Instrument I
Charter
Everything a university, a system, or a governor's office needs to stand up a center for economic freedom — from the first conversation to the ribbon cutting. Work the checklist; the seal fills as you go.
Founding checklist
Eighteen steps in the order they actually have to happen. Each one names who owns it.
Charter statement builder
Fill these in and generate the founding paragraph that goes in the board resolution, the press release, and the donor packet.
Governance
Board of advisors — seats to fill
| Seat | Why it exists | Named |
|---|
Director profile
Hire for three things at once, in this order: someone who can teach the material to a nineteen-year-old, someone who can raise money, someone whom faculty will not treat as an outsider. Candidates strong on only the second are the most common and most expensive mistake.
Budget model
Editable. Enter your own figures — nothing here is a quoted price. Startup is one-time; annual is recurring.
| Line | Startup | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Total | $0 | $0 |
Endowment needed = annual operating cost ÷ draw rate. Most institutions raise operating gifts for years one through three and the endowment behind it.
Eighteen-month launch timeline
| Phase | Months | What must be true at the end |
|---|---|---|
| Assent | 1–3 | Provost and president on record; academic home decided; director search opened. |
| Instrument | 3–6 | Charter approved by the board; name cleared by counsel; budget adopted. |
| People | 5–10 | Director hired; two affiliated faculty appointed; advisory board seated. |
| Curriculum | 8–13 | Course approved through the curriculum committee; instructor trained; first section scheduled. |
| Compact | 10–15 | International partner identified and MOU signed. See Instrument II. |
| Open | 15–18 | First cohort enrolled; public launch; first report to donors and legislature. |
Curriculum approval is the step that slips. Start it in month eight, not month twelve — most curriculum committees meet monthly and stop meeting in summer.
Instrument II
Compact
The international partnership desk. Find the right institution, score the fit, assemble the memorandum, track it to signature — and then keep it alive, which is where most of them die.
Partner fit scorecard
Score a candidate institution one to five on each line. Anything under 3.2 overall means a letter of friendship, not a memorandum.
| Criterion | Score |
|---|---|
| Weighted fit | — |
Memorandum clause library
Tick the clauses your agreement needs. Each one says in plain English what it does and why it is there. Assemble at the bottom.
Negotiation tracker
Tap a stage when it is done. Typical elapsed time from first contact to signature is nine to fifteen months — the delay is almost always legal review on one side or the other.
Signing day
After the signature
A memorandum with no milestone schedule is a press release. Set these dates on signing day.
| By | What has to have happened |
|---|---|
| Day 30 | Named coordinator at each institution, in writing, with email and phone. |
| Day 90 | First joint activity scheduled — a shared seminar, a visiting lecture, a co-taught week. |
| Day 180 | First students named for exchange; credit transfer confirmed by both registrars. |
| Day 365 | Written annual review; renew, revise, or let it lapse honestly. |
Instrument III
Classroom
The American Dream Project, packaged as a course a university can actually put in its catalog. Fifteen weeks. Two tracks — build a business here, or build one across a border. Every student leaves with a real venture, not a paper.
The American Dream Project is the teaching program of Born Between 2 Generals, LLC, built on the Educate → Equip → Amplify sequence and the Free Enterprise study volumes. This is its university edition.
american-dream-project.bornbetween2generals.com ↗
How a school can run it
| Format | Length | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Semester course | 15 weeks, 3 credits | The main line. Catalog course, letter grade, capstone venture. |
| Practicum add-on | 1 credit alongside | Students who want to register the business while enrolled. |
| Summer intensive | 6 weeks, on site | Cohorts drawn from partner institutions abroad. |
| Non-credit certificate | 10 evenings | Community members, veterans, returning adults, high-school seniors. |
| Exchange semester | 15 weeks abroad | Run at the Instrument II partner campus, same syllabus, local law module swapped in. |
Tuition, fees, and instructor compensation are set by the host institution. ◆ confirm pricing and licensing terms with counsel
What a graduate can do
- Explain, in their own words, why voluntary exchange creates wealth and what conditions it needs.
- Find a real problem someone will pay to have solved, and prove demand before spending money.
- Choose and register a lawful business structure in their own jurisdiction.
- Read a profit and loss statement, a balance sheet, and a cash flow statement, and build all three for their own venture.
- Price a product, calculate unit economics, and identify the point at which the business pays for itself.
- Raise or finance a first stage of capital and describe honestly what it costs them.
- Identify the licenses, taxes, and rules that apply to them, and say when they need a lawyer or an accountant.
- Enter a second market across a border — or explain why not to.
- Pitch the venture in five minutes to people who can fund it.
- Recover from a failed idea and reuse what they learned.
Fifteen weeks
How students are graded
| Component | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly build deliverables | 30% | Did the venture move this week. |
| Evidence of demand | 15% | Real conversations with real potential customers, documented. |
| Financial model | 15% | Unit economics and cash flow that survive questioning. |
| Compliance file | 10% | Structure, registration, licenses, tax posture — correct for the jurisdiction. |
| Capstone pitch | 20% | Five minutes in front of an outside panel. |
| Peer contribution | 10% | Whether other people's ventures got better because this student was in the room. |
A venture that fails honestly and is documented well can earn full marks. A venture that succeeds on an undocumented guess cannot. Say this out loud in week one.
Capstone
By the last class each student submits a venture file containing:
- A one-page description of the problem and who has it
- Documented evidence of demand — named conversations, letters of intent, presales, or a waiting list
- A twelve-month financial model with stated assumptions
- Registration documents, or a completed filing packet ready to submit
- A compliance memo listing every license, permit, and tax obligation identified, and which questions still need a professional
- For the international track: a market entry plan for one foreign market, with the legal route in and the cost of getting there
- A five-minute pitch delivered live
Instructor kit
| Piece | What it is |
|---|---|
| Session plans | Fifteen plans, each with a cold open, the teaching block, the build block, and the exit question. |
| Free Enterprise study volumes | The assigned reading spine, chapter-mapped to the weeks. |
| Founder interviews | Video segments from the American Builders series, two to six minutes, one per week. |
| Jurisdiction packets | A blank template the instructor fills for their own state or country — the course ships the structure, not the answers. |
| Panel recruitment guide | How to find and brief the outside judges for the capstone. |
| Adaptive practice | The Whiteboard tutor for students who need the finance and accounting weeks slower. |
Before the first section runs
Running it with the partner abroad
When Instrument II is signed, the course becomes the thing the compact actually does. Three ways to run it jointly:
| Model | How it works |
|---|---|
| Mirrored sections | Both campuses teach the same fifteen weeks in the same term. Students pair across the border and critique each other's ventures weekly. |
| Swapped semester | Students spend the capstone term at the partner campus and build the venture for that market. Credit transfers under the memorandum. |
| Joint cohort | One combined section taught by both faculties, meeting online weekly and in person twice. |
Whichever model you choose, the local law module is always taught by local faculty. Nobody teaches another country's business registration from a slide deck.
Instrument IV
Chapters
A center serves one campus. A chapter network serves a region — and gives you somewhere to run a pilot before a university has committed to anything. This is the layer that puts people on the ground.
America’s Future, Inc. convenes and leads the chapters. Born Between 2 Generals, LLC owns and licenses the tools and the curriculum they use. Those two sentences have to stay true in every document, every chapter agreement, and every piece of co-branded material.
Who does what
| America’s Future, Inc. — the nonprofit | Born Between 2 Generals, LLC — the owner |
|---|---|
| Charters and leads chapters; holds the mission | Owns the software and The American Dream Project curriculum |
| Recruits and supervises chapter volunteers | Licenses both to chapters and to institutions under written terms |
| Runs public programming and community events | Trains and certifies instructors |
| Holds the relationships with universities and officials | Maintains, updates, and supports the product |
| Raises charitable support for chapter operations | Sets and collects license fees |
| Reports outcomes to donors and to the public | Reports nothing on the nonprofit’s behalf |
Chapter tiers
The same four tiers already used in the BB2G network map. Tier decides what a chapter is expected to do, not how good it is.
| Tier | What it is | What it owes the network |
|---|---|---|
| Anchor | Established, staffed, has a bench of volunteers and local standing | Lends people and instructors to newer chapters; hosts regional training |
| High-need | The need is obvious and the local capacity is not there yet | Runs the course; takes help without embarrassment; reports honestly |
| Bridge | Can both give and take, depending on the month | Pairs with one anchor and one high-need chapter |
| College town | Built around one or more campuses | Carries the university conversation; the pipeline into Instrument I |
What a pilot chapter actually does
- Teaches one section of The American Dream Project — ten evenings, non-credit, open to anyone.
- Finds the four outside judges for the capstone from local employers and lenders.
- Introduces the nearest university to Instrument I, and stays in the room for it.
- Keeps the count of who enrolled, who finished, and what got built — feeds Instrument V.
- Tells the network what did not work, in writing, within a week of it not working.
- Hands the course to the university when the university is ready to own it, and does not compete with it afterward.
Chapter roles
| Role | What they are on the hook for |
|---|---|
| Chapter chair | The chapter exists, meets, and reports. Appointed by America’s Future. |
| Campus liaison | The relationship with the nearest university, from first coffee to signed charter. |
| Instructor | Teaches the course. Certified by Born Between 2 Generals under the license. |
| Employer liaison | Recruits the capstone panel and finds the first customers for student ventures. |
| Student lead | A graduate of the last cohort. Recruits the next one. Rotates every term. |
Chartering a chapter
Ten steps. The seal counts these.
Ninety-day pilot
| Days | What happens | What proves it happened |
|---|---|---|
| 1–15 | Chair appointed; charter signed; license executed | Two signed documents on file |
| 16–30 | Instructor certified; venue confirmed; cohort recruited | Named instructor, named room, enrollment list |
| 31–70 | Ten evenings taught | Attendance by session; weekly deliverables collected |
| 71–80 | Capstone night with the outside panel | Panel names; ventures presented; certificates issued |
| 81–90 | Written debrief; counts filed; university conversation opened | Debrief memo; Instrument V updated; a named campus contact |
Run six pilots, not one. One pilot tells you whether that chair is good. Six tell you whether the model is.
Chapters in this pilot cohort
Name the cities you are actually starting with. Leave the rest blank — a chapter list with aspirational cities on it will be read as a claim.
| # | City | Tier | Chair |
|---|
Instrument V
Proof
Every legislature and every donor asks the same question in year two: what did it produce. Count it from day one, because you cannot reconstruct it later.
Reporting period
Counts
Enter what you can verify. A number you cannot document is worse than no number.
Venture survival
The number that separates a real center from a conference series. Track every venture formed and check back at twelve months.
—
Report
Generates a plain report you can paste into a board packet, a donor letter, or legislative testimony. It only reports numbers you entered.
Instrument VI
Gates
The reviews that have to clear before any of this goes public. None of them are optional and none of them are fast, so start them early.
Standing reviews
| Gate | Covers | Clears before |
|---|---|---|
| IP and trademark ◆ R. Emmett McAuliffe | Every product, program, and center name; marks; domains | Any public use, signage, domain purchase, or announcement |
| Commercial and license ◆ Bill Olson | License terms, end-user agreements, institutional contracts, fees | Any signed agreement with an institution |
| Institutional counsel ◆ both institutions | The memorandum, cross-border obligations, data protection, foreign-gift reporting | Signature |
| Curriculum committee ◆ host institution | Catalog listing, credit hours, prerequisites | First section offered for credit |
Ownership
Born Between 2 Generals, LLC owns this platform, The American Dream Project curriculum, and the supporting applications, and licenses them to institutions. A licensing institution does not acquire ownership of the software or the curriculum. Keep the entities separate in every document, domain, and from-address.
House rules carried into every screen here
- No invented facts. Anything factual that has not been confirmed is marked ◆ confirm and left blank.
- No legal, tax, or investment advice — from the platform, the curriculum, or the instructor.
- Credential language stays at Certificate of Completion & Mastery. No accreditation claims.
- No prices, partner names, staff names, or testimonials appear until someone with authority confirms them.
- Student records stay with the host institution. This tool stores counts, not students.
Marks used in this build
Every name, mark, and designation that appears anywhere in this application, in the order counsel will want them. Nothing here is cleared. Status is what we know, not what we assume.
| Name | How it is used | Proposed class | Status |
|---|
Your work
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