Our Mission

The mission statement

We Are Americans Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening civic infrastructure through nonpartisan civic education, practical guidance, community engagement, and leadership development. Our programs are open to all, with particular focus on minorities, immigrants, and underserved and underrepresented communities that too often face barriers to civic knowledge, participation, and leadership.

We equip people with the knowledge, tools, and confidence to understand public institutions, navigate civic systems, engage meaningfully in their communities, and grow as civic leaders. That work strengthens the connection between people, their communities, and the institutions meant to serve them.

We answer the questions government websites assume you already know. We do not tell anyone what to think. Everything we publish is open to read at no cost, with no account and nothing to sell, and we publish in English and in Spanish.

Informed Citizens. Empowered Communities. Stronger America.

Most People Are Not Missing Interest. They Are Missing a Starting Point.

Civics is taught once in this country, at around fourteen, and then never again. Adult life arrives with a rezoning notice, a property assessment, a school boundary change, a water rate increase and a jury summons, and the last time anyone explained any of it you were in the ninth grade.

So people learn to describe the whole thing as “the system”, which is what you call a machine when nobody has shown you the parts. Ask someone whether they care what happens where they live and they say yes. Ask who sits on their school board and the room goes quiet.

That silence is a writing problem, not a character problem. Government sources are accurate and close to unreadable. Commercial sites are readable and built to sell you something. Classroom material is written for teenagers. Almost nobody writes for an adult with a real question and a deadline this week.

It is also fixable, which is the entire reason this organization exists.

The Numbers We Work Against

13%

of American adults cannot name a single branch of government. Annenberg Public Policy Center, August 2025, 1,684 adults.

12%

named the right to petition the government when listing First Amendment rights. It is the one that underwrites every letter to an official.

of Americans aged 18 to 24 answered all four of a standard civics quiz correctly. Forty percent got one. Institute for Citizens and Scholars.

Underneath those averages is the part that decides what we build. The last national assessment of eighth grade civics, in 2022, found gaps by race, income and language that were enormous. Civic knowledge in America tracks a school district more closely than it tracks curiosity.

Who We Are For

People who were never taught this

You have voted for thirty years and you are still not certain what a county board does, or why a school board election happens in an odd year. That is the most common civic experience in America and it is nothing to be embarrassed about.

Minority and underserved communities

Where the knowledge gap is widest and the cost of not knowing is highest. Our outreach concentrates here. Not because the interest is lower, because it never was, but because the information has been thinnest.

Readers in Spanish

Written in Spanish by people who write Spanish, not run through a translator afterward. Same facts, same sources, same date stamps.

Anyone explaining this to a young person

Parents, teachers, and whoever ends up doing it at a kitchen table. If you are the adult trying to close this gap for somebody, we want to hand you something usable.

What Each Pillar Commits Us To

A pillar is only worth stating if it changes what we publish. Here is what each one obligates us to do.

Learn

Explain how the thing works before explaining how to use it. Five levels of government, how a law is made, how a rule is made, what the Constitution sets up. Then link to the official source, because nobody should have to take our word for it.

Navigate

Name the office, the form and the next step. A page that explains a problem without telling you who to contact has not finished the job.

Engage

Describe what actually happens in the room before somebody walks into it. Meetings, hearings and comment periods are open by law, and knowing the format is most of the barrier.

Lead

Treat leadership as a set of steps rather than a personality. Boards have seats, commissions have applications, ballots have filing deadlines. We publish the steps.

How We Stay Nonpartisan

We describe law and policy. We do not argue for or against it. We do not endorse candidates, rate officials, score legislation, or tell anyone how to vote.

When a policy is genuinely disputed, we say what the dispute is and who is on each side, without picking one. When a fact is contested, we attribute it. When we do not know something, the page says so instead of filling the space.

This is not caution. It is the product. A reader who suspects we are steering them has no reason to trust anything else on the page, and the readers we care about most have the least margin for being steered.

What We Are Not

We are a private nonprofit. We are not a government agency and we are not affiliated with one. We charge nothing and we sell nothing.

There is no account to create and no form anywhere on this site. Not one page asks for your name, your email address or any other personal information.

Nothing here is legal advice. We explain how a process works and point you at the official source. For advice about your own situation, talk to a lawyer.