The Center For Michigan Inc

Programs: Inform program: the center strives to provide independent, balanced, thoughtful and high-quality journalism, a survival guide for michiganders with a stake in our state's future. The center also works collaboratively with various media to provide in-depth reporting to our partners, in so doing, building journalism capacity in ways that support michigan news media, citizens, business and philanthropy. The center's major focus is bridge magazine, a free online news magazine. The center's michigan truth squad examines and fact checks political advertisements.

engage program: the center works to call forth citizen views through our interactive, small-group community conversations and other public engagement tools that provide opportunities for thousands of michigan citizens each year to better understand public policy issues, discuss them with fellow citizens and develop common ground positions. Through this process of bottom-up "deliberative democracy," the center sets its policy priorities and works to enhance citizen participation in a democracy. Since our foundation began, the center has engaged more than 16,000 michigan citizens in our various outreach programs, by far the largest public engagement effort in michigan history. To assure statistical rigor and legitimacy of our policy positions, the center is careful to make sure the demography of our participants - in gender, age, race and geographical location matches the diversity of michigan's population.

achieve program: the center wants to put thoughts into action calling forth citizen voices through public outreach work. The center informs citizens and nourishes and amplifies citizen views through journalism, and takes the results into the halls of power as legitimate expressions of citizen attitudes. For example, in the years since the center's founding, its work has resulted in changing state law to prevent local school boards from reducing the school year, cutting appropriations for the state's prison system by $200 million annually and sharply increasing state support for early childhood schooling programs. The center's recent publication, the public's agenda for public education, has precipitated widespread discussion of how best to improve student learning in michigan schools.