National Civic League Joins Forces with Local Policy Lab and Spread the Vote to Strengthen Democracy at Local Level

​National Civic League is partnering with Local Policy Lab and Spread the Vote to expand its democracy work, alongside programs like Civic Genius and the Center for Democracy Innovation. Local Policy Lab contributes a model for embedding resident voice into city governance as durable civic infrastructure, while Spread the Vote strengthens voter access and participation—together creating a continuum from ballot access to sustained civic engagement. This integration positions the League to scale inclusive, locally driven democracy solutions nationwide, advancing trust, equity, and institutionalized community participation.

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The National Civic League is joining forces with Local Policy Lab and Spread the Vote to help build the next chapter of American democracy, with these additions to existing programs, Civic Genius and Center for Democracy Innovation, making the League a more comprehensive organization to help strengthen democracy in communities nationwide. With U.S. democracy facing increasing threats from multiple directions, one solution is addressing issues at the local level through democracy innovations and inclusive civic engagement, with the National Civic League building community capacity to increase trust, equity, and collective work to address civic matters by aligning technical rigor with national reach.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, local governments were focused largely on service delivery not resident participation, with engagement often episodic and disconnected from actual decision-making, and even now millions of Americans remain excluded from full participation in civic and electoral life—with the addition of Local Policy Lab and Spread the Vote enabling the League to address both sides of this equation: redesigning how community decision-making works and broadening who participates in it.

Local Policy Lab brings a proven technical blueprint for embedding resident voice directly into the machinery of city government, with LPL having demonstrated across communities nationwide that engagement can move from temporary initiative to codified civic infrastructure capable of surviving leadership turnover and political cycles, and co-founders Scott Warren and Peter Zahn having devoted many years toward making LPL an impactful organization with which the League has partnered on several projects in the past. Now in partnership with the League, the proof of concept created by LPL can scale further and connect with the League's audience, with the League's All-America City platform, longstanding relationships with local governments, and cross-sector credibility, providing the engine to move inclusive governance from isolated breakthroughs to universal practice, aligning deep technical expertise with national adoption capacity. Spread the Vote has for nearly a decade helped thousands of Americans—especially those too often excluded—secure identification, register, and participate in elections, with their work ensuring that access to the ballot is not theoretical but real and tangible, and founder Kat Calvin having nurtured STV for years and brought on terrific staff—with bringing Spread the Vote into the League creating powerful continuum from access to participation to institutional voice, where voters supported by Spread the Vote can move from the ballot box into sustained civic engagement through the League's programs, representing not expansion away from mission but deepening of it, ensuring participation does not end on Election Day.

These new programs are not about organizational growth for its own sake but about durability and collective effectiveness, with Local Policy Lab having proven that inclusive governance can be embedded into law, budget, and professional roles, and Spread the Vote having proven that participation gaps can be closed through targeted high-impact intervention, while the League provides stable institutional home and national platform to ensure both models move from demonstration to normalization. At a moment when democracy requires renewed investment and leadership, the National Civic League is stepping forward to help ensure that inclusive governance becomes not the exception but the expectation, inviting people to meet new colleagues, learn more about the work of Local Policy Lab and Spread the Vote, and join in building this next chapter. Democracy depends on both effective institutions and engaged residents, with bringing these programs together under one organization building comprehensive depth-preserving approach to civic renewal, embedding resident voice into governance while ensuring equitable access to participation—with this organizational integration creating continuum from voter access through Spread the Vote to sustained civic engagement through League programs to codified civic infrastructure through Local Policy Lab, ensuring participation moves beyond episodic engagement to become embedded institutional practice capable of surviving leadership turnover and political cycles.