Announcing Young Voices 2022-2023 Annual Report

Dear Supporter,

When I started my professional career in Washington a decade ago, it was next to impossible for a young writer to get published. In order to catch the attention of any respectable outlet, you had to be an experienced writer. But, to become an experienced writer, you had to be published — a Catch-22!

Then came Young Voices. In 2013, we opened our doors as a humble side-project of Students For Liberty and quickly became flooded with applications from frustrated young professionals eager to get their work published. We offered them copyeditors, a professional title (“Young Voices contributor”), and a rolodex of media contacts… and voilà! Young Voices established a reputation for delivering media placements for the brightest young minds.

Over the past ten years, we’ve grown from a modest side-project to the liberty network’s leading organization for media placement. My team now places 150+ media hits with the message of liberty reaching 6 million+ viewers every single month.

While we’re proud of these numbers, we’re never content with the status quo. In the coming pages, you will read the major investments we’ve made in our existing programs over the past year —

• The Dissident Project: In 2022, we launched a speakers bureau bringing together courageous speakers who escaped from totalitarian nations to address high school and college students about the importance of freedom. In the Dissident Project’s first full school year, our speakers gave 43 talks to high school and college audiences and reached over 3 million Americans through broadcast media hits.
• Largest Application Cycle Ever: 185 students and young professionals applied for our fall programs — our largest class yet — further affirming the growing recognition of our organization.
• Building an In-Person Network: In addition to our digital presence, we have actively fostered a robust in-person network. Throughout the year, we organized seven policy events and many more networking opportunities for our writers to exchange ideas and forge meaningful collaborations. More are on their way soon.
• International Expansion: Young Voices launched an exclusive fellowship last year for libertarian advocates in Europe to receive writing and placement training to promote greater opportunity in the Old World. So far, our writers have placed 125 media hits in French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Greek, and Czech, including many in top national outlets.
• Growing Budget, Staff, Board: This organizational velocity has led to growing resources for Young Voices, now operating with a $1.9 million budget, full-time staff of 12, and board of 7. We are so thankful to our supporters for making all this possible!

I hope these highlights make it clear: Young Voices is empowering emerging leaders to make a lasting impact for freedom in the United States and throughout the world. Here’s to another 10 years of disruption, injecting the mainstream media with rising leaders for liberty.

Sincerely,

Casey Given

President & Executive Director

Young Voices

Read the Report Here