Civics PlaybookGeorgia Center for Civic Engagement
- Mission: To educate and equip students to become informed and active citizens.
- Geographic Focus: Georgia –with plans to expand across the nation
- Audience: K-12 students and teachers, college students and teachers, and school administrators
- Budget: $1.8 million
- Focus Areas & Core Competencies:
- Hands-on civics participation
- Youth-in-Government Expo
- Teacher resources
Invest in Teachers to Build Effective Citizens
Impact: Georgia Center for Civic Engagement
The Georgia Center for Civic Engagement served 167,000 students in the 2023-2024 academic school year through their various hands-on civic programs.
A Conversation with Dr. Randell Trammell, CEO of the Georgia Center for Civic Engagement
Q: What is the mission of the Georgia Center for Civic Engagement? What problem(s) in civics education is your nonprofit working to solve?
Our mission is to educate and equip students to become informed and active citizens. We work within the K-12 space in Georgia. On a regular basis, we’re getting requests from colleges and universities to also engage with them.
Our focus is on K-12 students in Georgia including private schools, public schools, homeschools. We try to work with anybody who falls into that age range.
Our secret recipe is experiential learning. We believe that students need to understand the way their government works. The best way for them to do that is to actually participate in a model legislature, or another simulated government program. We do a lot of simulated programs that allow the students to actually put on the robes of democracy and legislate for a day, or contemplate the legal ramifications of this position or that.
Q: How do you describe the big goals the Georgia Center for Civic Engagement is working to achieve? How do you measure impact?
We want to serve every K-12 student in Georgia. We want every student to understand that they have not only the right but the responsibility to vote, to get engaged with their local, state, and federal policy. We want them to understand that there is a role for them. And not everyone needs to become an elected representative or senator or commissioner. But the whole basis of our constitutional republic is based on the idea that everyone accepts the need for civic virtue, and then everyone participates.
We’re also working with our Department of Education and have created something groundbreaking. We’ve helped put together a government public administration pathway in our career-tech program. The courses have really been strengthened by pairing it with social studies courses. Through this program, we’re really trying to build the pipeline to public service.
As far as measurement, we have stories from students for impact. But we also have pre- and post-test assessments that help us gauge and measure student levels of knowledge and civic identity. On the workforce side, we can track the number of students that go into internships and work-based learning scenarios within their local or state government offices. So there’s quantitative and qualitative atoms that we use to track our success.
Q: What are some of the biggest challenges the Georgia Center for Civic Engagement has experienced in working to accomplish its mission? How did your organization overcome those challenges?
One of the biggest challenges is over-politicization. Teachers are afraid to teach certain things because they don’t want to lose their job or end up on the news. We teach the process devoid of politics.
The other issue comes down to funding. Because we’re teaching government, everyone thinks that our natural funding partner is the government. But that’s not the case. We depend on the generosity of donors and individuals and foundations that help supplement our programs in the program fees, so that we can serve all students regardless of their ability to pay.
Q: What is the Georgia Center for Civic Engagement’s biggest need/where philanthropists can help your organization achieve its goals?
One of our biggest needs is a scholarship fund to underwrite student participation. Almost all of our simulations are residential. You’re looking at two to four nights in a hotel with meals. There’s a tangible cost to that.
We’re a lean and mean organization, and we’re getting close to capacity. A lot of funders don’t necessarily want to fund full-time staff equivalents, but we’re getting to the point where we need additional headcount to help serve the students in Georgia. This past school year, we served 167,000 students, which we’re very proud of, with a headcount of four and a half. But the truth is, there are a million students in Georgia, and we’re just scratching the surface.
Q: Beyond the Georgia Center for Civic Engagement, where should philanthropists who care about advancing civic knowledge invest their charitable dollars?
The Bill of Rights Institute, and Constitutional Rights Foundation, and iCivics do great work. A lot of folks are doing incredible work in this space.
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