Volunteer network
Volunteer Groups Alliance (VGA)
Through David Styers, VGA connects the project with international volunteer networks, helping us reach people interested in becoming conversation partners.
Meet VGA (opens in a new tab)arrow_back The Empathy Project
A decision brief for companies
One million hours of empathy, built one conversation at a time.
The Empathy Project is a six-week virtual volunteering experience for companies that want to give employees time for careful listening and intercultural conversation. The standard experience asks seven hours from each employee, mirrors four hours from conversation partners, and counts eleven hours of shared empathy work per completed seat.
6
weeks
A paced experience that gives connection and reflection time to accumulate.
7
employee hours
One-hour Brief, four calls, one guided reflection hour, and one-hour Debrief.
US$70
per seat
One standard price covering the platforms, delivery, and reporting model.
11
shared hours
Seven employee hours plus approximately four conversation-partner hours.
The experience
What the seven hours include.
The Brief sets the conditions for the work. Check-ins happen during the conversations. Reflection gives employees time to process what they heard, and the Debrief brings the cohort together afterward.
01
Brief
1 hour
A trained champion sets purpose, norms, context, and psychological safety. The experience is framed as volunteering, not a training course.
02
Check-in + conversations
4 hours
Four live one-to-one intercultural conversations through Acquaint, with champion check-ins during the experience.
03
Inqli reflection work
1 hour
Guided reflection, with a dedicated Inqli reflection space coming soon, is designed to help participants process what they heard, notice assumptions, and connect experience to practice. Private reflections stay in their own notes; sharing a question with the cohort is optional.
04
Debrief
1 hour
A champion-led team conversation makes room for stories, surprises, changed perspectives, and what participants want to carry into work and community.
The standard employee commitment
1-hour Brief + 4 one-hour calls + 1 guided reflection hour + 1-hour Debrief = 7 hours
Why this is volunteering
Both sides give time. Neither side is reduced to a role.
Employees volunteer paid time and attention to a public-good experience. Conversation partners volunteer their time, stories, questions, and perspective. The exchange is not a service delivered in one direction. It is a shared space for human conversation.
schedule
Time
Seven employee hours meet approximately four conversation-partner hours in the standard four-call experience.
forum
Attention
Prompts help people move beyond small talk while leaving enough room for a real conversation to unfold.
public
Public good
Every cohort contributes to a wider body of learning about empathy, behavior, and volunteering across difference.
The operating model
Three partners. One connected experience.
The platforms support the human work. RWI holds the design, champion support, reporting, and coordination across the experience.
The arrows show the handoffs a participant experiences. The work stays connected even when the tools are different.
01 · RWI
Design and support
RWI coordinates the model, prepares champions, provides playbooks and office hours, manages research governance, and translates aggregate learning into company-facing reports.
02 · Acquaint
Conversation
Acquaint provides the global infrastructure for one-to-one conversations, matching, scheduling, and the conditions for reciprocal exchange.
03 · Inqli
Reflection and sense-making
Inqli’s role is to support reflection and social learning. Prompts are designed around the six-week experience; participants keep private reflections in their own notes and choose what to share.
The Empathy Project · Nonprofit partners and mentoring collaborators
Partners in conversation and continued volunteering
Nonprofit partners help people find their way into conversations with employees. Our mentoring collaborations explore opportunities to keep volunteering after the Empathy Project, with each organization contributing in a different way.
Current volunteer connections
Finding conversation volunteers
VGA and Idealist help us reach people who want to volunteer their time in conversation with employees. Acquaint supports the conversation experience, with recruitment timed around participating cohorts.
Volunteer community
Idealist
Idealist helps connect its community with opportunities to volunteer in conversation with employees, reaching people and groups across its networks.
Meet Idealist (opens in a new tab)Conversation partner
Acquaint
Acquaint brings volunteers together for intercultural conversations and supports onboarding, matching, and scheduling for the Empathy Project.
Meet Acquaint (opens in a new tab)Interested in volunteering or introducing your community? Read the nonprofit overview, or contact RW Institute so we can coordinate the next step with Acquaint.
Future volunteering
Continue after the Empathy Project
Employees who want to keep volunteering can explore opportunities with partner organizations. We are developing pathways that connect the experience of listening across differences with ongoing community involvement.
Follow-on pathway in development
Global Mentorship Initiative (GMI)
GMI offers structured, one-to-one virtual career mentoring for students preparing to enter the workforce. We are exploring it as a next volunteering opportunity for employees after their Empathy Project cohort.
GMI’s existing mentoring program can be explored directly. The Empathy Project referral pathway is still being developed, and mentoring participation is arranged with GMI.
Mentoring collaboration in development
V2V.net
V2V.net is a corporate volunteering platform and consultancy whose mentoring programs include soft skills, financial education, and Girls in IT. RW Institute and Acquaint are exploring collaboration with founder Bruno Ayres around mentoring and what both programs can learn from participants.
A future mentoring opportunity for Empathy Project participants would need to be arranged with the project team and V2V. Contact us to discuss a potential pathway for your company.
Advisor pathway in development
Mountaintop International
Mountaintop International runs leadership fellowships for social impact leaders working in low-income communities, including people running education, health care, peacebuilding and environmental organizations.
RW Institute and Mountaintop are exploring a pathway in which Empathy Project participants could serve as advisors to its Fellows. Contact us to discuss it for your company.
Plan a first wave
Start with the people most likely to say yes.
The planning model assumes that 25% of employees are realistically likely to opt into volunteering, then recommends seats for 10% of that pool. That is 2.5% of total headcount. It creates a credible starting point without asking a company to invite everyone at once.
These are working planning assumptions. Recommended seats are rounded to whole people; investment and shared hours use that seat count. The project is designed to test and refine them with real participation data.
Cohort sizes
A cohort starts at 50 seats. Suggested sizes are 100, 500 and 1,000 seats, at US$70 each. If the model suggests fewer than 50 seats, the calculator shows the 50-seat minimum.
people
volunteering pool
10,000
25% of headcount
target seats
1,000
10% of pool
investment
$70,000
at US$70 / seat
shared hours
11,000
at 11 / seat
Scale with guardrails
Large enough to matter. Deliberate enough to hold quality.
The model is built for distributed and global teams, but scale is treated as an operating constraint, not just a headline number.
Annual employee-side capacity
100kA maximum planning guardrail for one global year, so each participant can receive the full experience.
Weekly conversation concurrency
~15kA target ceiling for employees active in Acquaint calls in a given week. Cohorts are staggered globally around partner supply and platform capacity.
What the guardrails protect
Matching quality, conversation-partner supply, reflection capacity, champion support, and the time people need to complete the experience well.
Corporate cohort pricing
US$70 per employee seat
The standard corporate cohort price is US$70 per participating employee, in US dollars. The calculator above uses this price to estimate your company’s investment.
| Allocation | US$ / seat | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Acquaint conversation platform | $34.40 | 49.1% |
| Inqli reflection environment | $8.10 | 11.6% |
| RW Institute delivery and oversight | $8.00 | 11.4% |
| Administration | $7.70 | 11.0% |
| Fiscal sponsor | $4.90 | 7.0% |
| Marketing | $2.40 | 3.4% |
| Surplus reserve | $4.50 | 6.4% |
| Total | $70.00 | 100% |
Percentage shares are rounded.
What companies receive
A participation system, not just four calls.
The seat price includes the parts that make a distributed experience possible: preparation, matching, reflection, support, and a way to learn from the cohort without exposing individual responses.
01
Champion support
Playbooks, templates, troubleshooting, office hours, and support for the Brief and Debrief.
02
Participant support
Matching, scheduling, account setup, prompts, reminders, and clear handoffs between each part of the experience.
03
Aggregate reporting
Anonymized completion information and cohort-level learning, with reporting thresholds that protect privacy.
04
Next-wave decision
A company debrief to decide what to keep, what to change, and whether another wave makes sense.
Implementation roadmap
From preparation to a live cohort.
The participant activity stays inside a six-week run. The company work around it begins earlier and continues afterward.
01
Design and onboarding
Confirm objectives, seat volume, champions, communications, data-sharing, and platform access.
02
Internal launch
Champions invite employees, answer practical questions, and finalize the cohort roster and schedule.
03
Six-week experience
Brief, Check-in, conversations, reflection, and Debrief. Participant activity is coordinated through Acquaint, with the Inqli reflection space coming soon.
04
Review and next wave
RWI provides aggregate learning, facilitates a company debrief, and helps decide what happens next.
Measurement rhythm
Look for movement, not a forced conclusion.
The project can combine quantitative measures with qualitative reflection. The purpose is to learn what shifts, for whom, and under what conditions.
Before
Baseline
Starting measures of empathy, openness, perspective-taking, and team dynamics where appropriate.
During
Reflection
Prompts invite participants to notice what surprised them and what they are still working through; private reflections stay in their own notes.
After
Post-experience
Final reflections and surveys look for reported changes in perspective, intent, and future volunteering behavior.
Later
Follow-up
Optional follow-up points examine what remains useful after the conversations have become part of ordinary work.
Privacy is part of the design.
Individual responses are not reported to companies. Aggregate reporting uses thresholds that protect anonymity, and research access is governed separately from the employee experience.
What the project is designed to learn
The outcomes are hypotheses, not guarantees.
The project’s intended outcomes become questions that a cohort can help answer.
Individual practice
Do repeated conversations and reflection change how people listen, notice assumptions, and describe their own role in cross-difference work?
Team life
Do stories and insights from the experience create useful conversations about belonging, psychological safety, and how the team works?
Future action
Are participants more likely to volunteer again, take on guiding roles, or choose opportunities that ask more of their attention?
Questions worth asking
The practical questions companies usually have.
Why call this volunteering?
Employees give paid time and attention to a public-good initiative, while conversation partners also volunteer their time. Both sides contribute to the exchange.
What does it feel like for employees?
A blend of listening, learning, partnering, and being changed. The structure gives people a way to begin without prescribing what the conversation must mean.
How are employees supported?
Champions set context and check in during the experience. Acquaint supports the conversations. Inqli’s reflection space, coming soon, will support reflection. RWI provides the operating materials and coordination.
What does a company receive?
Aggregate completion information, cohort-level learning, and a company debrief. Individual responses are not reported to the company.
Does this work for distributed teams?
Yes. The participant experience is remote, scheduled across a six-week run, and designed to work across distributed, hybrid, and global teams.
Is this self-development in disguise?
The employee may grow, but the experience is not framed as an individual benefit purchased from another person’s story. Both people show up as volunteers with agency.
How should companies talk about outcomes?
As an opportunity to practice empathy, listening, and perspective-taking, supported by aggregate measurement. The project does not guarantee a personal transformation.
What is the next step?
Start with a conversation about cohort size, champion capacity, timing, employee communications, and what the company needs to learn.
Keep exploring