We’re freshening up
(8/14/2026) – Remember when Cracker Barrel changed their logo and the CEO got fired? I’m trying not to have that happen to me.
But when I looked over our new website – which should launch around the first of the September – I didn’t see risk, I saw the future.
And that’s because we updated our brand and website the humanist way: we went out and got data about what rising generations of nonreligious Americans valued and needed, and what about our values most spoke to them. And we built from facts, not assumptions.
When I came in, a lot of people approached me with to-do lists of things to fix. The number one question was: how can humanism become a home for a broader, younger, more diverse community? Also at the top of the list was our website, which hadn’t been redesigned in a decade and can be wordy and confusing. And in a digital world, a website is our welcome mat to new audiences.
It makes sense for these to be priorities. No movement in American history has succeeded without being intergenerational, multiracial, or cross-class. We don’t need to abandon the community we already have, we need to add to it so that we create welcoming humanist communities in every part of the country and the political power we need to defeat Christian nationalism.
There are 100 million Americans who have left religion (or never joined, or are part of traditions like Unitarian Universalism or Quakerism or Reconstructionist Judaism that are entirely compatible with humanism). We estimate that about 46 million of them hold humanist beliefs. That’s a lot of people. And we can’t rely on the assumptions of people who are already committed to humanism to understand what will resonate with everyone who is not yet committed to humanism.
We knew to grow with new audiences we had to speak with them in their language, on their terms. Talk about their hopes and aspirations and fears. Present humanism as the answer to something they were searching for in their life.
So we did the most humanist thing of all: we did research.
One of our longtime supporters, Scott Seidewitz, made a massive donation of free services from his marketing firm. Through dozens of focus-group style interviews and a national survey, where we statistically oversampled young people and people of color, we asked nontheist Americans these questions. What are your values? What do you most need in your life? What messages about humanism will be most compelling to you?
The results won’t be a surprise to you. I’ve been writing to you about them for a year. They’ve driven our programming and our language. We heard that people want to see humanism stand as a counterweight to cruelty and bigotry, that one of the things they find most compelling about our movement is an emphasis on compassion and dignity for every human being. So we created the American Empathy Project. We heard that people are looking for a sense of meaning and purpose, so we invested in creating more local groups and volunteer opportunities where they can find it. We heard they wanted to see us fighting for the freedom of conscience and the dignity of all people, so we’ve stepped up our aggressive advocacy for secular public education, science, and a government that treats everyone equally regardless of what they do or don’t believe.
As we’ve done this, our membership has grown. Our donations have grown. Longtime members are telling us they have a renewed sense of hope for the future. The best evidence of our new strategy is people voting with their feet.
We took all this research – which we committed to using no matter the results, and I have to admit, some of the language wasn’t what I expected, or use myself. (I like talking about the Founders, but I’m an anomaly in my generation. The average 24-year-old doesn’t want to hear me talk about Thomas Paine.)
And we gave it to Wide Eye Creative, the best digital and branding firm in the country for mission-driven, pro-democracy causes. They built the new logo and websites for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Common Cause, March For Our Lives, NARAL Pro-Choice America, MoveOn.org, even the Harris campaign (both times).
And then they built ours. They started with the data we’d collected. They surveyed our members – everyone on this list got a chance to participate. (They told us they’d never received this many responses to a survey – thanks to everyone who had a hand in shaping this!) They heard from our staff and board. AHA President Candace Gorham joined our meetings to represent the voice of the board and members in approving process and designs.
The result? A website for the American Humanist Association with photos of actual humans on it. A clear definition of what humanism is, not eighteen different ones. Language that we know is proven to move people from “that’s interesting” to “yes, I want to be a humanist!” A new gallery of famous American humanists, a hub for showcasing our past and present work, and a welcome mat for bringing new people into the movement.
We’re not changing our name. Humanism is what humanism has always been. The Happy Human is here to stay (though it may look a little different). We’re even keeping things blue.
But we’ve heard you, and we’re freshening up to welcome a new and more diverse generation of humanists into the movement. And we feel confident about the approach because we started the way humanists are supposed to: with rigorous, empathetic inquiry, challenging our assumptions and relying on the facts.
If you want to hear more about our process for how we got here, what we learned about what the 46 million Americans with humanist or humanist-adjacent beliefs value and crave, and even get a sneak peek at the new designs, I’m hosting some webinars with Scott Seidewitz and AHA Communications Director Court Beyer next week to walk folks through it. You can join here!
For humanity,
Fish
The American Humanist Association
The American Humanist Association (AHA) works to protect the rights of Humanists, atheists, and other nontheistic Americans. The AHA advances the ethical and life-affirming worldview of Humanism, which—without beliefs in gods or other supernatural forces—encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good of humanity.
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