About Us

Close Up has been the nation’s leading civic education provider since 1971. In that time, we’ve made it our mission to educate, inspire, and empower individuals to become active citizens in our democracy. Each year, through our Washington, D.C.-based experiential learning programs and our multi-media publications, we help more than 1 million students and teachers in 15,000 schools nationwide develop the skills needed to begin a lifetime of active citizenship.

What sets us apart is our non-partisan approach to providing relevant content to students and teachers, and our unique teaching methodology specifically designed to appeal to mainstream students of all learning abilities. And we’re the only organization of our kind to provide this approach to learning 52 weeks a year through:

• Our D.C.-based civic ed programs for students in grades 6-12;
• The 30th anniversary edition of Current Issues, the nation’s leading supplemental social studies text;
• Our student-centric TV show, Close Up at the Newseum, aired weekly on C-SPAN since 1979; and
• Our “First Vote” classroom-based voter education and registration program.

We are also committed to making citizenship education accessible to everyone, regardless of ethnicity, socio-economic standing, or grade point average. Through annual funding from the U.S. Congress, private foundations, and corporations we provide financial aid to disadvantaged students to help them become better citizens.