With your
support
we will

This will be the City Club’s sixth home and a return to street-level activation that proclaims our commitment to free speech in the cultural center of downtown. Our new forum will be 50 percent larger and at a location on the same block as our primary media partners, Ideastream Public Media, along with so many other civic and arts organizations and all the stages of Playhouse Square. It's a new home for new voices, new dialogues, and a renewed commitment to civic engagement.

The City Club belongs to the community. From the design of the new space to the programming on stage, there is a commitment to access. Here, you have a seat at the table and your voice has a place in the conversation. Every week presents a new opportunity to hear a different perspective on the world and ask questions about it. It's a simple idea with a deep impact. Together with you, we strive to be radically inclusive, to bridge political divides, to celebrate diversity and create a sense of belonging among all participants, to honor dissent, and to create a shared vision of what might be possible.

Patrick Espinosa, Kwame Botchway, and Larisse Mondok discuss Cleveland's role as a global city

The persistence of civic dialogue for over a century is absolutely astonishing. Today, we are called to ensure that at the turn of the next century, the City Club will continue to convene conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive. Growing our endowment will strengthen the foundation on which we innovate to meet our community's civic engagement needs and will ensure future generations of civic leaders continue to have access to the means of full participation in democracy.

For more than 100 years, our speakers—more than 7,000 in total, from sitting heads of state to local community activists—have answered unfiltered, unrehearsed questions directly from the audience. And in 1968, the day after the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Senator Robert F. Kennedy stood on our stage to speak "On the Mindless Menace of Violence" before a crowd of 1,200. We continue to attract national speakers, and our weekly forums serve as a national model of truly civil civic dialogue and respect for freedom of speech.