For America 250 State Commissions
Ready, Set Go America 250!
State Level Commissions for America 250 are responsible for:
- Organizing events, programs, and initiatives in their state
- Highlighting their region's history, culture, and contributions
- Engaging their citizens in the commemoration
To accomplish this, each commission needs to hit the ground running now reaching out to stakeholders throughout their state to motivate them and get them engaged. Check out the ideas below!
Outreach, outreach and outreach (and more outreach)
Limber up your vocal cords and your typing fingers
Your first priority is to get buy-in across your state with stakeholders to engage the public. So the first thing you need to do is set up a sharable spreadsheet for contacts and start making your stakeholders lists that include phone number, email, and website
- Every mayor in your state and their city website
- The State Fair + every County Fair and Local Fair
- Every college, university and vocational school in your state
- Every K-12 school principal in your state as well as National Student group's State Level contacts for student clubs including DECA, FCCLA, FFA, BPA, HOSA, 4-H
- Key Businesses throughout the state
- Every museum and historical society in your state
- Every civic organization and nonprofit
- Every media outlet
Create an AMERICA 250 State Logo
Needed ASAP
Create a logo for your state's America 250 activities ASAP. You may want to make this into a contest, but if you do this, you should do it NOW as you need the logo to be incorporated into your messaging as soon as possible. Make a deadline of just a couple of weeks for people to submit high resolution (300 dpi) entries. You can post entries on your social media to start creating excitement and to help you narrow down your choices that people can vote on as well.
After choosing your logo, it should be included in all your communications and as your favicon on your social media profiles. You can create branded products with the logo and encourage local businesses to use it with on their America 250 communications and labeling.
Provide support and ideas
Get your Stakeholders excited!
CITIES: Ask cities and their mayors/public officials to do outreach at the city level WITH THESE IDEAS to get their citizens involved. Provide public spaces for America 250 displays and exhibits based on the work created in their locales including timelines, essays and artwork.
FAIRS: Ask the State Fair, County/Regional Fair and local fair coordinators to create America 250 ribbon categories in 2025 WITH THESE IDEAS for America 250 essays, artwork, photography and food entries. Must be done in 2025, 2026 will be too late for fall fairs.
EDUCATORS: Work with educators, school districts, higher education institutions to implement curriculum and assignments USING THESE IDEAS to get young people involved. Coordinate with State-level contacts of national clubs to implement America 250 themed contests and debates.
BUSINESSES: Work with key businesses throughout the state to USING THESE IDEAS to encourage them to add your state's America 250 Logo to the labels of their products, set up scholarships at institutions of higher education.
ORGANIZATIONS: Reach out to museums, historical societies, civic organizations, and nonprofits to coordinate with educators, schools, and student clubs to exhibit America 250 themed work USING THESE IDEAS.
MEDIA: Keep your media outlets informed about what is coming up via press releases and tagging them on social media. Encourage media outlets to attend and report on America 250 events throughout your state. Not just the events that elected officials attend, let those outlets know about all events and keep America 250 top of mind!
Communicate and recruit
Get help spreading the word
SOCIAL MEDIA: Be sure to create Facebook, Instagram and X profiles. You can set up the auto posting link between FB and Insta.
NEWSLETTER: Communicate with all these stakeholders regularly - at least weekly. Create a newsletter with all their email addresses to keep them informed. Connect with your stakeholders on social media and repost all their activities on your own social media accounts.
INTERNSHIPS: Create year-round internship opportunties to help get all the work done! This can include help with communciations, contact compilation and research, special projects, and event coordination.
Start planning your state's July 4, 2026
Decide how your state will celebrate
What will your state do on July 4, 2026 to celebrate America 250? Plan for a big event in your largest city and your state capital and encourage local events in each city/town.
Time capsules
America 250 State Commissions should take the lead on Time Capsules
On the America 250 National Level a Time Capsule will be buried in DC on July 4, 2026 with the directive to open it July 4, 2076. This could be done at the state and local level as well, where a time capsule is created, a location identified and a ceremony planned for July 4, 2026 at each state's capitol. Athe local level, any cities that want to participate could od the same. This would be specifically a State Commission project. You could also inquire about submitting an item from your state to the National time capsule.