CITIZEN UNIVERSITY

Programs

1. The civic saturday fellowship prepares motivated americans to inspire a renewed sense of shared civic purpose and moral courage in their community. Fellows learn how to create - and then host - civic saturday gatherings, which we think of as a civic analogue to faith gatherings. They're a ritual designed for reflection, reckoning, and recommitment. The fellowship begins with our immersive four-day training called civic seminary, which we lead in for cohorts of about 10-12. From reflecting on the unique challenges facing their communities to learning how to write a civic sermon, fellows gain everything they need to know to design their own civic saturday gatherings.

   $389,791 spentof which $10,433 as grants$28,000 earned by the program
   22% of program spending

2. The youth collaboratory brings together civic-minded high school sophomores and juniors from across the country for six months of learning and two national convenings where they engage around the idea and ideals of civic power, how to harness it, and how to share their learnings in their communities in the form of a personal project. In addition, our youth collaboratory students have the opportunity to participate in our national civic collaboratory meetings, offering an unparalleled opportunity for cross generational relationship building, which has led to several new partnerships between our youth and national collaboratory members. Students are active participants in the meeting activities and make commitments of help and support for national civic projects.

   $356,444 spent
   20% of program spending

3. Graduates of our training programs join our cu community, an ongoing peer learning network of hundreds of civic catalysts from around the nation grounded in shared purpose. Through gatherings, workshops, structures for communications and digital resources, this community serve as a platform for continued exchange, collaboration, and storytelling around spreading habits and activities that support powerful, responsible citizenship.

   $328,251 spentof which $37,297 as grants
   19% of program spending

4. Citizen redefined brings together groups of young people, guided by an elder, for an arc of civic and ethical formation, culminating in a civic confirmation rite of passage. Citizen University trains cohorts of 12-20 educators and other adult mentors from across sectors and across the country to form and facilitate small groups of high school-aged participants as they develop their identities as citizens. Youth participants then engage in self-reflection, reckon with moral tensions in american history, make sense of the current state of our democracy, and develop the skills, confidence, and conviction to live as responsible citizens.

   $295,742 spent
   17% of program spending

5. The national civic collaboratory is a national mutual aid society and project incubator for hundreds of the country's most innovative civic practitioners and catalysts from across the political spectrum. At our meetings held in cities around the us, innovators experiment and test new ideas, share cutting-edge projects, and form norms of collaboration as they support one another in their work. Members are from across the political spectrum and many domains: immigrant rights, veterans advocacy, civics education, voting reform, tech, arts and culture, worker organizing, corporate citizenship, and more. Each quarter, about 75 members of the network meet to support each other not just with ideas or feedback, but to provide true commitments of help and support to get a slate of national projects and initiatives off the ground.

   $293,543 spentof which $5,097 as grants
   17% of program spending

6. Our global learning research project is a multi-year initiative to explore civic culture and strategies to support and strengthen it in places around the world, with the intention of applying and circulating learnings for the benefit of our programs and our broader network. This project includes a research component, studying a variety of civic catalysts and their work in their unique contexts, as well as a series of learning exchanges with select international partner organizations. Our aim is to engage in mutually beneficial, hands-on learning focused on strategies, experiments, and possibilities of civic culture building. This includes visits to 3-4 countries, and inviting several global catalysts to take part in Citizen University programming in the us.

   $76,664 spent
   4% of program spending

The 6 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $1,740,435.