The Highlander Center was founded in 1932 to serve as an adult education center for community workers involved in social and economic justice movements. The goal of Highlander was and is to provide education and support to poor and working people fighting economic injustice, poverty, prejudice, and environmental destruction. They help grassroots leaders create the tools necessary for building broad-based movements for change.

Launched in 1981, ARC was born out of the community organizing experience. Both activists and academics recognized a need for rigorous study of the practice of organizing and the need for solid research into the issues around which organizers were mounting campaigns.

Today ARC is a leading research lab and foundry where academics and activists forge tools to spark social progress and measure the result.

DataCenter exists to build the capacity of a broad-based social justice movement that embodies, embraces, and honors diverse cultures to create the new systems and institutions essential to building a just and equitable world.

The DataCenter's programs include economic justice, environmental justice, youth, and criminal justice.

CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) promotes research on the civic and political engagement of Americans between the ages of 15 and 25. Although CIRCLE conducts and funds research, not practice, the projects that we support have practical implications for those who work to increase young people's engagement in politics and civic life. CIRCLE is also a clearinghouse for relevant information and scholarship. CIRCLE was founded in 2001 with a generous grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts and is now also funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York. It is based in the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy.