About Amanda
I started Front Porch Collaborative from a deep belief that everything we need to build a better world already exists in community. It's something I've witnessed again and again across two decades of organizing, advocacy, and movement work. The people closest to a problem hold invaluable insight into the solution. When organizations build with impacted communities them rather than for them, the work gets sharper, the solutions get stronger, and the change, when it comes, actually lasts.
I created this practice for organizations who believe that the world we want to live in is possible and that community is how we build it.
That conviction lives in everything about this practice, starting with the name. A front porch is where neighbors become community, where people feel welcome before they even come inside, where the conversations that matter most happen not in boardrooms but in the ordinary intimacy of being together. That's the kind of space I create in every engagement, because I believe that how we gather people is inseparable from what we're able to build with them.
On my own front porch I have a decorative goose named Pamela Ganderson. Pam greets visitors and wears festive seasonal outfits.
My Background
I bring nearly twenty years of experience in nonprofit advocacy, community engagement, and coalition building to this work, spanning grassroots organizing, Capitol Hill, and national campaigns.
At the National Women's Law Center, I directed Supreme Court rallies, coalition campaigns, and digital advocacy efforts generating tens of millions of impressions, with coverage in USA Today, Vox, PBS, and MSNBC. One coalition effort involving major national advocacy organizations mobilized nearly 350,000 people to effectively influence the outcome of a legislative amendment that would have permitted workplace discrimination.
At Feeding America, I served as Senior Director of Advocacy and Community Engagement. In 2022 I led one of the largest mobilizations in the organization's history in preparation for the first White House Conference on Hunger, Health, and Nutrition in 50 years, reaching more than 36,000 people across all 50 states and bringing people with lived experience of food insecurity to the White House to shape federal policy recommendations. I went on to co-create the Elevating Voices Power Summit, a national convening by and for people with lived experience that brought 150 advocates to Washington, DC and later scaled into a regional grant program.
I'm based in the Washington, DC area and work with clients across the country.
The Front Porch Method
The Front Porch Method is the framework behind everything I do. It's built on three beliefs that I've carried through every role I've held and that shape every engagement I take on.
Not every organization is starting from the same place. Some are ready to hand community members the mic. Others are just beginning to figure out how to listen. The Front Porch Method works at every stage of that journey.
Relationships First.
Trust is the foundation of everything. Before strategy, before design, before any of the work begins, I invest in creating the conditions where people feel safe, seen, and genuinely welcome. You can't build anything real without that.
Building Together.
The best solutions emerge from the people closest to the problem. I create intentional space for communities, coalitions, and organizations to shape the work alongside me, because the process of building together is inseparable from the outcome.
Community as Leader.
I design processes where impacted people have a meaningful seat at the table, where their expertise is recognized, and where their priorities shape the direction of the work. This looks different for every organization and every community. I meet people where they are and work toward progress.