History shows the most reliable path toward creating greater opportunity for all people is to apply key principles to society’s most pressing challenges. That is why the Charles Koch Foundation (CKF) supports organizations and changemakers who share a commitment to what we refer to as the Principles of Human Progress, which include:
- Bottom Up: People with personal knowledge of a problem are the most likely to discover solutions that get the best results.
- Mutual Benefit: People succeed by creating value for others.
- Self-Actualization: People live more meaningful lives when they can continually discover, develop, and apply their unique gifts to benefit others.
- Openness: The free movement of ideas, resources, and people generates knowledge, innovation, and opportunity.
- Dignity: Everyone is capable of extraordinary things.
Here are some examples of these principles in action.
Employers and employees benefit when learning is lifelong
Americans want to acquire skills that will allow them to find jobs that give them both purpose and a paycheck. In an October RealClearEducation column, our Executive Director Ryan Stowers noted this desire is present even during the middle and high school years. The hunger is further evident once workers are on the job. The Harris Poll found 80 percent of Americans consider professional development and training offerings to be important when accepting a new job, for example.
In a June impact story, CKF noted that when people have the chance to discover, develop, and deploy their unique gifts, good things happen. Businesses meet customers’ needs, communities prosper, and employees are fulfilled. Michael Horn further articulated the employer benefits of lifelong learning in a new book, Job Moves, and in a series of CKF-supported podcast episodes. Horn said when employers “understand employees’ quests,” they are able to “make roles more malleable to better utilize people [they] value rather than try[ing] to force square pegs into round holes.”
Bringing this mutual benefit to life is why, in 2024, CKF continued to support organizations that provide Americans with a diverse array of opportunities to learn about themselves and acquire the skills to find work they love.
Many of these organizations came together at the CKF-sponsored Human Potential Summit (HPS). HPS Founder Taylor McLemore developed the event to address the frustration many Americans experience at work. Like CKF, McLemore believes this feeling stems from the fact that a sizable percentage of people are not in jobs that maximize each individual’s ability to contribute. The employers, solution providers, and others assembled were united by their desire to help more people find work where their unique talents are valued and honed.
To encourage more employers to experiment in this arena, CKF also partnered with Jobs for the Future (JFF) to bring together 50 companies from 17 industries. Accenture, JPMorgan Chase, General Motors, McDonald’s, Blackstone, and Best Buy were among the companies that shared their stories of adopting practices that empower employees. JFF’s Employer Impact Model is just one tool that provides structured guidance to help business leaders strategically invest in employees’ career mobility and well-being. The Burning Glass Institute’s 2024 American Opportunity Index is another, serving as a benchmark for employers who want to respond to workers’ demand for skills acquisition and career progression. Burning Glass found both employees and their employees benefit when companies foster a culture of skills acquisition. In fact, organizations that prioritize this ethos are more likely to draw applicants from underserved talent pools, an outcome that helps address workforce gaps.
The Skills First Future, a new initiative from SHRM, also will help companies translate excitement about lifelong learning into practice. Its tools include an artificial intelligence-based system that helps employers understand how to adopt skills-based practices, a resource library to assist employers in selecting effective hiring tools, and a credentialling system to certify human resources professionals, hiring managers, and C-suite executives in skills-first practices.
In 2024, CKF also continued its support for SkillsFWD, a transformative initiative to advance skills-based hiring and economic mobility through the development of digital credentials called learning and employment records, or LERs. These records help create channels of opportunity by allowing individuals to easily share and validate their educational and career journeys with employers. By the end of the third quarter of 2024, more than 167,000 learners were using digital skill record wallets and 300 employers had access to these records.
Continuing to meet Americans’ demand for an array of learning opportunities also requires support for education and training providers that can move fast enough to partner with employers in emerging markets while maintaining focus on the best practices that prepare students for lifetime of learning and self-discovery. That is one reason CKF is working with Education Design Lab to co-create actionable, scalable skills-first blueprints, frameworks, and tools that facilitate employer-process change and skills-enabled technologies that meet the needs of data-processing and health care businesses in Texas and Florida, respectively. Meanwhile, CKF grantee Per Scholas has increased the job seekers it serves by partnering with community-based organizations, including Westside Works in Atlanta, to make their training and programming more accessible to residents.
CKF’s education and training provider partners also include the SkillUp Coalition and the Make It Movement. Since its inception, SkillUp has attracted more than three million users and is now partnering with more than 2,500 education programs, like Merit America, to connect workers with learning opportunities that equip them with new skills to secure meaningful, high-quality, in-demand jobs. Additionally, more than 90,000 individuals have utilized the Make It Movement platform, which helps young learners determine their aptitudes and interests and explore thousands of careers that may or may not require a college degree.
“There are then a host of ways young people can acquire the skills that will help them earn a job in the industry where they want to work,” Stowers wrote in RealClearEducation. CKF remains committed to finding, developing, and scaling programs that help Americans contribute to their own lives and the lives of others.
A commitment to openness enables societies and individuals to flourish
With the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence fast approaching, now is the time to support projects that will help Americans reflect on the foundational principles that have driven steady, but uneven, progress toward a society committed to the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all. To advance this work, CKF continued its long-standing support of a network of field-leading leading scholars who investigate and interrogate these principles.
Our partners include the Institute for Humane Studies, which provides a scholarly community, programs, and events that facilitate the free exchange of ideas. Like CKF, IHS believes important discoveries occur when people come together across interests, ideologies, and industries. IHS helps scholars from a wide array of disciplines and viewpoints convene to identify common concerns and avenues for collaboration and civil discourse.
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University advances knowledge about how free and open markets help Americans lead happier, healthier, and more fulfilled lives. By applying rigorous research to real-world concerns, Mercatus bridges the gap between theory and practice and strives to realize a world where markets operate at their full potential to increase abundance, civility, and well-being for all Americans.
Organizations like IHS and Mercatus complement the scholarship conducted at university centers across the country that share a commitment to advancing the ideas necessary to support a free and flourishing society.
At Creighton University, the Menard Center for Economic Inquiry has developed a community of students and scholars engaging in discussions about the relationship between the United States’ founding principles and the impact markets and economic freedom have on human flourishing. In-depth courses, compelling reading groups, and high-quality public events engage students and allow them to wrestle with how the nation’s founding principles affect their daily lives and the country’s direction. The University of Notre Dame’s Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government has cultivated a community of thoughtful and educated citizens by supporting scholarship and education concerning the importance of institutions and constitutional government. These are just two of the many campus-based programs that CKF and our partners supported in 2024.
In 2024, CKF also supported organizations grappling with the rapidly changing conditions in which students and faculty are pursuing truth and new discoveries. One example is the Center for Open Science, which launched a project to restore Americans’ trust in the peer-review system scholars depend on to test the application of core principles to society’s challenges. With CKF’s support, the center began development of Life Cycle Journal, a publication that will improve peer review for scientific research and enhance the discourse about this research.
The scale and scope of our partners’ work is impressive, but a student story CKF shared in September helps convey the impact. Cameron Tiefenthaler, a graduate of Miami University, shared her experience leading and participating in events with the CKF-supported Menard Family Center for Democracy. She argued, “Making sure we have the systems in place on college campuses, and in all parts of society, where you are exposed to ideas that are different than your own is really important to ensuring we are critically thinking through issues.”
Now, more than ever, CKF remains committed to ensuring those systems reflect the Principles of Human Progress.
