The Franklin Project was a policy program of the Aspen Institute from October 2012 to December 2015, that focused on advancing national service in the United States.
[3] McChrystal's remarks generated a lot of enthusiasm within the Aspen Institute community and several leaders within the United States national service community, along with Aspen Institute CEO Walter Isaacson, approached him to see if he would be interested in helping to form a new initiative around the concept that every young person should do a year or more of national service.
Over 275 leaders from business, labor, higher education, government, military, faith-based community, philanthropy, and nonprofit organizations attended.
[6] Speakers at the summit included: General Stanley McChrystal, former commander, International Security Assistance Force and US Forces Afghanistan and chair of the Franklin Project's Leadership Council; CNN senior political analyst and director of Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership David Gergen; Vice President Biden's chief of staff Bruce Reed; former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Rob Gordon, Clinton Foundation board member Chelsea Clinton; former US Senator Mel Martinez; Corporation for National and Community Service CEO Wendy Spencer; journalist, author & former California first lady Maria Shriver; Civic Enterprises CEO and Franklin Project co-chair John Bridgeland; City Year co-founder and Franklin Project co-chair Alan Khazei; ABC News contributor Matthew Dowd; former Undersecretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy; Teach For America founder and chair Wendy Kopp; former governor of Idaho, US senator & US Interior secretary Dirk Kempthorne; Global Health Corps CEO and co-founder Barbara Bush; Target Community Relations president Laysha Ward; Huffington Post president, chair and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington; former Bush White House director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives John DiIulio; PBS president Paula Kerger; White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation director Jonathan Greenblatt; Peace Corps deputy director Carrie Hessler-Radelet; former assistant to President George W. Bush, Michael Gerson; New Orleans, Louisiana, mayor Mitch Landrieu; Providence, Rhode Island, mayor Angel Taveras; Nashville, Tennessee, mayor Karl Dean; Bank of America Foundation president Kerry Sullivan; and Aspen Institute president and CEO Walter Isaacson.
Over 350 participants from the private sector, higher education, government, the military, faith communities, philanthropy, and nonprofit organizations attended.
Dionne; author and former senior editor of Newsweek Jonathan Alter, CNN political contributor Paul Begala; Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson; US Army captain (ret.)
Larry Snyder; former US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood; CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service Wendy Spencer; former director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and chair Forum for Community Solutions Melody Barnes; former member of the US House of Representatives Harold Ford, Jr.; mayor of Flint, Michigan, Dayne Walling; former US secretary of education Margaret Spellings; former vice chief of staff of the Army General (Ret.)
Peter W. Chiarelli; former chairman of the FCC Michael Powell; and president and CEO of the Aspen Institute Walter Isaacson.
[8] The program collaborated with the journal Democracy to release an issue coinciding with the summit that featured a symposium on national service.
Top leaders and organizations representing the United States military endorsed two ideas by signing their name to the pledge: On September 12, 2014, President Barack Obama launched the Employers of National Service initiative at the 20th anniversary of AmeriCorps event on the South Lawn of the White House.
The program had three priorities: Forty-five ambassadors from twenty-five states were selected and began their term with a three-day training Alexandria, Virginia.
Mangone shepherded the project's merger into its successor organization, Service Year Alliance, where he served as its founding chief operating officer.
The council hoped to develop and steward future leaders who view universal national service as their generation's legacy and would be willing to work together across party lines to eventually foster bipartisan legislation in support of it.
Examples of council members included: Steven Olikara, founder and president of the Millennial Action Project; Joshua Marcuse, chairman of the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy; John McCarthy, executive director of Future Civic Leaders; and Anastasia Dellaccio, senior officer at the UN Foundation.