From Elementary School through Career and Beyond: Opportunities for Nonpartisan Civic Engagement Across a Lifetime
Whether it's preparing a new generation of leaders to run for office, training election officials on complex electoral rules, or equipping classrooms with the tools to teach the next generation about civic participation, this year's Crimsonbridge Foundation Civic Engagement partners are helping more Americans take part in nonpartisan civic engagement and education.
The Crimsonbridge Foundation is partnering with four organizations to support nonpartisan civic engagement efforts across the country. She Should Run, Running Start, RepresentWomen, and the Center for Civic Design are national nonprofit organizations working at the intersection of leadership development, civic participation, and making community engagement accessible.
Civic engagement doesn't start at the ballot box. It starts early in the classroom. That's why Crimsonbridge is excited to welcome two additional national partners that are working to strengthen K-12 civic education: iCivics and Generation Citizen. Their robust nonpartisan curricula and teacher resources are helping students understand how government works long before they're old enough to vote, at a moment when most states are moving to require civic education.
Since 2018, the Foundation's Civic Engagement program area has supported 20 organizations that build leadership and civic engagement infrastructure, cohort-based training, programming, and coaching that community leaders depend upon.
In 2026, these six partnerships reflect the Foundation's continued dedication to nonpartisan approaches that invite all people to participate in public leadership and civic decision-making. Learn more about their ongoing work:
Center for Civic Design is partnering with states to design new nonpartisan communications for election officials across rural, suburban, and urban jurisdictions in all 50 states. With the 2026 midterm elections introducing complex new rules, this project will help election offices (and the often-volunteer staff who run them) communicate these changes clearly. The project's expected reach spans more than 500 election offices and, indirectly, 158 million eligible voters.
Generation Citizen has reached a quarter of a million young people through their peer-driven community-based civics education model. Providing a middle and high school curriculum across 17 states, Generation Citizen is building civic knowledge that helps students and teachers implement the civic education policies that were passed in 34 states in 2026! The organization serves as a national resource for K-12 civic education research, recently piloting a Civics Seal for K-12 schools alongside in-person teacher training, civics day events, and digital learning.
iCivics provides nonpartisan civics education and reaches 9 million students and 145,000+ educators across 40 states. Founded by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, iCivics has expanded research to help close longstanding gaps in civics outcomes data and developed middle school programming with game-based curriculum to bring more primary sources into the classroom. Its project-based civics high school curriculum is helping schools meet a growing number of state civics requirements. The organization also hosts a national Civic Learning Week in March.
RepresentWomen plans to expand nonpartisan, cross-issue communications to build public awareness and understanding of key electoral reforms like ranked choice voting and proportional representation. Using jargon-free language designed to reach audiences in all 50 states, RepresentWomen will add a distinctive new resource for leaders and communities - developed in partnership with a national collaborative that will advise on and disseminate the work.
Running Start will expand its Next Step community cohorts with a curriculum designed to train 200 young leaders. Participant-driven and informed by alumni, the Next Step program has earned a reputation for drawing curious Gen Z leaders out of disengagement and into public service, with a coordinated system of nonpartisan mentorship that supports alumni across party lines.
She Should Run will scale its Local Leader Lab, a cohort training model piloted in 2025 and is expected to reach at least 300 leaders and their communities across 30+ states. The Local Leader Lab pairs leaders with in-person and virtual convenings alongside nonpartisan voter activation resources and civic engagement toolkits. With a community of more than 58,000 leaders, She Should Run is raising the bar for leadership training across the entire civic engagement field.
We hope you will explore the resources, programming, and research that these national leaders offer in the field of civic engagement and civic education today. To learn more about Crimsonbridge Foundation's Civic Engagement partnerships, visit https://www.crimsonbridge.org/civic-engagement.
