About
The Institute for Civic Service
We empower individuals and institutions to harness the transformative power of civic service, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and excellence for the common good of all.
Every city runs on public servants few people see.
Plate 0.1. Before the city wakes. Image: Gordon Parks (FSA-OWI), “American Gothic (Ella Watson, Washington, D.C.),” August 1942. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-DIG-fsa-8b14845. Public domain (work of the U.S. federal government). Source: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gordon_Parks_-_American_Gothic.jpg
The diagnosis
The quiet crisis
The diagnosis: a quiet crisis, the slow, corrosive decline of trust in the institutions meant to serve the public good. This is not a sudden rupture but the product of decades of delivery failures, bureaucratic inertia, and siloed, risk-averse government. Throwing money at the problem has proven insufficient; the disease is structural, and the cure must be too.
The philosophy
The scholar-official ideal
The philosophy: civic service is a noble calling spanning the full spectrum of work toward the common good: volunteers, nonprofits, private-sector partners, and the professional civil service, which is its cornerstone and engine room. The intellectual spine of the Institute is the scholar-official ideal: modern government has the best people, hyper-competent technocrats, but has lost wisdom. Merit must be re-enriched with history, ethics, and human-centered judgment. This is codified in the Civil Service DNA:
Permanence
Loyalty to the State, not transient rulers.
Deliberative Stewardship
Process as ballast against haste.
Professional Impartiality
The courage of remonstrance: frank counsel to power.
Structured Execution
Order and accountability as one architecture.
Enriched Merit
Wisdom alongside technical skill.
The method
Convener and bridge-builder
The method: ICS acts as a convener and bridge-builder, led by practitioners, integrating evidence-based innovation into the machinery of government while remaining grounded in merit, impartiality, and integrity.
Core values
What we hold to
- 01Collaboration
Building across sectors and silos to solve complex public problems together.
- 02Rigor
Grounded in evidence before ideology, exhaustive analysis before action.
- 03Innovation
New tools for old duties; relentless ambition in administrative method.
- 04Stewardship
Guarding the public trust with unyielding constancy in core values.
- 05Non-partisanship
Service above politics, institutional merit above faction.
The work
Projects
Projects are how the philosophy gets its hands dirty.
FRAME for Mobility
The philosophy applied to transportation policy: a from-scratch rewrite of federal surface transportation law.
Plan for Planning
The philosophy applied to the craft of city planning, and the book The Lost Art of the Plan: A Guide to Seeing the City Whole.
Crafting the New Civil Service
In development: Crafting the New Civil Service (Manual v8.1), the comprehensive monograph establishing the historical diagnosis and operational upgrade.
People
People
We are built around practitioner leadership: the people designing our reform agenda are the same people who advocate for it in rooms where decisions are made.
Jonathan Rewers
Chair & Principal Advisor of Practice
Chairs the Institute and leads its strategy, advocacy, and public voice — including the FRAME legislative effort and the growing publications programme.
Esther Younan
Director & Vice Chair for Strategic Growth & Partnerships
Leads the Institute's partnerships and growth — strengthening relationships with funders, institutions, and civic leaders.
Jim Morrill
Director & Senior Fellow of Policy
Counsels the Chair on mission, vision, and strategic objectives, and leads applied policy work — turning bold, evidence-based ideas into legislative drafts and governance tools.
Tim Manglicmot
Director & Senior Fellow of Infrastructure Finance
Counsels the Chair on mission, vision, and strategic objectives, and leads the infrastructure finance practice — shaping strategies that scale new institutional models.
Behind the leadership sits a growing network of practitioners and convening partners.
Support
Support the Institute
Institute for Civic Service is fiscally sponsored by The Hack Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Our EIN is 81-2908499.