But today, the dangerous direction of public policy, the centralization of government power, and the spread of toxic partisanship have made the defense of liberty more urgent than ever before. Neither of the major parties can be trusted with this task: Both question whether a free and open economy is morally acceptable and generates prosperity for all.

In the current crisis, Cato sees an opportunity: a chance to captivate the exhausted middle majority. To do so, we are determined to raise our shared voice and put our message—the dignity of the individual, the power of dynamic markets, and the dangers and downsides of expanded government power—at the center of every major debate over public policy and America’s future.

We never forget that without our generous supporters, we would not be positioned, as we are now, to achieve that goal. With their continuing support, we can sustain our momentum, extend our reach, and create the changes that will preserve liberty.

To meet our commitment to securing liberty for all, Cato is investing in talent, technology, and infrastructure and in our programs, ideas, and policy solutions reaching millions of citizens each year, including students, journalists, policymakers, and teachers.

Ideas matter, and Cato’s task is to ensure that the best ideas rise to the top. To achieve this, Cato is adding policy staff in critical areas, expanding our Government Affairs and State Relations teams, and further boosting our Defending the Free Economy initiative.

We continue to scale initiatives that are driving critical policy change, welcoming new hires across several policy areas—including entitlements, taxation and budgets, health, energy, free speech, and state-based economic issues.

Alongside our growing policy teams is an expanding staff of government outreach professionals, who are amplifying our scholars’ work and bringing their ideas to policymakers on Capitol Hill and in the states. In the past few years, we have more than doubled our government outreach staff, embedding dedicated outreach officers in each of our policy areas.

Cato’s vision for a freer, more prosperous future demands that we educate young people in libertarian principles and policy and develop a robust talent pipeline. To build on our successes in reaching vast audiences of young people, we will scale our programs and resources aimed at inspiring the next generation of libertarian thinkers and leaders.

We’re scaling our Sphere Education Initiatives by expanding the range of curriculum content, increasing our online resources and virtual programming, and leveraging our expanding network of teacher-ambassadors.

By the end of 2029, Cato aims to build an alumni network of over 25,000 educators, reaching more than three million students. To do this, we will add new staff to enhance Sphere’s content and outreach and continue to grow our Sphere on the Road program and Sphere Summits at Cato’s headquarters.

Cato is relaunching Cato University with a focus exclusively on university students, challenging the wave of illiberalism from academia. This scalable educational program will provide an intensive crash course in the ideas, history, and policy outcomes of individual liberty.

In the coming years, we aim to increase student attendance across our intern, student briefing, and Liberty Seminars programs by up to 2,000 students annually.

Within the Institute, we will help foster a talent pipeline of future libertarian leaders by providing focused training to our research associates so that they can enter a variety of professions.

We will build up our suite of classroom resources, including lesson plans and other content designed to model civil debate, and introduce more students to the ideas of liberty, including via Human​Progress​.org and Libertarianism.org—both of which are being used in classrooms across the country.

A brand-new classroom product, Cato Courses, is set to launch in 2024. This interactive product, designed specifically for high school and college students, will provide a deep dive into public policy from the libertarian perspective. These courses will also be offered as part of our Cato University programs, strengthening our engagement and impact with young audiences.

Increased investments in our marketing, communications, and digital capabilities are allowing Cato to engage with new and broader audiences with targeted messages.

By reaching the right individuals with the right messages at the right time, we will grow the number of supporters for our defense of liberty. New tools for Cato staff will help them present our ideas and products to specific audiences, including students, Capitol Hill staff, and the nearly 12 million people who visit Cato’s websites each year.

Cato’s Content Lab—a crew of audio/​visual, web, digital, and creative professionals—continues to grow. This team brings Cato’s scholarly work to life through compelling infographics, data visualizations, videos, podcasts, and other digital assets.

We are so gratified by the affirmation we are continually receiving from our Sponsors regarding the strategic direction of Cato, the strength and talent of our team, the quality of our digital platforms, and the growth and diversity of the audiences we are reaching among policymakers, the public, educators, and students. Cato has an incredible foundation on which to keep building—the unique and uniquely principled organization that decades of support created. And those underlying principles are one of the few things that will never be open to change.

This affirmation, along with the urgent challenges facing America and our liberty, have motivated Cato Sponsors to keep increasing the resources they provide each year so that we can more forcefully execute our mission. This, in turn, has allowed us to acquire outstanding new talent and to launch innovative initiatives reaching new audiences with a diverse portfolio of content communicating our ideas and message. We are building from a position of financial, operational, and principled strength thanks to our supporters—with more investments and impact to come.

Thank you to the Cato Sponsors who share our commitment to taking on the longest and hardest fights for liberty—who know that victories in the battle of ideas are rarely immediate or easily won but believe that in the end, ideas can and will change the world.