Aspen Institute's Weave: The Social Fabric Project
Designing Digital Learning to Scale a National Movement to Increase Trust
OVERVIEW
When Weave: The Social Fabric Project secured a $22.4 million grant from Lilly Endowment to distribute Weaver Awards to 6,000 neighbors and community builders across 75 cities, they needed more than funding. They needed infrastructure. The Learning Center and Community platform were central to making that investment stick: equipping Weavers with the skills, confidence, and peer connections to turn microgrants into lasting local change.
But there was a catch. Weave's mission is to get people off their screens and into their communities. So we had to build a digital experience powerful enough to support a national movement, and thoughtful enough to get out of the way.
We partnered with the Weave team to redesign the Learning Center from the ground up: selecting a new platform, reimagining the learning strategy, redesigning priority courses, building internal capacity, and launching a content and community strategy rooted in real-world action.
The result, Weaving Us, launched in November 2025. Within weeks, 500+ members had rejoined, exceeding year-end goals. For the first time, Weavers could move fluidly between learning and community without switching platforms or losing momentum. They could surface their own needs, respond to each other directly, and spread Weave's mission further and faster than any formal marketing effort could.
The goal was never to maximize engagement. It was to minimize friction, so Weavers could get what they needed and get back to the real work.
"Weaving Us brings together community building, learning, and knowledge exchange in a single space. Unlike our previous platform, Weavers can connect with one another, participate in courses, share resources, post events, respond to polls, and contribute their own expertise without leaving the platform. Plus, community members have significant agency to shape the experience."
— Ericka Burroughs-Fournier, Community Manager, Weave Program, Aspen Institute
THE CHALLENGE
How do you leverage online learning to strengthen human connection, without tethering people to their screens?
Weave: The Social Fabric Project, founded at the Aspen Institute by New York Times columnist David Brooks, had grown into a national movement. Weavers are everyday neighbors, teachers, faith leaders, block captains, and community organizers quietly rebuilding trust in divided communities across the country. With a growing network and a $22.4M Lilly Endowment grant to fund 6,000 Weaver Awards nationally, the stakes for scalable infrastructure had never been higher.
Weave's original Learning Center wasn't up to the task. It was a static content library, disjointed and disconnected from the broader community experience. Learning happened in one silo. Community conversation happened in another. Neither reinforced the other, and neither was designed to send Weavers back out into the world faster.
The challenge: build a digital experience that elevates human-to-human connection without replacing it, in a way the community itself could sustain, grow, and ultimately own.
images of the final learning center at weaving.us
THE WORK
Set a future vision with a hand-selected expert team - We assembled a cross-functional team of designers, educators, marketers, and technologists. Then we held stakeholder, partner, and learner interviews to co-create a vision for the future, built learner personas and community manager profiles. Plus we developed long-range scenarios to anchor near-term decisions.
Reimagined learning to respect people's time - We audited of all 10 existing courses and redesigned the learning experience around people's real lives: short, asynchronous formats; downloadable tools for meetings and community circles; and flexible participation models, solo, cohort, or just-in-time. This wasn't about maximizing screen time. It was about minimizing friction so learning could happen quickly, then get out of the way.
Selected a new technical platform and unified what was fragmented - We evaluated multiple LMS options and pushed back on the original phased migration plan. Asking members to migrate twice would fragment engagement and undermine the integration we were designing toward. We recommended Mighty Networks, which unified courses, community, and peer exchange in a single lightweight app.
"It was so much better to rip the Band-Aid off and move community and learning all at once." — Maria, Weave Program Lead
These insights shaped a three-part intervention strategy:
Create a teacher-centered movement. Start with teachers, not mandates. Invite them to lead the change.
Focus on “Looking at Student Work Together.” Use shared student work as a central practice for professional growth.
Set the environment for teachers to thrive. Support administrators to become champions of the new behaviors.
THE IMPACT
The new Learning Center and community platform, Weaving Us, launched in November 2025. Within weeks:
500+ members rejoined, surpassing year-end goals
30% adopted the mobile app, increasing flexibility and participation
High engagement in community-led events, discussions, and forums
Strong member feedback citing ease of use, clarity, and a stronger sense of belonging
The more important results were structural. For the first time, learning and community reinforced each other rather than operating in isolation. Weavers moved fluidly between courses and conversation and began responding to each other's needs directly, faster than any central team could.
The reach is also extending organically. One Weaver learned about the Weaver Award Program through Weaving Us and recommended it to a local community organization he partners with. That organization is now adapting the program to recognize community builders in their own city, extending Weave's reach in a way no marketing campaign could engineer.
"By making successful approaches visible and accessible to Weavers across the country, the platform creates opportunities for community-led replication and adaptation, extending Weave's reach beyond what staff alone could achieve."
— Ericka Burroughs-Fournier, Community Manager, Weave Program, Aspen Institute
The clearest example of community in action: after a community poll surfaced that many Weavers wanted to build confidence with AI tools, a community member volunteered to facilitate a six-week skills-building series for fellow Weavers. No staff intervention. No formal program design. The platform surfaced the need, and the community responded.
WHY THIS MATTERS
This project sits at an unusual intersection: a $22.4 million philanthropic bet on grassroots community building, and a digital platform designed to make that bet pay off without becoming another screen-time sink.
The design philosophy was simple and counterintuitive. The platform should do just enough to spark action, then step aside. Learning and community should reinforce each other. And the community should be empowered to identify its own needs and respond faster and more authentically than any centralized team could.
At a moment when loneliness, distrust, and polarization have become the defining challenges of our era, Weave is investing in the people already doing the quiet, relational work of rebuilding trust. This platform exists to make those people more effective, not more dependent on technology.
This is what human-centered design looks like in a fractured world: not just a better UX, but a system where digital infrastructure amplifies human agency, accelerates peer learning, and gets out of the way so Weavers can do what they came to do.
This work was completed in collaboration with Mark Magellan, Dave Good, and Rachel Youngblade, and The Aspen Weave team: Michael Skoler, Maria Oah, and Jacob Ford.