ABOUT

THE INSTITUTE

Our Vision

The Institute for Common Power is a non-profit educational branch of Common Power, dedicated to illuminating undervalued, underappreciated, and pivotal aspects of our collective history. We catalyze people to action through experiential learning opportunities such as workshops, lectures, courses, learning tours, and national educational events designed to foster, sustain, and expand what should be the most common power in American democracy — the right to vote.

Ensuring a vote for all is essential to dismantling systems of injustice and creating equitable healthcare, living wages, decent housing, affordable education, and so much more. We also seek to lead by example as we guide learning and implement programs and initiatives devoted to social change. The Institute for Common Power is wholly dedicated to education to action as a foundation for social justice and inclusive democracy in the United States.

Organizational Partnerships

We have partnered with organizations from across the country to lead them through our Truth & Purpose Learning Tours. Our partnerships are essential to the work we do in building a more just and inclusive democracy as we safeguard the teaching of truth.

Our Daily Mission

Movement Learning

We focus on and learn about how common power has been forged in America despite overwhelming obstacles. Specifically, we are guided by the strategies, people, and institutions in movements for Emancipation, Citizenship, Suffrage, Civil Rights, and Justice to inform how we take action to foster a just and inclusive democracy today.

Immediate Application

We apply our learning to intertwined struggles today over civics education, voting rights, and a just democracy. Knowledge without application is the province of the privileged; in our programs we emphasize the links between voting justice and pathways to unlock systems of inequity and achieve genuine common power–right here, right now.

Purposeful Action

We commit to carrying our education into intentional action in support of voting justice and equity in America. This includes upholding accurate information about civil and voting rights, advocating for more inclusive enfranchisement policies, mobilizing people to cast votes, electing officials who are committed to voting for all, and implementing programs that demonstrate how we can create racial equity.

Our Impact

The Institute for Common Power is dedicated to teaching truth, so that educators and others are equipped with the knowledge, perseverance, and inspiration necessary to combat the threats to education. We all know that you cannot understand our modern existence without exploring the historical processes that have worked to create both tragedy and triumph.

Students Taught by Our Institute for Common Power Educator Ambassadors

Our Goal Pace of 100 new Educators per year

Our Current Pace of 64 new Educators per year

The Institute for Common Power currently supports approximately 32 educators per Educator Learning Tour. We aim to increase this number to 50 educators per tour, a 56% increase, which would expand our five-year impact by reaching an estimated 65,000 additional students. This growth represents a 24% increase in our overall student reach who will be taught by our Educator Ambassadors.