Letter to Funders: Invest in High School Civic Engagement
High School Is An Untapped Source of Civic Power. Three Organizations Are Changing That.
This letter was co-written by Laura Brill of The Civics Center, Jahnavi Rao of New Voters, and Jacob Banobi of Rhizome.
High school voter registration and community organizing are among the most consequential yet most underfunded areas of US democracy work. More than four million teens graduate every year. According to The Civics Center’s analysis of voter files, only 43% of 18-year-old Americans are registered to vote, compared to 82% of older adults.
In every election, more than three million young people are left out — not because they are apathetic, but because they were never welcomed into our democratic system. When they are registered to vote, they show up: roughly 70% of registered 18-year-olds turn out in presidential elections, and turnout rates among youth approach those of older voters in high-profile midterm races.
High school students also have enormous capacity to build collective power, shape narratives, and influence the institutions that govern their lives. But that capacity goes largely unrealized. Most schools offer no structured space for students to develop organizing skills, practice collective decision-making, or connect their concerns to civic action. When students do get that space, and it’s properly supported, something real happens: they start to see themselves as people who can actually change things, and that self-image persists.
Democracy advocates often lament the non-participation of those without four-year college degrees – yet youth civic philanthropy focuses almost exclusively on colleges.
Since more than 60% of young people don’t finish four-year college, most youth civics funding excludes most of those it seeks to empower.
These problems are not inherent in young people. They are systemic and they can be solved in high school. The benefits compound across every election and every organizing campaign that follows.
What Makes This Work Hard
Three things make youth voter registration hard. First, the structural barriers are real and uneven: 36 states restrict or prohibit online voter registration for the roughly half of teenagers who lack a driver’s license or state ID, meaning digital-only solutions exclude the students who most need help to register. Second, the 40% of young people who don’t attend college are invisible to college-based outreach and traditional campaign infrastructure: high school is the only reliable moment to reach them. Third, the cultural narrative that young people don’t vote because of apathy actively depresses investment and lowers expectations, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Organizing faces its own structural barriers. Students are navigating institutions not designed for civic agency or collective power-building. Administrators may resist student organizing. Time and space for civic work must be carved out against competing pressures. And the adults best positioned to support student leaders often lack the training, permission, or framework to do so.
High School Is a Different Ecosystem
High school is not college. The legal environment is different, the developmental moment is different, and the relationships that make civic work possible are different. High school students are minors, which means the adults in their lives — parents, teachers, administrators — aren’t optional. They are the conditions under which any of this works. Parents are often the most influential people in a teenager’s civic life, especially when it comes to navigating registration requirements and deadlines. Educators are the adults with daily student interactions and the standing to create time and space for civic activities in school. And college students, as near peers, are role models that high schoolers actually listen to.
The legal and regulatory environment — student rights, school district policies, state education law, voter registration law — requires specific expertise that organizations working on college campuses don’t have. This is a different ecosystem. It requires organizations that have built knowledge and relationships within it.
Student Leadership at the Center
All three of our organizations share a core conviction: young people are not the recipients of civic education but its agents. The goal is not to hand students a registration form. It is to develop them as leaders who register and organize their peers, build civic culture in their schools, and keep the habit of civic participation for the rest of their lives. That requires investing in the adults around them — educators, parents, community organizations, college mentors — who give student leaders the support and tools to do that work. Student leadership and adult support aren’t in competition. Each makes the other possible.
Three Organizations, Three Approaches
Rhizome works at the level of civic identity: building the organizing habits, collective power, and sense of agency that make sustained participation possible and meaningful.
New Voters works at the level of near-peer activation: connecting high school student leaders with college student mentors who help them run data-informed voter registration drives and develop as lifelong civic leaders.
The Civics Center works at the level of systems, resources, and infrastructure: providing the research, data, policy analysis, educator training, and national campaigns that make school-based registration work at scale and that give student leaders and their adult supporters the tools they need.
We are complements, not alternatives. A student who develops civic identity but never gets registered is a missed opportunity. A student who gets registered but has no civic community to sustain their participation may not come back. The field needs all three layers working together.
What the Field Needs Now
To date, our three organizations have largely worked in different communities and through different relationships, growing without getting in one another’s way. But as we grow and more people recognize the importance of high school civic engagement, we need a more intentional approach, to ensure resources go where they are most needed, that students and educators get consistent and accurate information, and that the field builds coherently.
High school voter registration and civic organizing are among the most solvable problems in US democracy. The students are there. The models are proven. What is missing is the investment and the coordination to bring them to scale.
We’ve already seen an encouraging rise in the number of 18-year-olds registered for these midterms and we expect to keep it growing ahead of the next presidential election. Young Americans want to help build a better future – together, we need to empower them. So if you can offer introductions to funders, school districts, partner organizations, or policymakers who should know about this work, please reach out. And if you want to learn more about how you can work with or support any of our three organizations, please reach out.