Engage Responsibly | ANA

Education plays a crucial role in reducing online hate.

ANA's Engage Responsibly is a nonprofit dedicated to education that drives understanding of online hate and how you can use existing platform tools and other available mechanisms to make online safer and more welcoming for everyone.

Fifty-two percent of Americans have experienced online hate. Expressions of racism, homophobia, xenophobia, misogyny, and other forms of targeted harassment against vulnerable groups and individuals is turning corners of our social media spaces toxic. Engage Responsibly built educational materials and curated resources to inform small to medium-sized businesses and consumers how to reduce online hate, and create a safer and more inclusive digital space for everyone.


Our Partners


Built for Impact

Engage Responsibly is led by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and supported by capability contributors ANA Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM), Brand Safety Institute, Ogilvy, Publicis Media, and Pernod Ricard who founded, seeded, and donated the initiative to the ANA to scale.

Engage Responsibly delivers education to tackle online hate, built collaboratively with social media platforms and industry organizations and supported by major brands and businesses of all sizes, non-profits and SMB representation, including partnership with the Better Business Bureau to scale to its six-million-strong SMB network. In addition, Global Alliance for Responsible Media provided input on educational assets and definitions.

 

Scaling to Businesses and Consumers

Engage Responsibly is designed to educate and empower consumers and businesses of all sizes, including harnessing the unique power of SMBs. As the largest business segment on social media, SMBs are a fragmented but expansive collective, poised to have tremendous impact. Engage Responsibly will look to scale to SMBs and consumers in different ways:

    • Partnership with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) to scale Engage Responsibly to its SMB network of over six million, including 400,000 accredited businesses
    • SMB and consumer campaign, developed by Ogilvy, driving reach, awareness, and engagement

In addition, Engage Responsibly has a robust measurement plan in place to measure engagement and impact over time.

 

Driving Understanding and Action

With a focus on education for businesses — especially SMBs — and individuals, Engage Responsibly provides resources that democratize responsible media practices and tools, the same ones that many large corporations use, offering them as a turnkey, no-cost solution to SMBs. Engage Responsibly also offers a robust, curated resource library for educational and support resources for confronting online hate.

The Engage Responsibly curriculum includes numerous video education modules with English- and Spanish- language options and closed-caption capability for accessibility. Among the topics covered are actions that can be taken, including how to report online hate speech on each of the major platforms, protect one’s online presence with technology, use counterspeech, and invite others to take the Engage Responsibly education.

 

Powering Through the Reach of Business

Brands play a critical role in scaling Engage Responsibly to reach consumers and SMBs. We invite you to learn about online hate and how your brand can be a part of the solution alongside platforms, NGOs and more.

Download the Engage Responsibly brand activation kit to explore how you can activate Engage Responsibly, harnessing ready-made resources to expand awareness and education about Engage Responsibly through your brand's channels.

 

 

Learn More:

 

For further information about Engage Responsibly, visit EngageResponsibly.org.

Go Further

2023 ANA Brands for Humanity Conference

At this inaugural two-day virtual conference, presented by the ANA Brands for Humanity Coalition, attendees learned how today's “forces for good” — both brands and nonprofit organizations — are using their voices and influence to establish real impact and consequential change.

learn more and see what you missed

Beyond Profit

In this recording of Beyond Profit, a podcast of the ANA Center for Brand Purpose, Anita McGorty, Engage Responsibly’ s EVP, joins host Ken Beaulieu to discuss why humanity is under attack online, what we can do to combat hate, and support a safer environment for our businesses, consumers, and society.

listen in