Bush served from 2012 to 2015 as co-chair of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. He has also worked with The James Madison Institute (JMI), a free market public policy think tank based in Tallahassee, Florida. He helped the institute in numerous ways and still has his think tank working in conjunction with it. In June 2008, Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education partnered with JMI to hold a summit called Excellence in Action: A National Summit on Education Reform.