The Fetzer Institute

The Fetzer Institute is a private operating foundation based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The Institute pursues its mission of helping to build the spiritual foundation for a loving world through a deeply engaged board of trustees drawn from across the United States, a staff of 60 talented and experienced professionals, and a growing network of program and project partners.

Our goal is to help catalyze and support a broad-scale, spiritually grounded transformation from an ego-centered way of being grounded in separation and fear to an all-centered way of being grounded in wholeness and love. Our vision is a critical mass of persons around the world embracing love as the guiding principle and animating force for living in sacred relationship with self, others, and the natural world.

We see ourselves as a single node in an expansive web of individuals and organizations around the world who are engaged in this common work. Our contribution to this work includes five broad strategies: 

• personal spiritual transformation: supporting the individual journey and exploring connections between inner work and outer action 
• new narrative: contributing to a worldview that integrates a sophisticated scientific understanding of physical reality with deep spiritual understanding of the “something more” that binds us together in a deeply interconnected and sacred reality and calls us to a life of love
• movement building and outreach: accelerating the emergence of a powerful global movement for spiritual transformation
• spiritual communities: supporting the emergence of new forms of inclusive spiritual communities, both within existing and emerging spiritual traditions
• science: engaging science to maximize its contribution to the “new narrative” and to deepen our understanding of the factors that shape spiritual growth and development and our ability to love