#WeTheCivic America 250:
Our Stories.
Our Democracy.
On July 4, 2026, “America” turns 250 years old.
In June 2026, a collective of nonprofit partners will lanch #WeTheCivic: America 250—a collective narrative movement dedicated to putting multiracial nonprofit and civil society voices at the center of how America tells its 250-year story.
In an era of book bans and erasure in curricula and defunding of libraries, truth stripped from archives, and immigrant voices and bodies silenced, we have every reason to believe “official” America 250 narratives will be whitewashed, incomplete, and dangerous in their omissions.
We are building local and national partnerships to refute and refuse that narrative by sharing the voices of nonprofit and civic workers, voices, media and funders doing the daily work to advance a thriving, inclusive democracy.
Because democracy's unfinished work requires our narratives, our stories, and our communities.
“In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.”
—Toni Morrison,
‘No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear’
What Is
WeTheCivic?
#WeTheCivic is a dedicated narrative movement to surface and celebrate the unquenchable nonprofit and civil society voices fighting every day for our democracy—and our future.
Inspired by the call to #UniteInAdvance, we will raise our voices to:
Reclaim July as a time to center community voices, celebrate our civic impact, collaborate on democracy’s challenges, and champion its potential
Amplify nonprofit sector storytelling, solutions, and solidarity needed to advance access to opportunity, joy, and freedom for all
Advance nonprofit and civic partnerships and narrative power-building
We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams. This is our moment.
Why
America 250?
In the last years, we’ve witnessed a full-scale campaign by elected officials to silence American voices, stories, bodies, history, and journalism.
This includes illegal attacks on our First Amendment rights, wholesale erasure of American stories, and armed attempts to disappear our people and communities, both online and in person.
We refuse to be silenced. We refuse to be erased. The promise of American democracy belongs to all of us. Not only the richest voices or those with the narrowest definitions of patriotism.
This Independence Day, will you celebrate the nonprofit and civic workers and community members who protect and advance democracy every day of the year?
Why center nonprofit voices?
The multiracial, multilingual, multigenerational nonprofit sector has been the connective tissue of American democracy for those 250 years.
Enslaved people building mutual aid networks. Immigrant communities founding neighborhood institutions. Indigenous organizers defending sovereignty. Black women leading civic movements. Queer activists building health infrastructure. Workers organizing for economic dignity across generations. Climate defenders protecting communities that government abandoned.
Nonprofit workers, leaders, activists, and funders are central to the work of democracy, and the stories of democracy.
None of these stories will tell themselves.
Join the Movement
The movement will have three parts.
A Democracy250 Series: A series of essays and/or art from public thinkers examining different moments in the last 250 years of nonprofits defending and advancing multiracial democracy's unfulfilled promises, from community advancement to policy change.
Each piece will center intersectional nonprofit workers, histories, organizations, and/or stories that have been systematically excluded or ignored from dominant narratives about who and how we advance the unfulfilled promises of a thriving multiracial “American democracy.”
All content will be republished by Nonprofit Quarterly, and aggressively syndicated to media partners covering the America 250 cultural moment.
#WeTheCivic Day of Narrative Action: On July 4, 2026, we’re calling for a movement to resist sanitized 250th anniversary and whitewashed democracy narratives, and instead celebrate the civic sector working every day to defend it.
This is the No Kings model applied to the nonprofit sector: one day, one shared belief, infinite individual expression. The ask is simple but defiant: flood the feeds on July 4. Share a #WeTheCivic story, video, photo, post, or testimonial that names a nonprofit organization or person building a stronger multiracial democracy.
#WeTheCivic Nonprofit Newsroom Network: A cross-sector coalition of independent media organizations, nonprofit newsrooms, and civic institutions are committing to publishing stories of local nonprofits defending democracy and impacting their communities on July 4, 2026. NPQ will commit to republishing and amplifying local and independent newsroom and narrative platform coverage of
