Educating for democracy since 1945
The Citizens & Scholars Civic Venture Accelerator builds on our tradition of discovering and supporting up-and-coming talent across ideologies. We now expand that approach by providing start-up capital and advisory services to develop promising ideas for ventures that foster youth civic development at scale.
As venture builders, we tap our network for breakthrough ideas for new ventures, such as fellowships or initiatives. We assign teams, funding, and necessary resources to test and sustain these ideas for the long term.
Each venture must produce measurable results against Citizens & Scholars’ mission to develop youth who are civically well-informed, productively engaged for the common good, and hopeful about democracy.
Our methodology ensures that we source and develop ideas that will be viable across the political spectrum, achieve measurable social outcomes, attract sustainable funding, prioritize channels outside of the crowded K–12 school setting, and thrive when scaled.
We build out the most promising ideas by assembling nimble teams that draw from our staff, funders, and ideologically diverse experts in our network. These teams provide strategic programmatic guidance and access to capital, tools, and networks in order to test the efficacy of the idea against the desired outcomes. The ideas that achieve impact are poised to become a venture. The others wind down.
Every venture benefits from shared services, including legal, fundraising, technology, marketing, and strategy support. Most ventures, such as our historic Fellowships, remain under our management and governance indefinitely. Others spin off as independent organizations under our guidance. Our portfolio acts as a working ecosystem that enables us to share knowledge across ventures at all stages of development.
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Convening a range of leaders in higher education, diverse in institutional type and ideology, who believe that civic preparedness for the next generation is crucial to their work.
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