Charter for Compassion
A global initiative built around the Golden Rule as a universal principle across all traditions. Sign the charter, join a local community of practice, or take part in education programs open to anyone.
From reading to living
Resources for Action
Organizations suggested here grow out of the specific chapters of Friendship …in a lonely age—a menu, not a to-do list, if you want to move from reflection into action.
Browse by chapter
- Introduction
- Chapter One: What Is Friendship?
- Chapter Two: Best Friends
- Chapter Three: When Friendships Fail
- Chapter Four: Befriending Ourselves
- Chapter Five: Spiritual Friendship
- Chapter Six: Becoming Friends with the World
- Chapter Seven: Friendship and the Paradise Already Here
- Chapter Eight: Loneliness and the True Self
- Chapter Nine: When a Friend Is Ill
- Chapter Ten: Spiritual Companionship
A Note on These Resources
The organizations suggested here grow out of the specific chapters of this book.
The nonprofits listed are a menu, not a to-do list, offered to you if you want to move from reflection into action. Each is a nonprofit or public service organization: credible, responsive, and action-oriented. We favored the unsung over the famous, strove for balance between secular and spiritual, and let no organization pay for its place. No political agenda shaped the selections. This list is a door to walk through, not a comprehensive directory.
Introduction
To the One Who Might Become a Friend
The On Being Project
Krista Tippett’s nonprofit: the On Being podcast and the Civil Conversations Project, which trains communities in speaking and listening across difference. Free and open to all.
Trauma Intervention Programs
TIP trains community members to provide immediate emotional first aid to survivors of tragedy—showing up on scene and staying until professional help arrives. Chapters operate across the country and welcome new volunteers.
Pongo Poetry Project
Volunteer poetry mentors work with youth in juvenile detention, helping them write about their joyful and difficult experiences as a source of healing and growth. If you write, teach, or counsel, Pongo is looking for people like you.
Chapter One
What Is Friendship?
Letter Writers Alliance
A nonprofit devoted to handwritten correspondence as a living practice. Writing a real letter to someone whose friendship matters is one of the most direct acts the first chapter describes.
AVA: America’s Walking Club
500 clubs organizing more than 3,000 noncompetitive walking events per year nationwide. Walking alongside someone is one of the oldest forms of friendship. No competition, no pressure, all welcome.
Chapter Two
Best Friends
Foundation for Social Connection Action Network
Advocates for federal and state solutions to the epidemic of social isolation, documenting what isolation costs us and what deep connection restores.
For All Ages
Unites younger and older adults through intergenerational programs including Tea at 3—a weekly phone call across generations. Best friendships often cross the lines we expect them to.
Chapter Three
When Friendships Fail
NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness)
Free, peer-led support groups across the country for people living with mental health challenges and for the families who love them. The room that saves you—a circle of honest peers—exists for almost every kind of difficulty. NAMI can help you find it.
Youth Speaks
One of the world’s leading spoken word and youth development organizations, serving more than 25,000 young people annually through poetry slams, festivals, and school programs. When friendships fail and words run dry, sometimes a poem reaches what nothing else can.
Chapter Four
Befriending Ourselves
Kristin Neff’s Self-Compassion Site
Free meditations, exercises, and assessments grounded in decades of research on self-compassion. Extend to yourself the same kindness you would offer a friend in pain.
Ghost Ranch
A 21,000-acre nonprofit retreat center in Abiquiú, New Mexico—Georgia O’Keeffe’s home—offering more than 300 workshops and retreats each year. Scholarships are available. The landscape itself does much of the work.
Chapter Five
Spiritual Friendship
Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation
Trains spiritual directors and offers retreats and a referral service, rooted in the contemplative tradition but open to all seekers. If you have never had a spiritual director, or if it has been years, Shalem can help you find one.
Spiritual Directors International
A worldwide directory of trained spiritual directors across traditions and denominations. Whatever your background, SDI can connect you with a companion for the inner journey.
iNaturalist
Record observations of plants, animals, and fungi and contribute to real biodiversity science. Paying close attention to the living world is its own contemplative practice.
SciStarter
Find and join real citizen science projects matched to your interests—from bird counting to water quality monitoring to astronomy. Wonder made participatory.
Chapter Six
Becoming Friends with the World
Neighbors to Nicaragua
Grassroots education and infrastructure for communities in Nicaragua. No salaries, no overhead—every dollar goes directly to the community. Medical missions and donor immersion trips available.
International Rescue Committee
Resettles refugees across the United States and welcomes volunteers in practical ways: tutoring, job mentoring, driving people to appointments. Becoming friends with the world sometimes means meeting the world at the airport.
Outdoor Afro
The nation’s leading network celebrating African-American connections and leadership in nature, with nearly eighty leaders in thirty states. It exists because the outdoors has not always felt like a welcoming place for everyone—and because that needs to change.
Appalachian Mountain Club
Builds and maintains trails, protects public lands, and runs extensive volunteer programs across the Northeast and beyond. One of the oldest and most volunteer-rich outdoor organizations in the country.
Chapter Seven
Friendship and the Paradise Already Here
Braver Angels
Brings together Americans of opposing political views for structured conversations, workshops, and debates. Does not ask anyone to change their mind—only to stay in the room long enough to remember that the person across from them is a person.
Citizen University
Builds a culture of responsible citizenship through training programs, free toolkits, and a national network. Makes civic life feel relational and worth doing.
Chapter Eight
Loneliness and the True Self
Gay For Good
Mobilizes LGBTQ+ and ally volunteers in twenty cities, building connection and friendship through shared service.
PFLAG
The nation’s largest organization supporting, educating, and advocating for LGBTQ+ people and those who love them. Chapter meetings serve families and allies as much as LGBTQ+ individuals. Loneliness breaks when the people around us show up.
Trans Youth Equality Foundation
Education, advocacy, and support for transgender and nonbinary youth and their families, including a camp program building lifelong friendships since 2008. In a moment when trans youth face particular isolation, TYEF offers community and the knowledge that they are not alone.
Chapter Nine
When a Friend Is Ill
CaringBridge
A free platform for someone facing serious illness to stay connected with those who love them—a private site where friends and family can follow the journey, leave messages, and coordinate care. When you do not know how to help, CaringBridge gives you a way to show up.
The Names Project (National AIDS Memorial)
A massive community art project created to honor people who died from AIDS, celebrate their lives, and bring awareness to the epidemic. Cleve Jones conceived the project in San Francisco in 1985. Today, the National AIDS Memorial cares for the fifty-four-ton tapestry. You can start a quilt in your community, and they will guide you through how to get that going.
Chapter Ten
Spiritual Companionship
Center for Action and Contemplation
Free Daily Meditations, podcasts, online courses, and retreats founded by Richard Rohr, OFM in 1987, open to seekers of all traditions and none. The two-year Living School is available for those who want to go deeper.
Church of Conscious Harmony
A monastery without walls in Austin, Texas, offering services, retreats from half a day to ten days, The Journey School, and a podcast. Its model of mutual spiritual companioning is the closest description in this book of what spiritual friendship looks like in practice.