The Washington Institute is a Christian policy organization that “invests in culture” through convening “conversations of consequence” for people whose vocations revolve around culture. It's website asks: "Why is it that Bono has to come to Washington to plead for Africa? What has happened, historically and culturally, that the most visible pop icon in the world is taken seriously at the White House and the World Bank? At the dawn of the 21st-century popular culture—film, music, theater –have a profound effect on what we see and hear, especially so for the generation of people under 30. For many years we have been actively engaged in an effort to constructively engage people whose vocations are in the arts and entertainment arenas, believing that they are “upstream” culturally from the city of Washington, DC, but also from the society at large. To care about the way the world is and isn’t, about the way things ought to be, means that Washington as a city must see itself as a place with true responsibility for history, but also that cities like New York, Nashville, and Los Angeles are incredibly important."