MAKE IT BETTER
"I walked past it everyday. Nobody ever told me I was allowed to fix it!"
Help YC² open five Founding Civic Impact Sites by December 31, 2026.
$375,000. Five communities. One generation that stops waiting.
THE GREAT THING ABOUT AMERICA IS THAT YOU CAN MAKE IT BETTER THAN YOU FOUND IT.™
Every young person has something they walk past.
The bus route that never comes.
The creek nobody has tested.
The clinic that closed.
The meeting where their family had no seat.
They see it. They live with it. They already have opinions about it.
Then they walk past — because no one ever offered them a way in.
YC² IS THE WAY IN!
TWENTY WEEKS, FROM THE INSIDE
FRAME . WEEK 1
FRAME . WEEK 4
DESIGN . WEEK 8
DESIGN . WEEK 11
CREATE . WEEK 16
CREATE . WEEK 19
SHARE . WEEK 20
"I said what bothered me. My team made me prove it."
"I was wrong about the cause. That was the most useful week of my life."
"I had to sit down with people who disagreed with me. Nobody walked out."
"We stopped arguing about what should happen and started deciding what
we could actually do."
"We built it. Smaller than we imagined. More useful than we imagined."
"We measured it. Two things worked. One didn't. We said so out loud."
"We stood up in front of the town. And then a team three states away asked
how we did it."
"I started the year saying somebody should.
I ended it saying we did!"
What YC² Actually Is
YC² is a national, nonpartisan program where teams of high-school students take on a real problem in their own community — and are held to finishing it.
Not a class. Not a simulation. Not an awareness campaign.
Share
Publish it, so the next community doesn’t start
from zero.
Create
Do it. Measure it.
Say honestly what changed and what didn’t.
Design
Build a team. Hear the people who disagree. Choose a response you can actually deliver.
Frame
Find the real problem.
Test what you
assume about it.
Student Takeaway
Why Sites, Not Classrooms
A TEAM IS PEOPLE.
A SITE IS WHAT LETS THE TEAM EXIST.
A cohort is one team, one season.
A Founding Civic Impact Site is the structure underneath it:
-
Partners who open doors
-
Coaches trained to guide without taking over.
-
Materials and transportation so cost never decides who participates.
-
Money for the project itself.
-
Honest evaluation.
-
Line to the national network.
$75,000 opens one. We are opening five.
What Your Gift Actually Buys
$25 / month | MAKE IT BETTER MONTHLY
Participant support, materials, seed money — the quiet things that decide who gets to participate.
$2,500 | COACH PARTNER
Trains the adult who shows up every week and doesn’t take over.
$10,000 | CIVIC PROJECT PARTNER
One team's project, from first question to public presentation.
$25,000 | SITE PARTNER
A major share of getting one community ready and keeping it running.
$38,000 | COHORT PARTNER
A full team for a full season - coaching, materials, and the project itself.
$75,000 | FOUNDING SITE PARTNER
Opens one of the five founding sites.
$100,000+ | REGIONAL LAUNCH PARTNER
Opens a region.
One site can be opened by one partner at $75,000, or by a circle: two at $25,000, two at $10,000, and two at $2,500.
$375,000 by December 31st, 2026
Five Founding Sites. Five communities.
The first five nodes of a network where what one town learns,
the next town gets.
Right Now, somewhere, a young person is walking past something they could fix.
GIVE THEM A REASON TO STOP
The great thing about America is that you can make it better than you found it.™