Institute for Civic Service
The architecture of our shared life.
Civic service is the noble calling spanning the full spectrum of work toward the common good: volunteers, nonprofits, private-sector partners, and, at its cornerstone, the professional civil service. We exist to renew it.
Together, We Serve
What we build
What we build
Products for change. We are product-oriented. We build the things that make change possible.
The FRAME Act
New legislation: the FRAME Act, written with the practitioners who build and use the system.
The Lost Art of the Plan
Manuals for success: The Lost Art of the Plan, recovering the craft of city planning.
Civil Service DNA
Philosophical grounding: the Civil Service DNA, the timeless principles of public service.
Learn
Learn
The quiet crisis
A slow, decades-long erosion of public trust in institutions, not from a single event, but from a pattern citizens have come to expect: delivery failures, bureaucratic inertia, and siloed, risk-averse government. It announces itself not in headlines but in the resignation of people who no longer believe the state can build, deliver, or keep its word.
Our method
Our method: transform the mindset and the tools (how civil servants think, plan, and deliver) while holding fast to the timeless values (the ethical inheritance that makes public service worthy of the public’s trust). Ambition in method, constancy in values.
Our values
- Collaboration
Building across sectors and silos to solve complex public problems together.
- Rigor
Grounded in evidence before ideology, exhaustive analysis before action.
- Innovation
New tools for old duties; relentless ambition in administrative method.
- Stewardship
Guarding the public trust with unyielding constancy in core values.
- Non-partisanship
Service above politics, institutional merit above faction.
Get involved
Get involved
We are a convener: we bring together public agencies, private firms, universities, and civic organizations, working across sectors to turn ideas into deliverable reform.
Help shape FRAME
Comment: For practitioners: share comments on the draft.
Endorse: For organizations that want to stand behind the work.
Convene: For partners who can bring people together around the draft.
Brief: For policymakers and staff, from any party, who want a briefing on the Act.
Put the book to work
The Lost Art of the Plan: a moral argument, practical manual, and call to action for civic leaders and public servants to reclaim comprehensive, artist-like city planning.
Read the work
Read the work
The Quiet Crisis
The foundational essay of the Institute. It names the quiet crisis: a decades-long erosion of public trust, driven not by ideology but by delivery failure, by institutions that cannot do what they promise.
The Lost Art of the Plan
The Lost Art of the Plan. Plan for Planning, Second Edition, 2026. A Guide to Seeing the City Whole.
FRAME for Mobility: Introduction
FRAME for Mobility: Introduction. January 22, 2026, 19 pages, PDF 2.2 MB.
Donate
It’s time to renew the work we were born to do.
Support the mission of the Institute for Civic Service. Tax-deductible via our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor.
Institute for Civic Service is fiscally sponsored by The Hack Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Our EIN is 81-2908499.