2022

YEAR-END REPORT
PROSPECTUS FOR

2023

This document provides an introduction and progress report on ProSocial

World as it begins its third year as an independent nonprofit organization.
PROSOCIAL WORLD 2

Table of
Contents

3 Letter from the Managing Director

4 Board of Directors

5 History, Mission and Vision

7 Our Growth as an Independent Nonprofit

8 Our Unifying Theoretical Framework and Field Approach

9 Building and Communicating the Scientific Foundation

11 Fostering a Worldwide Community of Facilitators

13 Partnership Development and Community Engagement

17 Focal Topic Areas

19 Creating a Governance Structure that Reflects our Own Principles

20 Building Our IT Infrastructure

21 Marketing

22 Financial Sustainability

23 Financial Graphs

25 Conclusion: Working Toward Cultural Catalysis

 3

Welcome
"Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to
direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel
that allows common people to attain uncommon results." – Andrew Carnegie

Last year was a foundation-building year for ProSocial World. We expanded rapidly as an
organization while also simultaneously working to build a solid framework for future growth. We
engaged partners to guide us through a discovery process that helped us better understand the
needs of the community that we serve. We examined our current tools and platforms and created
an IT roadmap that will enable ProSocial to expand and improve the quality and reach of its
offerings in the coming years. Our team went through a strategic initiative to help us align our
vision and organizational purpose. We adopted a circle governance process to help us better
embody the prosocial principles and practices that we offer to groups and organizations.

ProSocial World has also attracted an outstanding team of open-minded open-hearted

professionals with diverse talents who care deeply about our mission and vision. We are fortunate
to be guided by a world-class board of directors with expertise in the areas of health & genetics,
engineering, business, organizational behavior, psychology, evolutionary science, spirituality, and
law. Several of our board members recently co-authored a groundbreaking article in the prestigious
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal on Multilevel cultural evolution.
This article will help raise awareness of the importance of multilevel selection within the scientific
community and also highlight the work of ProSocial World.

ProSocial has trained over 800 facilitators in 35 countries. We currently have active programs in the
areas of health and wellness, schools and youth, spiritual communities, and the business sector.
Many important partnerships are emerging. Last year we were honored to collaborate with the
Buddhist community of Plum Village, France to co-create a retreat on the topic of Spirituality,
Science, and Action. We are also working closely with the Charter for Compassion and working with
cities as part of its compassionate cities initiative.

It’s inspiring to reflect on ProSocial World’s rapid growth. It’s even more
inspiring to know that we have developed an evidence-based playbook
for cooperation. An evolutionary framework that is trainable, scalable, and
that delivers repeatable results. The impact that ProSocial is having in the
world is only possible because of the generous support from foundations
and individual donors, and sponsors. We are deeply grateful to the John
Templeton Foundation and other foundations that have provided grants
to support this work. We are also thankful to our growing community of
individual donors and sponsors that generously support ProSocial World
and its mission.

With deep gratitude,

Jeffrey M Genung
Managing Director
PROSOCIAL WORLD 4

Board of Directors

Guru Madhavan Michele Gelfand Dr. Norman Anderson

Chairman of the Board Professor of Organizational Assistant Vice President
and Treasurer of ProSocial Behavior and Psychology Research & Academic Affairs
World at Stanford University at Florida State University

Rita Colwell Kiran Bali David Sloan Wilson

Professor at the University Member of the British Co-founder and President
of Maryland College Park Empire, Magistrate of ProSocial World
and President of CosmosID

Paul Atkins Jeff Genung

Co-founder, Vice President, Managing Director of
Secretary & Chief Program ProSocial World
Officer of ProSocial World
PROSOCIAL WORLD 5

History, Mission
and Vision
ProSocial World (ProSocial for short) began in 2011 as an initiative of the Evolution
Institute and spun off to become its own nonprofit organization in 2020.

VISION MISSION

To work
together to
A MORE facilitate and
inspire positive
PROSOCIAL cultural change
WORLD using evolutionary
and behavioral
science.

While many organizations have a prosocial mission and vision, our distinct
contribution is to bring modern evolutionary science, including evolution-
informed behavioral science, to bear upon real-world change efforts.

The science behind our approach is very recent and new to most individuals and
organizations working toward positive change. We are therefore positioned to
have a major impact on cultural evolution in multiple contexts and at multiple
scales.
PROSOCIAL WORLD 6

Through a process of
humble inquiry and
practical application
of both inner and
outer work,

ProSocial helps foster

collaboration within and
between groups at
multiple scales.
 PROSOCIAL WORLD 7

Our Growth as an
Independent Nonprofit
ProSocial’s growth during its short history has been
spectacular. As we begin our third year, we have:

An annual
budget of
approximately

1.1 m
NUMEROUS
14
grant-funded projects,
including a major grant
from the John Templeton
Foundation to develop our
full-time and “community-based field
four part-time site” approach.
team
A facilitator
members [1]
training program
that has trained over

800
facilitators from
35 nations.
COMMUNICATION
STRATEGY
for increasing
worldwide literacy
in evolutionary
science.

A rapidly
developing
EXPANDING SCIENTIFIC
ECOSYSTEM RESEARCH
of partnering PROGRAM
organizations
and social
networks.

[1] This includes five full-time employees, one part time employee, one full-time non-compensated executive, seven
full-time contractors, and three part time contractors.
 PROSOCIAL WORLD 8

Our Unifying Theoretical

Framework and Field Approach
Darwin’s theory of evolution has proven its explanatory scope for the biological
sciences but was restricted to the study of genetic evolution for most of the 20th
century.

What’s new is the expansion of evolutionary
thinking to include human cultural evolution
and all other processes that combine the triad
of variation, selection, and replication. With this
expansion, evolutionary science becomes
relevant to all positive change efforts, no matter
what the scale or context. This is a tremendous
conceptual unification, compared to the
currently fragmented nature of academic
knowledge and practical applications relevant
to positive change.[1]
This is what ProSocial co-founder and president
David Sloan Wilson calls “completing the
Darwinian Revolution” in his book This View of
Life[2] (TVOL). Advancing basic scientific
knowledge and increasing worldwide literacy in
evolutionary science are two key objectives of
ProSocial.
This unifying theoretical framework is applied
to real-world change efforts in Prosocial: Using
Evolutionary Science to Build Productive,
Equitable, and Collaborative Groups, by
ProSocial co-founder and vice president Paul
Atkins, Wilson, and Steven C. Hayes. Catalyzing
positive change is a third key objective of
ProSocial.
These objectives are combined and positively
reinforce each other by working with people in
the context of their everyday lives. This is the
counterpart of field research in evolutionary
biology, which is why we call it our
community-based field site approach, or field
approach for short. Our research is highly
participatory—“done with,” rather than “done
to” our partners. Working together, we can ask
the “big questions” about human cultural
evolution while simultaneously aligning the
forces of cultural evolution with our valued
goals.

[1] We are aware that practical applications of evolution in the past had a dark side, in part because they were
highly gene-centric (e.g., eugenics). A special issue of This View of Life titled “Truth and Reconciliation for Social
Darwinism” covers this topic, providing an example of how we are improving scientific literacy. A recent ProSocial
seminar by Steven C Hayes also covers this topic.
[2] The phrase “this view of life” is based on the final passage of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, where he wrote
“There is grandeur in this view of life”.
 BUILDING AND
COMMUNICATING
THE SCIENTIFIC
FOUNDATION
 PROSOCIAL WORLD 10

Building and Communicating the

Scientific Foundation
The scientific foundation that we are building is In addition to generating scientific research,
described in a major 2023 article published in we also have a well-developed communication
the Proceedings of the National Academy of strategy called the Science to Narrative Chain.
Sciences (PNAS) titled “Multilevel Cultural This strategy notes that science is necessary
Evolution: From New Theory to Practical but not sufficient to solve the problems of
Applications.” The authors include five modern existence. There must also be
members of ProSocial’s board—David Sloan compelling narratives reaching mass
Wilson, Guru Madhavan, Michele Gelfand, Paul audiences and material providing
Atkins, and Rita Colwell—along with Steven C. intermediate depth so that anyone can learn
Hayes, who has been closely associated with more no matter where they start out on the
ProSocial from its inception. This article chain.
illustrates the caliber of our board members
and scientific associates[1]--and the degree to
which they are engaged in developing the
organization. It also illustrates our capacity to
publish in the top academic journals, in
addition to top applied journals such as the
Journal for Contextual Behavioral Science.[2]

Our JTF grant has enabled us to hire a full-time

Research Director, Beth Hawkins, along with
several other scientific staff positions. This
capacity puts us in a position to become known
ProSocial’s online magazine, This View of Life,
as a worldwide hub for cultural evolutionary
edited by evolutionary anthropologist and
science, much like the Santa Fe Institute’s focus
historian Eric Michael Johnson, is designed as
as a worldwide hub for complex systems
a link close to the science end of the chain,
science.
with the standards of an academic journal but
reaching much larger audiences. The
advantages of having our own online
magazine are huge.

[1] Rita and Michele are members of the National Academy of Sciences. Guru is Senior Scholar and Director of
Programs at the National Academy of Engineering. Steve is one of the founders of Acceptance and Commitment
Therapy/Training and one of the most widely cited clinical psychologists in the world.
[2] This JCBS article titled “Report of the ACBS Task Force on the Strategies and Tactics of Contextual Behavioral
Science Research” shows how much integration with evolutionary science has already taken place.
 PROSOCIAL WORLD 11

Fostering a Worldwide
Community of Facilitators
Early in our history, we decided that the best way to work with groups is with the
help of trained facilitators. By now, over 800 facilitators from 35 nations have
received ProSocial training.

Many have strong backgrounds in other group

facilitation and change methods, which they
integrate with their ProSocial training. When
facilitators implement ProSocial in their own
ways, they provide a field of variation to
compare and select.

As an outstanding example of a facilitator-

initiated project, James Lemon is a pediatric
psychologist in Scotland’s National Health
Service (NHS) who became an early adopter of
ProSocial. Jim started implementing ProSocial
in teams of specialists working with gravely ill
children and their parents. These teams
worked so well that ProSocial spread “virally”
to other teams within the NHS with Jim’s help.
[1] Currently, ProSocial has spread to other
branches of the NHS within the UK, including
funding for cohorts of NHS staff to receive
facilitator training.
Our training
methods are Our training methods are continuously evolving
continuously evolving and designed to be taken to scale so that
and designed to be individuals can graduate from participants to
taken to scale so that coaches and from coaches to lead as
individuals can graduate facilitators. To view our current offerings, please
from participants to visit our website. An important objective is to
coaches and from “endogenize” the process so that participants
coaches to lead as are working with coaches and lead facilitators
facilitators. from their own cultures. In addition to charging
for facilitator training, we offer generous
discounts and scholarships, frequently
providing facilitator training for free with the
help of grant-supported projects.

[1] For more, please view the short video titled “ProSocial with the National Health Service” on the ProSocial
website’s project page.
 PROSOCIAL WORLD 12

The facilitators have formed an active An outstanding example is the German

community of practice with participation in a
variety of initiatives in Healthcare, Schools, and
Business. In 2022 we initiated a successful
facilitator “unconference” that will be repeated
annually, along with Case Clinics where
facilitators can gather to share their ideas about
how to use ProSocial in a variety of real-world
contexts.
Our worldwide facilitator community provides
an early indication that ProSocial’s governance
and change methods can be adapted to diverse
cultures and are not restricted to WEIRD
(Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and
Democratic) contexts.[1]
nonprofit organization Commit and Act, which
works in the African nation of Sierra Leone and
has had remarkable success on wicked
problems such as the Ebola epidemic, violence
against women, and female genital mutilation.
[2]
Thanks to our current growth, we now
have two master facilitators on staff,
Paul Atkins and Robert Styles, working
with a full-time training administrator
(Louise Mathieson).

[1] For more on the concept of WEIRD societies, see Joseph Henrich’s book The WEIRDest People in the World: How
the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous.
[2] For more, see https://www.prosocial.world/case-studies/commit-and-act.
PROSOCIAL WORLD

Partnership
Development
and Community
Engagement
There is growing interest in ProSocial
Holomovement

from other organizations and social https://www.holomovement.net/

networks, as shown in this list of

collaborating organizations.
Hylo Community

http://www.hylo.com/

One reason for this interest is that ProSocial’s

unifying theoretical framework and practical
toolkit can be applied to any topic area.

Another reason is ProSocial’s collaborative

stance toward other governance and change
methods, which might otherwise be regarded
as competitors. We realize that effective
governance and change methods have arisen
repeatedly as a form of convergent cultural
evolution. They spread to a degree based on
their success but then come up against
boundaries, beyond which they are unknown.

Also, as expected for products of cultural

evolution, they often work without anyone
knowing exactly how they work. The “added
value” of ProSocial’s approach is to provide a
more general and science-based
understanding of what works, as well as an
infrastructure for comparing methods and
adopting best practices.

Charter for Compassion Human Energy

https://charterforcompassion.org/ https://humanenergy.io/
PROSOCIAL WORLD 14

Two examples of partnership development will briefly be

described here. The first is a project funded by the
Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF) to work
with organizations in Latin America, including some that
receive funding from (TWCF) and others that have been
working with ProSocial. These organizations have diverse
missions (e.g. education, wildlife conservation, economic
development) and ordinarily would have little reason to
interact with each other. Yet, they share a need to be
internally prosocial, to foster prosocial relations with other
groups, and to be adaptable in working around obstacles
to reach valued goals.

They share a need to be

internally prosocial, to foster
prosocial relations with other
groups, and to be adaptable
in working around obstacles
to reach valued goals.

The project has established a framework for ongoing

interactions at four levels: Individuals (level 1) are
members of teams (level 2), representing organizations
(level 3), that expect to work with each other (level 4). This
framework allows new organizations to be added and for
the facilitator training process to be endogenized, as
described in the previous section. In this fashion,
ProSocial’s unifying theoretical framework and practical
toolkit can go “viral” in Latin America, in the same way as
described above for the National Health Service in the UK.
PROSOCIAL WORLD 15

Our second example is the Charter for

Compassion, a worldwide network that formed
around principles of compassion that transcend
all religious, spiritual, secular and ethical
traditions. This movement has been quite
successful since its inception in 2009, including
the formation of hundreds of “compassionate
communities.”

However, these communities vary in their

ability to translate their compassionate attitudes
into compassionate actions. Realizing the
advantages of implementing ProSocial within
these existing social networks, ProSocial is
partnering with the Charter for Compassion to
work both system-wide and with some of the
most active communities, such as San Antonio,
Texas, and Las Vegas, Nevada.

Thanks to our growth, we now have a full time

coordinator to manage this partnership, Susan
Soleil, and we’ve also hired a community
development catalyst, Dounia Saeme, to help
facilitate our community engagements.
COMMITTED TO CHANGE
PROSOCIAL WORLD
Focal Topic Areas
While our unifying theoretical foundation and practical toolkit can be applied to
any topic area, given topic areas also deserve to become their own focus. Our PNAS
article highlights the topic areas of engineering and complex systems science,
economics and business, mental health and wellbeing, and global change efforts.
Our JTF grant funds development in the topic
areas of schools/youth, health, and spirituality.
Other funded projects—and our own intrinsic
interest--are in the areas of food systems and
bioregional development. End-of-year reports
are available for each of these topic areas. Here,
we will focus on three that appear very different
from each other: economics/business,
schools/youth, and spirituality.
Economics and business have been a focus
since the early days of the Evolution Institute.
ProSocial’s “core design principles” approach to
governance is based on Wilson’s collaboration
with the political scientist Elinor Ostrom, who
was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in
2009. Currently, Wilson is coauthoring a series
of articles titled “Rethinking the Theoretical
Foundation of Economics” with the economist
Dennis Snower, which is showcased in this
recent event sponsored by the UK’s Royal
Society of Arts and Manufacture (RSA) titled “A
New Paradigm for People and Planet.”
A new collaboration with Raj Sisodia, co-
founder of the Conscious Capitalism
movement, illustrates ProSocial’s collaborative
stance toward other ProSocial change efforts
and its strategy of spreading along existing
social networks. Based on his books Firms of
Endearment (with David B. Wolfe and Jagdish
Seth), Conscious Capitalism (with John
Mackey), Everybody Matters (with Bob
Chapman), and The Healing Organization (with
Michael J. Gelb), Sisodia has inspired a
movement that currently has approximately
thirty chapters around the world.
17
Two podcasts, one with Sisodia and another
with Gavin Watson, who heads the Connecticut
chapter of the CC movement, convey the
excitement and synergistic potential of working
with each other.
SCHOOLS CAN PLAY A CENTRAL ROLE
IN DEVELOPING THE COMMUNITY
SCIENCE SKILLS NEEDED TO SUPPORT
POSITIVE CULTURAL EVOLUTION IN
ALMOST EVERY OTHER CONTEXT.
This insight has been deeply elaborated by our
partners at Max Planck Institute’s Open Evo
project (with ProSocial Schools co-founders Dr.
Susan Hanisch and Dr. Dustin Eirdosh). Here
they describe a model of schools as field sites
for community-based cultural evolution. The
model also reconciles several frameworks for
school improvement, including an approach
known as networked improvement
communities (NICs). NICs are broadly
contextualized in evolutionary terms and are
structured to co-evolve theories of
improvement - an ideal catalyst to introduce
and explore modern evolutionary science as a
solution space. Thanks to Peter Bullock, our first
full-time employee and Director of ProSocial
Schools, these elements, in their generalized
form, shaped the primary focus of our JTF
grant, namely: community-based field sites and
a field site and research ecosystem to catalyze
the spread of innovation between them.
 PROSOCIAL WORLD
With JTF grant funding, we have now engaged
Dr. Hanisch to study two key questions. First,
what pedagogical content knowledge is
required for teachers to facilitate student
learning about cultural evolution? Second, what
are the attributes of successful efforts to
introduce community science skills to a variety
of school practitioners in diverse contexts?
Peter is spearheading a similar effort to
endogenize these processes for youth
organizations by youth facilitators. These
projects are invigorated by network
practitioners and governance members with a
breadth of field engagement (within
classrooms, whole schools, regional coalitions,
and universities) alongside several active field
site communities in Leipzig, DE, Bristol, UK,
Warsaw, PL, and Lake Placid, US. We are also
beginning to reach a diverse global audience in
collaboration with organizations like OECD
Focus Group 2B, Learning Planet Institute (LPI),
and Youth Leaders Programme.
Spirituality has also been a longstanding focus
of ProSocial, dating back to Wilson’s landmark
book Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion,
and the Nature of Society (2002), which helped
to initiate the modern study of religion and
spirituality from an evolutionary perspective.[1]
[1] Go here for a recent assessment of evolutionary religious studies.
18
Starting with funding from the Templeton
Religion Trust and continuing with our JTF
grant, we are able to support a full-time staff
member, Kate Sheehan Roach, to understand
the nature of spirituality and its role in the
formation of strong communities. Our
spirituality-oriented partners include the Mind
and Life Institute, the Plum Village Monastery
founded by the Zen Master and world spiritual
leader Thich Nhat Hanh, Human Energy (a
nonprofit devoted to the teachings of Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin), the Evolutionary Leaders,
and the United Religions Initiative. A
forthcoming print conversation between
Wilson and Brother Phap Linh, a senior monk
from Plum Village, explores the theme of
“Spirituality, Science, and Action” in detail.
The fact that the same theoretical framework
can shed light on the nature of
economics/business, schools/youth, and
spirituality/religion–at the highest level of
intellectual discourse in addition to “on the
ground” implementations–is a vivid illustration
of the grand synthesis that ProSocial is
attempting to catalyze.
 19

Creating a Governance
Structure that Reflects
Our Own Principles

In addition to working with other organizations, ProSocial regards itself as an experiment in

conscious multilevel cultural evolution. We have implemented a form of polycentric governance
that utilizes our own tools and borrows from other change methods that we admire, such as
Sociocracy. We have also undergone two strategic change processes with outside consultants to
obtain a third-person perspective and to learn from other successful consulting methods. The more
we experiment with our own cultural evolution, the better we will be able to serve as role models
and advise others.
PROSOCIAL WORLD 20

Building Our IT Infrastructure

We have recently hired Sage Gibbons to lead

ProSocial’s new IT initiative. Sage has deep
domain expertise in TVOL and also has
experience as a researcher, which will help
guide the development of our research
database for JTF. We have recently completed
a rigorous evaluation of digital platforms, tools,
and architectural frameworks. In February
2023 we launched our new ProSocial.World
website. The elegant and intuitive site guide
users through a process of continuous
engagement, inspiration, information,
formation, and transformation.

The technology team is currently working on a custom database that is expected

to be released by the end of Q2. Below are some of the features and functions that
will be launched in the coming months.

Universal ID for users and interoperability across platforms

connected to the website.

A participatory research database documenting the myriad of

applied projects run by both the ProSocial Research Circle and the
ProSocial community. This will allow the science of ProSocial to
continue to improve while supporting real-time community
discovery of best practices and success stories.

Intuitive user registration and staff administration of synchronous

and asynchronous courses and programs

A living library of stories, videos, podcasts, blogs, expert articles,

events, and "news from the field" created by and for ProSocial
community members.

Community engagement platform on the Hylo social network

platform.
PROSOCIAL WORLD 21

Marketing
We have recently formed an internal MarCom
Circle that is led by Juliet Buddiga as
Coordinator. The MarCom circle consists of
ProSocial representatives from several other
focus areas and serves as the main
communications hub for internal and external
communications.

ProSocial’s marketing campaigns

have already benefited from this new
structure by adding hundreds of new
subscribers with a 42.6% increase in
open rates within the last quarter.

The MarCom circle is also helping ProSocial

better align and facilitate communications
between the many initiatives both internally
and externally.

Recently, ProSocial has partnered with

Grounded.World to help us with positioning,
branding, and marketing strategy. In the
coming months, Grounded World will work
with key stakeholders to help distill our
essential narrative, messaging, and unique
value proposition to the communities that we
serve.
 PROSOCIAL WORLD 22

Financial
Sustainability
ProSocial has been successful in receiving grants from
the following foundations: John Templeton Foundation,
Templeton World Charity Foundation, the Human
Energy Foundation, Forever Green, and the Lenz
Foundation [1].

ProSocial is also supported by generous donations from

members of the Darwin Circle, a diverse group of wise
advisors and supporters. The organization is also
supported by donations from community members of
the ProSocial Commons.

In addition to grants and donations, ProSocial is also

supported by revenue that comes from Facilitator
Training and other courses and services. We have
recently launched a new initiative led by Exmond
DeCruz to provide leadership training and services to
corporations and businesses. The aim of the initiative is
to develop a suite of services that will generate a
repeatable stream of income and enable ProSocial to
become a financially sustainable organization.

ProSocial is fortunate to have an experienced

Operations Manager to oversee its operations. Ashle
Bailey-Gilreath has a wealth of non-profit experience
and previously served as Operations Manager for the
Evolution Institute. She works closely with the
Managing Director to oversee budgets and financial
performance and helps to create processes and policies
to improve organizational performance.

[1] Some of our projects were also supported by Templeton Religion Trust, National
Institute of Economic and Social Research, and Partners for a New Economy while
ProSocial was part of the Evolution Institute before it became its own nonprofit
organization.
PROSOCIAL WORLD 23

2022 Financials

2021

2022

In 2022, we received $1,132,409 in consolidated revenue.

PROSOCIAL WORLD 24

Allocation of Expenses
CONCLUSION: WORKING
TOWARD CULTURAL CATALYSIS
While this “State of ProSocial
World” report has been kept brief,
it conveys the scope of ProSocial’s
mission and vision—nothing less
than catalyzing positive cultural
evolution across all contexts and
scales. In closing, it is useful to
dwell upon the concept of
catalysis. In chemistry, a catalytic
substance, even when added in
tiny amounts, can speed up the
JOIN US IN WORKING TOGETHER
TO FACILITATE AND INSPIRE
POSITIVE CULTURAL CHANGE
DONATE
PROSOCIAL WORLD
rate of a chemical reaction by
orders of magnitude. If rates of
cultural change can be catalyzed in
the same way as rates of chemical
change, then progress can take
place in a matter of years rather
than decades or not at all. ProSocial
has provided solid proof of concept
during its short history and
hopefully will continue to expand its
capacity in the near future.