Strengthening Civic Health: How CivicLex Is Revitalizing Local Democracy

Forbes

23-05-2025

The founder of CivicLex in Lexington, Kentucky, discusses how his work is redefining what's possible in community and civic life – showing that in an era of national uncertainty, the most meaningful democratic renewal can begin locally.
Ashoka: Richard, let's start at the beginning – what made you want to create CivicLex?
Richard Young
Richard Young: Through my previous work, I'd spent a lot of time around local government, and I kept seeing this lack of meaningful public engagement – only a small group of people were showing up to meetings. I'd watch these major policy decisions move through with hardly any public input. But then, like clockwork, right before any policy would pass, people would suddenly appear opposing it: "Why wasn't I told about this earlier? This feels like it's being done to me instead of with me." The thing is, these policies take a year or two to develop before they ever get to council for a vote. I realized that a couple of well-organized people could actually make a real impact on local decisions.
This was around 2016, when national politics felt so divisive, and I wanted to build something that could make people feel good about contributing to our community's civic life again. I ended up getting a small $5,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to do work around civic information in our public transportation system, and that helped seed the idea for CivicLex.
Ashoka: How does your team approach civic engagement differently?
Young: We focus on three core things: civic knowledge, social cohesion, and building responsive institutions. First, people need to actually understand how civic life works. It's not something we're taught in school, and with local news shrinking, there's just less access to information about local decision-making. So our team teaches thousands of students how local government actually works. We also run adult workshops on civic processes, and we operate as a local newsroom covering city hall. Second, relationships are crucial, so we focus on social cohesion – how do we all build relationships with people who are different from us, and across different levels of civic power? Everyone should be able to talk to civic leaders and share their perspectives. We foster these relationships through events and by improving public spaces where people naturally meet. And third, our civic institutions need processes that actually welcome people into decision-making. If people show up wanting to participate and the process is terrible, they're not coming back. So we work with institutions to make participation meaningful for the public and helpful for government, too.
Ashoka: How do you work with local government in the mutually beneficial way you describe?
Young: For starters, we don't advocate for policy outcomes like affordable housing or minimum wage. Instead, we advocate for changes in process, which is a distinction the government recognizes. If we supported specific policies, our relationship would fundamentally change. We also approach our work with humility. People in government have decades of experience and really rich ideas about public engagement. If you come in saying, "You all aren't good at public engagement," you're discounting people who've put their lives into public service. So we build relationships and collaborate at the speed of trust. We also demonstrate a value proposition: good public engagement can actually convert opponents to supporters. Nothing helps in local government like having someone show up to say "yes," because almost always people show up to say "no."
Ashoka: Can you share an example of success in changing government processes?
Young: Sure. During Covid, when we were meeting virtually, our city suspended public comment because white supremacists were Zoom-bombing meetings. We reached out to a council member and said, "This is bad, and we get why you suspended it, but the process was broken to begin with. Could this be a starting point for actually fixing this?" So we surveyed about 1,000 residents and 85 top city staff about the legislative process, and when we asked where people should provide input, a significant majority of both the public and officials said "as early as possible." This revealed an unknown consensus. We then made 15 recommendations to change meeting structures and participation methods. The city adopted 13 of those 15, including creating two new types of pre-legislative council meetings to get public input before legislation even enters the stream.
Ashoka: Civic engagement can be difficult to get excited about after a long day at work. How do you flip the script and make it something people want to do?
Young: We've all experienced how learning about civic engagement and government processes can be boring, right? Convincing people to participate can be like convincing someone to eat spinach. If we want more participation from all groups, we've got to make it something people actually want to do. Following the pandemic, there's this real hunger for community and we try to build on that. In our educational events, like workshops on the city budget, we include games like "The Price is Right" where people guess dollar amounts about city government. We also host purely social events. We've invited people to paint pumpkins with elected officials, build birdhouses, and attend pancake breakfasts. These spaces build relationships because you're not trying to convince anyone of anything – you're just having fun together. All the decisions being made by local government are serious – they can literally add or subtract years from people's lives. But if you talk about it that way, it sounds like taking medicine. People don't want lectures, they want fun.
Ashoka: CivicLex is a powerful place-based model for civic engagement. How do you think about impact and scale?
Young: We're missing crucial civic infrastructure in our country, with too many organizations going broad rather than deep. The Elks Clubs, Rotary Clubs, local press – these were important because they were contextualized to place, making them feel authentic and rooted. Now, everything's watered down, trying to appeal nationally. The natural inclination would be to make this a national organization with "CivicLexes" everywhere, but that's like taking two tablespoons of peanut butter and spreading it over a whole loaf instead of one slice. We see another way to grow, and we've had over 100 communities reach out about building similar organizations. Where there's demand, we want to share our lessons, show how these three impacts work together, and help communities build something that actually works for them.
Ashoka: What's next for CivicLex?
Young: We're thinking about our role in this tense political moment and especially want to amp up our work on relationship building and social cohesion. We have big projects coming up focused on potential changes to our city government structure, and we're planning to expand to include our public school system. The big thing I'm focused on is how this becomes like the library – an institution that feels permanent, that people will access for decades to come to help them feel a sense of agency over their lives. And now that we feel secure in who we are, we're thinking about how we can help other communities build something similar but tailored to their needs.
Richard Young is an Ashoka Fellow.
This interview was condensed for length and clarity by Ashoka.