Preparing Young People for Leadership in America

The Pope Foundation’s new Grantee Profile focuses on The Fund for American Studies, a nonprofit that prepares young people for leadership, with particular emphasis on economics:

The time was the late 1960s. The United States was engulfed in a seismic cultural and political shift. Radicalism dominated college campuses. Confidence in the American system of government was on the decline.

That atmosphere prompted former New Jersey Governor Charles Edison, in 1967, to lay the foundation for what would become the Fund for American Studies, a nonprofit that organizes training programs to teach college students the values of freedom, individual responsibility, and free markets.

Today, TFAS has over 13,500 alumni representing 1,900 colleges and universities, all 50 states, and 113 countries.

Built around training young people to be the leaders of tomorrow, TFAS targets students interested in fields of study that are particularly influential in society: journalism, government, political science, international affairs, nonprofits, and the law.

“The founders of the Fund for American Studies felt it was the obligation of every generation to prepare the next generation for leadership. That’s particularly true in a free society,” said TFAS President Roger Ream.

At the time that TFAS was funded, Ream says, there was a deep concern that young people weren’t getting a balanced perspective on government in the halls of higher education.