Pioneer Institute is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization founded in Boston in 1988 by Lovett C. Peters. Pioneer's stated mission is to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts and beyond through civic discourse and intellectually rigorous, data-driven public policy solutions based on free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility, and the ideal of effective, limited, and accountable government. Pioneer Institute engages in a range of advocacy efforts, including publishing white papers, conducting media advocacy campaigns and holding events.
Pioneer conducts research and advocacy in the area of education reform. In the 1990s, Pioneer was a leading champion of charter schools and standards-based education, key elements of the state’s landmark Education Reform Act. The Institute created a fellowship program to train charter school entrepreneurs, which in 2003 became a separate non-profit organization, the Building Excellent School Foundation, which today trains charter operators around the nation. In 2006, Pioneer established the Center for School Reform, which promotes choice, competition and high-quality academic curricula in the public school system.
The Institute also focuses on high-quality, affordable health care, with a particular focus on the Commonwealth’s 2006 health care reform as well as containing the cost of Medicaid and other programs. The Institute also focuses on job and business creation; and limited and effective state and local government. Its "good government" efforts have included welfare reform, streamlining regulation, and the mass transit system; currently, its focuses are on public pensions, collective bargaining, public finance, and transparency of information. The Institute’s national Better Government Competition is a grassroots citizens’ ideas contest aimed at addressing key challenges to state and local governments.
Pioneer outsources almost all of its research to field experts external to the organization. The Institute itself serves as a strategic marketing firm, which establishes a handful of core areas of priority, commissions research, and markets the results to the general public, key constituencies, and the media.
The Institute is governed by a Board of Directors from Massachusetts and run by Jim Stergios, the executive director.
Read more about Pioneer Institute: History and Influence, Media Coverage, Research and Publications, Events, Personnel, Governance, Budget and Finances
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“Mead had studied for the ministry, but had lost his faith and took great delight in blasphemy. Capt. Charles H. Frady, pioneer missionary, held a meeting here and brought Mead back into the fold. He then became so devout that, one Sunday, when he happened upon a swimming party, he shot at the people in the river, and threatened to kill anyone he again caught desecrating the Sabbath.”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it’s foundation on such principles & organising it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)