A Humanist Community in Florida Stopped Asking “What Do We Believe?” and Started Asking “What Can We Build?” The answer may offer a blueprint for the rest of us.

In the fall of 1998, Jerry Lieberman walked into a board meeting of the Humanists of Florida (HoF) in Orlando and told the room something they didn’t want to hear. The organization had no business plan, no fundraising strategy and no vision that extended beyond its next annual conference. Its membership was aging. Its events, while pleasant, were largely social — opportunities for like-minded people to reaffirm their philosophy to one another. If humanism was going to matter in Florida, Lieberman argued, the Humanists of Florida had to stop being a discussion group and start building something.

He was newly retired to Florida after a career in political science and organizing — a Ph.D. from NYU, decades of writing platforms for democratic organizations, building party coalitions and writing grant proposals for government and foundations. But for Lieberman, retirement meant investing himself in a progressive social movement. When Sol Klotz, the then-president of Humanists of Florida asked Lieberman to present his ideas to their board, Lieberman showed up with a three-page essay titled “American Humanism’s Pathway to the Future” and an eight-point strategic plan.

The board listened. Within months, HoF had adopted the Progressive Social Action Program, rewritten its bylaws, renamed itself the Humanists of Florida Association to signal a broader, more inclusive identity, and begun the slow work of transforming from an arm-chair philosophy club into a vehicle for social change. The transformation was so striking that Virginia Kohl, Lieberman’s wife and a doctoral researcher at the University of South Florida, made it the subject of her dissertation — a case study in how a small nonprofit can reinvent itself through communication, leadership and an openness to change. After they went through a slew of organizational structure changes, the board was ready for the next step.

But the hardest question still remained: What, specifically, would they build?

The annual conference itself was retooled from what Lieberman had once described as a “dog and pony show” into a working session focused on addressing Florida’s problems and building broad coalitions. Education emerged early as an idea to focus on closer. Their new Issues Development Committee identified it as the arena where humanist values could most concretely translate into action. Florida’s public education landscape was fractured — massive county-based systems, a sprawling voucher apparatus and a testing regime that presented the false promise that an unregulated education market could guarantee a quality education. HoF initially tried to engage the public school system directly, but the bureaucracy and politics of districts that large proved impenetrable.

When Lieberman stepped back and asked where a small, motivated community could have the most impact without competing with public schools or alienating teacher unions, early childhood education was the clear answer. The need was enormous. Funding existed but the existing options for minority and low-income families were overwhelmingly for-profit, religious or functionally daycare rather than genuine learning centers.

Getting there required money and infrastructure the organization didn’t have. Lieberman secured a $10,000 grant from the Institute for Humanist Studies, with additional matching funds from local donors, to develop a statewide coalition and begin functioning as a humanist think tank. AHA leaders and individual donors contributed money for a foundational workshop on early childhood development at the University of Miami — an event that proved both the feasibility and the demand.

From all of the research, preparation and feedback, they took on building early learning centers. The early childhood learning centers emerged that clearly reflect a humanist philosophy. The curriculum is science-based and secular, designed around validated outcomes rather than ideology. Staff and students are, in Lieberman’s words, “welcoming, trusting and inquisitive.” For parents, the difference is tangible: Children come out genuinely prepared for kindergarten. The results have been strong enough that the state increased per-child funding based on performance — a concrete, measurable endorsement of what a humanist approach to education can produce.

The path wasn’t smooth. The COVID-19 pandemic devastated early learning centers across the country and many never reopened. Lieberman’s centers survived, but the experience underscored how fragile even successful community projects remain without deep institutional support.

More than 15 years in, Lieberman sees the impact in the families who came through the program and in the demand for expansion. But when he talks about what the centers mean, he reaches past the metrics. “There are ways to be good and accomplish more in the real world that benefits others and makes life meaningful,” he says. For Lieberman, the learning centers aren’t just a service project. They’re a living demonstration that humanist values, applied with rigor and commitment, produce something people need.

Which raises the question he most wants other humanist communities to hear: why aren’t more of us doing this?

Lieberman is direct about it. A lot of humanist groups default to potlucks and book clubs — comfortable, communal and entirely inward-facing. He’s not dismissing those things, but he’s asking what happens when a community takes its values and turns them into infrastructure. HoF has developed a template for launching early learning centers and is prepared to share it, along with technical assistance and mentoring, with any humanist group willing to do the work.

The model doesn’t have to be early childhood education. What Lieberman built sits alongside other humanist legacies — Joe Gerstein’s founding of SMART Recovery, humanist involvement in the ACLU and Planned Parenthood — that prove individual secular communities can create organizations with outsized impact. The common thread isn’t the issue area. It’s the willingness to move from discussion to action, from philosophy to praxis.

Back in 1998, standing before that board in Orlando, Lieberman warned that humanists couldn’t afford to keep talking about philosophy while the world moved on without them. Nearly three decades later, a network of learning centers full of curious kids in Florida suggests he was right — and that the movement’s best argument for itself is creating a lasting, tangible difference in our communities.

If you’ve been feeling like you want to do more, to build something like Jerry did, reach out to our Organizing team at grassroots@americanhumanist.org.