicly accessible series of free internet teaching modules that can be tailored to different audiences through 90-minute workshops. The BRIDGE program is a “train the trainer” model where educators complete the program and are meant to then incorporate it into their teaching, promoting “broader conversations around diversity.” Modules focus on self-reflection, challenging biases related to diverse worldviews, and building skills for discussing personal faith and identity. IA offers one-on-one coaching to facilitate a workshop. ⁸

In 2020, the organization shifted its focus to promote a left-of-center narrative around social justice and race relations. IA launched “We Are Each Other’s,” a series of online learning modules that provide training in interreligious dialogue and encourage young people to engage in left-of-center activism projects, claiming that 2020 revealed the “brokenness of American democracy.” This project was launched at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the widespread movement for left-wing racial activism sparked by the death of George Floyd. ⁹

IA also hosts in-person events, including the annual Interfaith Leadership Summit, a three-day conference designed to encourage undergraduate students and college professors to become leaders in the field of interfaith dialogue. Graduate students may attend but are considered “educators.” ¹⁰

Aside from its conference programs and online modules, IA coordinates research studies on religious tolerance. From 2015 to 2019, IA launched the Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey (IDEALS) research project to track changes in student perceptions of religion based on surveys given to students three times over the course of their college careers. ¹¹ Funding for the IDEALS project was provided in part by left-of-center organizations, including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Julian Graces Foundation, and The John E. Fetzer Institute. ¹²

Other Initiatives

Interfaith America (IA) created the Sacred Journey Fellowship to support civic leaders, organizers, and storytellers who advance their mission. The 2025 to 2027 cohort, supported by Fellowship in Prayer, brings together ten leaders working across sectors to share their projects and insights, which will be featured in Interfaith America Magazine and on social media. ¹³

For the fifth year, Religion News Service and Interfaith America sponsored the Religion Journalism Fellowship, a nine-month program running from September to May that trains early-career journalists on how to cover religion, faith, and civic pluralism. The fellowship provides a $4,200 stipend, two fully paid trips to Chicago to attend the Religion News Association Conference and a writing conference, mentorship, workshops, and editorial training, focusing on religion’s role in individual and public life. ¹⁴

Launched in October 2025, IA created the Religious Inclusion, Skill-building and Engagement (RISE) membership program that can be used either by an individual ($500 annually) or an organization ($5,000 annually) that would like to learn to implement religious pluralism within the workplace. ¹⁵

Media

In 2020, Interfaith America (IA) launched its own magazine, Interfaith America Magazine. ¹⁶ In 2022, the magazine brought on seven left-leaning columnists with backgrounds and knowledge in community activism, advocacy, diversity, equity, inclusion, race relations, religious polarization, and LGBT issues. ¹⁷

IA created its own podcast, Voices of Interfaith America, with rotating hosts, including IA’s founder, Eboo Patel; the organization’s CEO, Adam Nicholas Phillips; and vice president of external affairs Jenan Mohajir. ¹⁸ In 2024, under IA’s Voices of Interfaith America podcast, it launched the “Faith in Elections” podcast series enabling the organization to focus on “free and fair elections.” ¹⁹

In 2024, while partnering with Protect Democracy, a left-of-center litigation and advocacy organization opposed to the policies of then-former President Donald Trump, the organizations created a 36-page “Faith in Elections Playbook,” to be used during the 2024 elections. The Playbook argued that misinformation, violence in elections, low trust in the U.S. elections, and campaigns that were targeted specifically toward “marginalized communities” should encourage left-leaning voters in the 2024 election. The Playbook linked to organizations that support left-of-center ideologies, including Vote Early Day, the movement by a coalition of nonprofits and businesses which encourages voters to use early ballots and wants October 24 to become an official “Vote Early Day” holiday; the League of Women Voters, a group that lobbies and advocates on a number of left-leaning issues; the One America Movement, whose leadership includes a former Democratic Party campaign staffer; and A More Perfect Union, a coalition of left-of-center Jewish advocacy organizations that hoped to mobilize 10,000 American Jewish organizations during the 2024 election cycle. ²⁰

Grantmaking

In addition to its core programming, Interfaith America (IA) provides grants to individuals who participate in its programs. The Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) are campus units created across colleges and universities that support faculty and staff. IA has developed Teaching and Learning Pluralism (TLP) Cohorts that will work with selected groups of CTLs to develop and create projects that promote pluralism in teaching and learning. Participants will receive training, teaching resources, and grants of up to $10,000 to support their work. The 2025 to 2026 institutions chosen to participate in the TLP Cohorts include College of Charleston, Columbia University, Cornell University, Goucher College, and James Madison University. ²¹

IA awards a series of $1,500 grants called Building Interfaith America. Grants may be used by recipients to fund programs, events, or projects that address a social need using the idea of pluralism or that will develop the individual’s leadership skills, but topics should encompass racial equality, environmental protection, or bridgebuilding, while half of the grant may be used as individual compensation. ²²

IA awarded an Interfaith Civic Pluralism Fellowship (ICFP) for October 2025 to June 2026 for senior leaders at faith-based civic institutions to include a $4,000 stipend, convenings, trainings, a travel stipend, and other resources in exchange for collaborating with other fellows on programming focused on social trust, religious liberty, and to implement “pluralistic frameworks and habits with their own organizations.” ²³

The Faith and Health Pipeline grant program, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, enables IA to disseminate religious pluralism into the healthcare system by sponsoring initiatives that promote integration, research, public scholarship, and community initiatives with the goal to “shape the public narrative.” This program allocates yearly $5,000 grants to those who integrate religion into the factors that influence a person’s health and well-being, including course revision, research, the public narrative, and community partnership. Recipient’s proposals are chosen based on an initial blind review, however final selection recipients are prioritized based on diversity, specifically racial and ethnic identities. ²⁴

Funding

Interfaith America (IA) has received funding from prominent left-of-center organizations. Based in Chicago and founded by Muslim sociologist, speaker, educator, and author Eboo Patel, IA (at the time Interfaith Youth Core) received its initial funding in the form of a $35,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, a left-of-center activist and grantmaking organization, in 2002. ²⁵ In 2007, IA (at the time IFYC) received a $50,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation. ²⁶

In 2025, IA received a $300,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to “advance pluralism, decrease polarization, and support our diverse democracy.” ²⁷ On July 28, 2020, IFYC was named as one of MacKenzie Scott’s “116 Organizations Driving Change” and received a  $6 million grant, which, according to Patel, would be used to shift the organization’s focus to “racial and economic justice.” ²⁸ In 2023, IA reported assets of nearly $40 million. ²⁹