He served as a member of the Board of Trustees of Fontbonne University in St. Louis. Fontbonne was founded as a woman's college in the 1923 by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and became co-educational in the 1970’s. Ragen counts the opportunity to meet many of its graduates as among the greatest gifts brought to him by living in St. Louis. The most successful M.A. student he ever advised as a professor, his own voice instructor, and many of his dearest friends are Fontbonne alumnae. The college had a strong liberal arts tradition, and while it always offered programs in other areas, ranging from deaf education to business to cyber-security, it kept its commitment to passing the heritage of Western Civilization on to its students, as well as its Catholic identity and the Sisters of St. Joseph's devotion to serving “the dear neighbor.” Ragen spearheaded the efforts to make the college armigerous, worked to revive the university’s music program, created a scholarship to support students who would study literature, music, history, or theology, though without necessarily majoring in any of those fields, and endowed a professorship in the humanities. With his permission, the remaining funds associated with those efforts were redirected during the university's final years in order to help as many students as possible graduate before its closure or to facilitate the transfer of its Deaf Education program to Butler University in Indianapolis.
Ragen has served as an alumni interviewer for both Pomona College and Princeton University and has established scholarship or fellowship programs at both institutions. He has also joined with many of his cousins to create a scholarship at William Penn University, his guardian Katherine Ragen’s alma mater. That scholarship honors the whole generations of Ragens who lived in Oksaloosa, Iowa.
Ragen is an active supporter of the two Catholic schools of Theology in St. Louis, Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, which is sponsored by the Archdiocese of St. Louis, and Aquinas Institute of Theology, which is sponsored by the Province of the St. Albert the Great of the Dominican Order.
Ragen has served on the board of the Eugene Field House Foundation for many years, and now holds the post of secretary. Ragen’s mother read him Field’s poems when Ragen was a child and worked as a newspaper columnist, the profession Field pioneered. The House is notable not only as Eugene Field’s childhood home, but also as the home of his father, Roswell Field. The elder Field was Dred Scott’s lawyer and made Scott’s case that he should be declared a free man. The house was preserved in part by donations of pennies by the city's school children and Eugene Field's friend Mark Twain appeared at the dedication.
Ragen has had a major role in the renovation of the historic Field house, the construction of the visitor's center and museum complex, a second restoration after a catastrophic flood, and several events that both raise funds for the museum and promote knowledge of Eugene Field’s work. The museum's focus has always stretched far beyond the Fields to other areas of American culture. (For many year borne a second name: “The St. Louis Toy Museum.” Ragen has helped to expand the range of of its offerings, while keeping them in the spirt of the Field's work. He has sponsored displays on the work of Charles M. Schulz and leant objects displays in other exhibition. His special interest has been musical settings of Eugene Field's poems.
Ragen has also been an active supporter of several arts organizations in St. Louis, including the Saint Louis Symphony and Opera Theater of St. Louis. He considers the last to two organizations to be among the most important arts organizations in America today.
Ragen also supports a Saint Louis Public Radio and a wide-range of national charities, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Opera, The Charles M. Schulz Museum, The National World War II Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution.
By far the largest part of Ragen’s charitable activities are carried out through church groups and orders of chivalry.