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Organizations and Foundations Making a Positive Impact in Communities
Education Reform
Criminal Justice
&
Social Reform
Funding Inovative Ideas
VELA is a national nonprofit fund that launched in 2020. VELA invests in everyday entrepreneurs – students, parents, educators, and community leaders – who are envisioning new approaches that meet learners’ and families’ needs. These models include homeschool co-ops, microschools, after-school programs, and much, much more. VELA does not dictate solutions to its grantees. Instead, VELA trusts grantees to identify what their communities need and how they can best meet those needs.
WE’RE PARENTS AND EDUCATORS COMMITTED TO BUILDING A BETTER FUTURE FOR OUR KIDS
The Liberation of Education was born in 2021, out of frustration with the education status quo. Our founding team of veteran educators and in-the-trenches parents wanted better.
Our goal now is to build a community of parents, innovators, and educators all working to build a better future for our kids – one where kids’ individual needs are seen and heard, and where kids get to experience the joy of learning out of curiosity, not coercion.
Our job is to make it as easy as possible for parents to find all the resources out there, so they can design their kids’ education on their own terms.
We want to live in a world where education options are easy to find. A world with an abundance of approaches – one to fit the needs of every child – and where the thriving of the individual child is the highest priority.
We want the idea of homeschooling, private schooling, and online schooling to not feel foreign, but accessible. Parents who want to take that route should know where to start – and they should know what resources are available to them.
And we want it to be easy for parents to find other people walking the same path – to feel less like dissidents and more like a part of a movement of individuals all building a better future.
Because parents who want more for their kids are part of a movement. The movement may be hard to find, but it’s quickly growing.
A big change in education is already happening. The momentum is strong, and the future is bright.
The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is a 501(c)3 educational foundation and has been trusted by parents and teachers since 1946 to captivate and inspire tomorrow’s leaders with sound economic principles and the entrepreneurial spirit with free online courses, top-rated in-person seminars, free books for classrooms, as well as relevant and worldly daily online content.
Young Voices provides fledgling writers with the guidance needed to succeed during the most critical years of their early career. We do so by acting as a copy editor, agent, and mentor to a roster of pro-liberty writers through our cornerstone Contributors Program. Our network generates 50+ commentaries in print, online, TV, and radio every single month. On top of our public relations capabilities, our writers have exclusive access to continuing education opportunities through our program, including training and mentorship from top think tank scholars. In short, Young Voices is a one-stop-shop for aspiring intellectuals to build their brand and develop their expertise as advocates for market solutions.
The EdChoice mission is to advance educational freedom and choice for all as a pathway to successful lives and a stronger society.
EdChoice is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization committed to understanding and pursuing a K–12 education system that empowers every family to choose the schooling environment that fits their children’s needs best.
ParentsUSATM is the collective voice of parents, all parents! The National Association of Parents, Inc. d/b/a ParentsUSATM focuses the power of parents behind three important missions.
ParentsUSATM’s core objective is to preserve and support the parent-child relationship. By advocating for the rights of parents as protected by the U.S. Supreme Court, ParentsUSATM works to support parents’ rights to raise their children as they see fit, so long as they are not harmed. Through strategic litigation, education, and lobbying, we will reshape public policy to be in alignment with your rights as a parent.
The American Federation for Children seeks to empower families, especially lower-income families, with the freedom to choose the best K-12 education for their children.
Advocate for change at the state and national level regarding school choice issues most important to today’s parents.
Empower families with the freedom to choose the best K-12 education for their child.
Connect families to resources to make the best education decisions for their children.
Identify and develop tomorrow’s leaders in the school choice movement.
Our purpose is to transform education to be as diverse as the kids it’s designed to serve.
We are focused on serving kids and their families.
Instead of allowing politicians and special interests to rule education, we can unleash the extraordinary potential of every kid by treating them with dignity and empowering them to make decisions that are best for them. We give a voice to every parent, student, and teacher who shares that goal.
Free Now Foundation originally operated as the California Chapter of Children's Helath Defense but is now a fully independent 501c3 non-proift. Since early 2020, we have been informing families about their fundamental legal rights, providing self-help legal resources to oppose unlawful school and employment jab and mask requirements. We engage in strategic lawsuits to challenge the illegal mandates in California, which have been among the most restrictive in the country.
We aggresively pursue lawsuits against rogue school districts that force experimental injections onto our children and the implement harmful masking, testing, and quarentiine policies. We sure county boards of supervisors to compel these governing bodies to comply with their statutory duties to review local conditions and hold public meeting in order to keep declared "emergencies" in place.
We are a community that champions human happiness, harmony, and prosperity through the values of self-government. These include persuasion and voluntary cooperation, personal responsibility, and respect for persons and their property.
Our VISION is:
A WORLD OF SELF-GOVERNING PEOPLE LIVING IN A CONDITION OF HAPPINESS, HARMONY AND PROSPERITY.
Those who advocate for self-government reject the initiation of force as a means of solving social problems. Instead, we promote a social philosophy that promises greater public safety, effective regulation, and compassionate welfare. Our philosophy replaces coercion with persuasion and violent state power with systems of voluntary association.
Everything we do is driven by our MISSION:
TO EQUIP PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND, EMBRACE, AND ADVOCATE THE VALUES OF SELF-GOVERNMENT.
Today, almost 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education ushered in the civil rights movement, there is an urgent need to reaffirm and advance its core principles. To insist on our common humanity. To demand that we are each entitled to equality under the law. To bring about a world in which we are all judged by the content of our character and not by the color of our skin.
That’s where FAIR comes in.
We defend civil rights and liberties guaranteed to each individual, including freedom of speech and expression, equal protection under the law, and the right to personal privacy.
We advocate for individuals who are threatened or persecuted for speech, or who are held to a different set of rules for language or conduct based on their skin color, ancestry, or other immutable characteristics.
We support respectful disagreement. We believe bad ideas are best confronted with good ideas—and never with dehumanization, deplatforming, or blacklisting.
We believe that objective truth exists, that it is discoverable, and that scientific research must be untainted by any political agenda.
We are pro-human and promote compassionate opposition to intolerance and racism rooted in dignity and our common humanity.
REFORM Alliance aims to transform probation and parole by changing laws, systems and culture to create real pathways to work and wellbeing.
A justice system that holds people accountable and redirects back to work and wellbeing leads to stronger families and safer communities. Instead of keeping people trapped in a revolving door from probation/parole to prison — which costs taxpayers billions of dollars — we’re working to move people from the justice system into stability.
The Sentencing Project advocates for effective and humane responses to crime that minimize imprisonment and criminalization of youth and adults by promoting racial, ethnic, economic, and gender justice.
The U.S. prison population has grown nearly 500% in the past fifty years.
Increasingly, punitive changes in sentencing laws and policies, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase. Despite increasing evidence that large-scale incarceration is not an effective means of achieving public safety, these trends have resulted in dangerous prison overcrowding as well as weighty fiscal burdens on taxpayers to accommodate a rapidly expanding penal system.
The Sentencing Project advocates for effective and humane responses to crime that minimize imprisonment and criminalization of youth and adults by promoting racial, ethnic, economic, and gender justice.
The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) works to reduce incarceration and violence, improve the outcomes of system-involved youth and adults, and increase the capacity and expertise of the organizations that serve these individuals. NICJR provides technical assistance, consulting, research, organizational development, and advocacy in the fields of juvenile and criminal justice, youth development, and violence prevention. NICJR works with an array of organizations, including government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and philanthropic foundations.
The Justice Foundation, founded in 1993, seeks to protect the fundamental freedoms and rights essential to the preservation of American society by providing free legal services to promote those rights.
To restore proper respect for God’s word and law to American jurisprudence, and thus restore righteousness, justice, mercy and a proper respect for God to the nation.
To pray, litigate, educate and advocate for life, liberty and justice.
The Mission of YATP is to spread, and act on, the Principle of Human Respect.
We accomplish this through:
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Building Community Roots – We find people who are in need, activate our Members to organize that community around their cause, and demonstrate that we care, our solutions work, and they are welcome to join us to accomplish more.
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Network Effect – We grow and nurture a network of engaged and likeminded activists, train them on best practices for organizing and winning on causes, and communicate the principle behind why our solutions work: that people flourish without coercion, force or theft.
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Education and Action – For both our Members and the general public, we use these causes and our network as an opportunity to educate them about the foundational Principle of Human Respect, and give them a direct call to action to implement this Principle into practice.
Our purpose is to use localized, grassroots, single-issue activism to empower people to work together to set our communities free, restore individual rights, and take the power away from government and put it back in your hands, where it belongs.
We are a non-partisan network of activists, community leaders, and candidates for elected office who identify problems and work to implement solutions.
Decriminalize Sex Work (DSW) works to improve policies related to all forms of sex work and to end the prohibition of consensual adult prostitution in the United States. Evidence shows that decriminalizing sex work will help end human trafficking, improve public health, and promote community safety.
Our mission is to end the prohibition of consensual adult prostitution, and to improve policies relating to all forms of sex work.
We work to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone.
Atlas Network increases global prosperity by strengthening a network of independent partner organizations that promote individual freedom and are committed to identifying and removing barriers to human flourishing.
The Atlas Network vision is of a free, prosperous, and peaceful world where the principles of individual liberty, property rights, limited government, and free markets are secured by the rule of law.
Atlas Network cultivates a network of partners that share this vision. To accelerate the pace of achievement by our partners in their local communities, Atlas Network’s unique Coach, Compete, Celebrate!™ strategic model inspires our partners to improve performance and achieve extraordinary outcomes.
Free Speech Makes Free People
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression's mission is to defend and sustain the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for these rights, and provides the means to preserve them.
Vera is fighting to end mass incarceration.
Founded in 1961 to advocate for alternatives to money bail in New York City, Vera is now a national organization that partners with impacted communities and government leaders for change. With offices in four major cities, and a team of hundreds of advocates, researchers, and policy experts, we work to transform the criminal legal and immigration system so that money doesn’t determine freedom; fewer people are incarcerated; and everyone behind bars is treated with dignity.
Our Mission
To end the overcriminalization and mass incarceration of people of color, immigrants, and people experiencing poverty.
Our Vision
Safe, healthy, empowered communities and a fair, accountable justice system.
The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. We have an impact on the system through journalism, rendering it more fair, effective, transparent and humane.
There is bipartisan agreement that the criminal justice system needs reform. Our reporting has shown that it perpetuates racial and economic inequities, costs taxpayers billions of dollars a year, and is toxic to those it incarcerates — and often to those who work in it. Police, courts and prisons are repositories of crises they are ill-equipped to handle, including mental illness, addiction and poverty. And victims of crime often feel re-traumatized by a system that is supposed to protect them.
Although we are not advocates, The Marshall Project often spurs change. Our journalism exposes wrongs, bringing them to the attention of officials who can take action. We give visibility to proposals and critiques from the criminal justice community. And we try to set an example for other media to cover criminal justice issues fairly and responsibly.
We partner with both national and local media outlets to reach diverse audiences who can be awakened to the issue. Our journalism informs criminal justice experts who need fresh and accurate information to do their best work. We also aim to serve and engage the millions of people whose lives have been ensnared in the criminal justice system, and whom the media have too often neglected and marginalized.
You have about 80,000 working hours in your career: 40 years x 50 weeks x 40 hours.
If you want to have a positive impact with your life, your choice of career is probably your best opportunity to do that.
That means it’s worth thinking hard about how to use this time most effectively. If you can make your career 1% higher impact (whatever that means to you), it would in theory be worth spending up to 800 hours working out how.
We aim to help you work out how you can best use your 80,000 hours to help others, and to take action on that basis.
We believe you can increase your impact by much more than 1%, and it’ll take a lot less than 800 hours.
We empower purpose-driven brands to change the world. Iron Light is a change agency with advocacy at its core. We team up with public, private, and nonprofit organizations to create a world without limitations on human potential. The secret to our success is content rooted in neuroscience, design rooted in empathy, and advertising rooted in sociology.
1517 is a venture capital fund and community supporting college dropouts, renegade students, and deep tech scientists with investment at the earliest stages of their companies. Founded by the cofounders of the Thiel Fellowship, it supports founders across software, hardware, and deep tech verticals and also provides a community to hackers, makers, and scientists from across the world.
Stand Together is a philanthropic community. We help America’s boldest changemakers tackle the root causes of our country’s biggest problems.
Stand Together’s vision is for a society where every person can realize their potential and live a life of meaning. That is the North Star that guides everything we do.
Every person has a unique gift and deserves the chance to express it. We break barriers standing in their way.
The best solutions often come from those closest to the problem. We empower people to lead the way forward.
You don’t have to agree on everything to work together. We unite with anyone on areas of common ground.
Mental, Physical, &
Spiritual Change
Anti-War
Founded in 1971 by Robert A. Monroe, the Monroe Institute is widely recognized as a leading center for exploring and experiencing expanded states of consciousness. For over 50 years, our immersive programs have empowered participants to undergo profound transformations, gaining a fresh outlook on life and discovering a deep sense of purpose.
Using cutting-edge Monroe Sound Science technology, guided imagery, and collaborative group activities, our programs have welcomed individuals world-wide from all walks of life. The only prerequisite is an open mind and an understanding that our existence extends beyond the physical realm.
In addition to our experiential programs, the Monroe Institute actively engages in research, partnering with scientists, doctors, and academics to explore the remarkable benefits of expanded states of consciousness.
You may embark on life-changing journeys and access our transformative experiences through Monroe's Expand meditation app, our online courses, or by attending our residential retreats and workshops held worldwide.
As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, the Monroe Institute is dedicated to advancing the global awakening of human consciousness.
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Designed by Sadhguru, Inner Engineering is a transformative program that includes simple Yoga practices, sessions and meditative processes guided by Sadhguru, and the transmission of Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya, a powerful 21-minute Yogic process. This program helps you build a foundation of health, joy and exuberance, and establish a chemistry of blissfulness.
Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran soldiers who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories. We endeavor to stimulate public debate about the price paid for a reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population on a daily basis, and are engaged in the control of that population’s everyday life. Our work aims to bring an end to the occupation.
APN is the sister organization of Shalom Achshav, Israel's preeminent peace movement. APN's mission is to educate and persuade the American public and its leadership to support and adopt policies that will lead to comprehensive, durable, Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab peace, based on a two-state solution, guaranteeing both peoples' security, and consistent with U.S. national interests. We also work to ensure Israel's future and the viability of Israel's democracy and Jewish character through education, activism and advocacy in the United States, and by mobilizing American support for Shalom Achshav.
B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories strives for a future in which human rights, liberty and equality are guaranteed to all people, Palestinian and Jewish alike, living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Such a future will only be possible when the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime end. That is the future we are working towards. B’Tselem (in Hebrew literally: in the image of), the name chosen for the organization by the late Member of Knesset Yossi Sarid, is an allusion to Genesis 1:27: “And God created humankind in His image. In the image of God did He create them.” The name expresses the universal and Jewish moral edict to respect and uphold the human rights of all people.
Since B’Tselem’s inception in 1989, we have been documenting, researching and publishing statistics, testimonies, video footage, position papers and reports on human rights violations committed by Israel in the Occupied Territories. The initial mandate we took upon ourselves focused on the occupation regime in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and in the Gaza Strip. However, over the years, it has become clear that the concept of two parallel regimes operating between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River – a permanent democracy west of the Green Line and a temporary military occupation to the east of it – is divorced from reality. The entire area that Israel controls is ruled by a single apartheid regime, governing the lives of all people living in it and operating according to one organizing principle: establishing and perpetuating the control of one group of people – Jews – over another – Palestinians – through laws, practices and state violence.
In more than 30 years of work, B'Tselem has earned a place of honor in the local and international human rights community, and has received various awards, including the Carter-Menil Award for Human Rights (1989, jointly with Al-Haq); the Danish PL Foundation Human Rights Award (2011, jointly with Al-Haq); the Stockholm Human Rights Award (2014); and the Human Rights Award of the French Republic (2018, jointly with Al-Haq). B’Tselem’s video project has also received various awards, including the British One World Media Award (2009) and the Israeli Documentary Filmmakers Forum Award (2012).
Combatants for Peace is a grassroots movement of Israelis and Palestinians, working together to end the occupation and bring peace, equality and freedom to our homeland. Committed to joint nonviolence since our inception, we use civil resistance, education and other creative means of activism to transform systems of oppression and build a free and peaceful future from the ground up.
Launched in 2006, we are the only movement worldwide that was founded by former fighters on both sides of an active conflict. As a result, we were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 and 2018.
VISION: We believe in a future where all people live in peace with dignity, justice, and liberty.
MISSION: Combatants for Peace (CfP) is a joint Palestinian-Israeli community working in solidarity to end the occupation, discrimination, and oppression of all people living on this land. Guided by the values of nonviolent resistance, we are showing the world that there is another way.
Palestine & Israel
Combatants for Peace is led by a Leading Circle, which is similar to a Board of Directors. The Leading Circle guides all movement management, direction and vision. The Israeli staff works out of the Tel Aviv office, while the Palestinian staff works out of the Beit Jala office. Together, the staff provides the infrastructure and financial support to provide for the movement. The Activities Circle coordinate all movement activism, campaigns and lead the Regional Groups of local activists.
Zochrot is an NGO that has been working since 2002 for exposing and disseminating historical information about the Palestinian Nakba in Hebrew, with a view to promote accountability for the Nakba among the Jewish public of Israel and the implementation of the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees.
Yesh Din – Volunteers for Human Rights is an Israeli organization registered as a non-profit in Israel. Yesh Din is subject to Israeli law and is served by a volunteer corps and by a professional staff, lawyers and human rights experts. Yesh Din was established in 2005 and has since worked to protect the human rights of Palestinians living under Israeli armed forces’ occupation. We view the occupation as a main source of the violation of the human rights and therefore seek to end it.
Yesh Din documents, collects and disseminates reliable and updated information regarding systematic human rights violations in the OPT. We have a two-tiered approach: On the individual level, we work on individual cases to assist those whose rights have been violated. On the systemic level, we use the accumulation of individual incidents to identify structural violations of human rights and advocate for change. Yesh Din conducts public and legal advocacy in order to pressure Israel’s authorities to implement their duty according to international humanitarian law to protect the Palestinians and their rights, and raise public awareness to human rights violations in the OPT.
Yesh Din’s work focuses on law enforcement on settlers and other Israeli civilians; criminal accountability of Israeli security forces personnel in the West Bank suspected of offenses against Palestinians; and human rights violations related to takeover of Palestinian land and restricting Palestinians’ access to their land.