Civics PlaybookAshbrook Center
- Mission: Strengthen self-government by educating our fellow Americans in the history and founding principles of our country. We are in the freedom business.
- Geographic Focus: National
- Audience: K-12 students and teachers, college students and citizens
- Budget: $8.5 million
- Focus Areas and Core Competencies:
- Civic literacy
- Digital resources and programs
- Teacher training
Cultivate Informed Patriots by Focusing on Teachers
Impact: Ashbrook Center
The Ashbrook Center’s teacher education program has hosted over 900 programs for thousands of teachers, which has grown their network to over 30,000 teachers nationwide.
A Conversation with Jeffrey Sikkenga, Executive Director of the Ashbrook Center
Q: What is the mission of the Ashbrook Center? What problem(s) in civics education is your nonprofit working to solve?
We were inaugurated in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan. For the last 40 years, our mission has been to strengthen self-government in America by educating our fellow citizens in the history and founding principles of the country. As we like to say, we’re in the freedom business. The biggest problem that we’re trying to solve is keeping the American experiment in self-government alive by cultivating informed patriots: Students, teachers, citizens, people who love our country because they understand why it’s lovable.
Q: How do you describe the big goals the Ashbrook Center is working to achieve? How do you measure impact?
We have three “buckets” of programs: students, teachers and citizens. In each bucket, we measure our results qualitatively and quantitatively. Qualitatively, we talk to our participants and conduct evaluations: How did this change your thinking, your understanding of American history and our founding? Quantitatively, we have commissioned several independent data evaluations that queried participants on how our programs impacted them. We found that our programs did change the way teachers teach and students learn American history and civics. It wasn’t just that they got information from us—they actually changed the way they think about America and how they teach America’s history.
Q: What are some of the biggest challenges the Ashbrook Center has experienced in working to accomplish its mission? How did your organization overcome those challenges?
We have outstanding programs, an outstanding mission and outstanding people. I think we’re first class in all of those areas. Our challenge now is to get in front of the right people—people who can help us get participants into our programs and, of course, raise funds. While our programs can be found across the country, our challenge is to raise the funds necessary to scale them further so we can fully engage as many possible students, teachers and citizens nationally as possible. We’ve got a republic to save!
Q: What is the Ashbrook Center’s biggest need? Where can philanthropists help your organization achieve its goals?
On July 4, we launched a two-year, $20 million campaign for America’s 250th anniversary called “Freedom. For the Next 250.” This is really the biggest opportunity area for philanthropists to help Ashbrook advance our mission.
We are looking to raise the support necessary to increase our current programs by 50% and launch three new national initiatives: First, we want to create an Ashbrook School of Civic Education to turn undergraduate students into outstanding teachers of U.S. history and civics. We want the program to be a model that can be replicated across the country to create thousands of teachers who can reach millions of students.
Second, we want to create a Digital Atlas to provide interactive classroom resources that will allow history and civics teachers to get rid of their textbooks and use primary sources to create wonderful conversations with their students, which is really a hallmark of Ashbrook. We aim to make the Digital Atlas available to teachers in every school district in America.
Finally, we want to create a Blueprint for History and Civics that will be a guide to best practices in U.S. history and civics and will be distributed across the country for those who want to support outstanding civic education.
Q: Beyond the Ashbrook Center, where should philanthropists who care about advancing civic knowledge invest their charitable dollars?
Any good civic education organization needs to be built on two fundamental principles. The first is, to quote Thomas Jefferson, “The human mind is free.” Really do education, not indoctrination, and not just transmitting information. The mind must be engaged in thinking freely. That’s what we really need in this country: citizens who have the habits of “reflection and choice,” as The Federalist put it.
The second principle is that a good civics organization must believe that America is a free country. For Ashbrook that means a country founded on principles of freedom whose history is the story of the struggle to live up to those principles of freedom. There might be organizations who believe that America is fundamentally free or who engage in conversation with students and teachers, but look for organizations that are guided by both. Those organizations will really change civic education.
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