“Ripe For Organizing”: Youth Civic Engagement Lessons from Alabama 

YEF and CIRCLE: Partners for Impact on Youth of Color

CIRCLE is proud to conduct this research in partnership with the Youth Engagement Fund (YEF), which is committed to resourcing and amplifying the work and voices of youth and young-adults-of color-centered organizations in the South and Southwest. As such, YEF trusts, funds and follows the leadership of young people of color by providing monetary grants, access to coaching, and capacity-building offerings to movement partners (grantees). This commitment, which is deeply connected to CIRCLE’s mission to empower youth and address inequities, drives this learning effort for an increased understanding of the youth civic engagement ecosystem in Alabama.

The state’s legacy of civic engagement is being  reignited by the local youth-led momentum, strong civic traditions, and rising movement infrastructure—signaling that Alabama is at a pivotal moment for long-term, youth centered civic power building. At the same time, despite youth leadership and innovation, organizations centering youth of color, specifically in the South and Southwest regions, have been historically underfunded. Now that challenge is compounded by a philanthropic landscape in flux. While youth civic engagement receives growing rhetorical support, actual dollars are shrinking or shifting, leaving frontline organizations vulnerable.

Youth Disengagement Reflects Systemic Inequity, Not Apathy

CIRCLE’s past research on Alabama shows that even where young people are motivated to participate, structural barriers often blunt their impact. Alabama’s more than 800,000 young adults—one in five of the state’s voting-age residents—face a civic landscape that’s harder to navigate than in most other states. A plethora of restrictive election-related policies, including strict voter ID laws; the absence of in-person early voting, same-day registration, pre-registration, and automatic registration; and complex absentee voting requirements make it especially difficult for students, first-time voters, and low-income youth to cast a ballot. Moreover, in more than 70% of Alabama’s counties, fewer than half of households have high-speed broadband internet access at home, impeding young people’s ability to access civic information and register to vote online.

These systemic conditions contribute to persistent gaps between state and national youth turnout rates, trailing by as much as eight percentage points in recent elections. Yet, even within those constraints, Alabama’s young people show strong civic potential. A 2024 WalletHub analysis ranked the state near the bottom overall for political engagement, but 35th nationally for youth political engagement, suggesting that young Alabamians remain eager to participate despite the odds. Moreover, when discriminatory or potentially restrictive policies arise, young people are often among the first to respond. During the debate over Senate Bill 129, the state’s anti-DEI bill, college students organized protests and testified at legislative hearings, exemplifying how Alabama’s challenging political environment can also spark bold, youth-led action.

Long-term Investment for Long-Term Progress

Interviewed organizations varied in size from volunteer-run efforts to staffed nonprofits, yet they described a shared challenge: instability. Most rely on a mix of private and regional foundation support, with almost no state or corporate funding. Because youth civic engagement rarely has its own dedicated funding stream, programs are often sustained through general operating budgets and become “the first to go if tough times come.” Leaders described running budget deficits, cutting youth programs to preserve essential services, and struggling to maintain current offerings.

This fragility is compounded by national funding patterns that favor “swing states” and short-term election-year investments, creating a boom-and-bust cycle. The result is a patchwork system where programs expand and disappear depending on shifting external priorities. Ultimately, building lasting youth power requires steady staffing, flexible multi-year investments, and year-round collaboration that can outlast election cycles and funding waves.

Staffing and Training are Key to Organizational Infrastructure

Across interviews, a common theme was that organizations know what to do but lack the people and resources to do it. Many want to launch youth fellowships, ambassador programs, leadership institutes, or campus organizing efforts, but without dedicated staff or flexible funding, these aspirations remain out of reach. Additionally, the need for staff capacity was especially clear. Some groups have just one organizer covering multiple regions, limiting their ability to build sustained relationships with young people. As one director explained, “We have one community organizer per region who’s supposed to be reaching everybody,” but “if we had two or three [organizers] in a region, that would give us the flexibility to have an organizer who could really focus in and dig in on youth engagement and another one that could dig in on older adults.” 

Additionally, leaders highlighted the importance of training and mentorship. One statewide network leader noted that while there is no shortage of talent or ideas, “resources tend to be so scarce for this work that people typically have to go out of state to receive training, and then once they receive training, there's not typically too many options to plug back in, especially if you're talking about employment.” Investing in professional development—particularly in strategic planning, relationship building, leadership development, digital communications, and data/technical skills—could go a long way in helping organizations engage youth sustainably.

Place-Based Anchors Are Leverage Points

Leaders consistently highlighted the power of Alabama’s place-based institutions, especially HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities) and statewide coalitions, as underutilized anchors for civic engagement. With 14 campuses, Alabama has more HBCUs than any other state. As one interviewee explained, those campuses, many of which also have Black fraternities and sororities, are “ripe for organizing because they are full of people who tend to grow up in homes with an awareness of political organizing, if not the civil rights movement, at least the sense of responsibility to communities.” However, the same interviewee noted that these campuses are difficult to engage without dedicated staff and resources to serve as liaisons. Another leader described piloting student-led voter engagement initiatives on three HBCU campuses that could expand statewide if more funding were available.

Additionally, Alabama’s issue-based coalitions, spanning voting rights, environmental justice, and immigration, demonstrate the connective tissue that already exists across movements. Many coalitions include youth components and shared spaces where organizers exchange strategies and collaborate on statewide initiatives. Together, HBCUs and coalitions illustrate how local institutions can become durable civic infrastructure, and the growth potential of sustainable youth engagement when rooted in trusted institutions that already connect people to one another and to place.

Reaching Rural and Non-College Youth Requires Different Design Choices

Geography and socioeconomic barriers make it especially difficult to engage young people outside Alabama’s largest metro areas. In the Black Belt and Wiregrass regions, largely agricultural areas in south-central and southeastern Alabama, youth face a unique set of obstacles: underfunded schools, limited job opportunities, and almost no infrastructure to support civic life. As one interviewee explained, these communities “have the fewest number of organizations for young people to plug into.” Many rural areas lack public transit, rideshare services, or reliable broadband. One leader put it bluntly: “Imagine trying to organize and do things when you don’t even have the basic things people take for granted.”

The challenge extends beyond geography. Leaders noted that non-college youth (those who have not accessed college at all) and system-impacted youth (those who are formerly or currently incarcerated) are often left out of civic engagement programs designed around campuses. One interviewee explained that colleges provide natural gathering spaces for outreach but, for young people working outside higher education, “it can be a lot harder to find them.” For organizers, these insights suggest that engaging all young people requires creative solutions, such as meeting youth where they are—at job sites, in churches, and through community centers—and offering transportation stipends or shared vans to help them attend in-person events. Rural and non-college youth are often some of the most underheard voices in civic life, and connecting with them will require new outreach strategies, infrastructure, and imagination.

Intergenerational Partnerships Can Strengthen Movements

In Alabama, the legacy of the civil rights movement continues to shape how communities understand leadership and justice. Cities like Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma remain living classrooms for civic participation, where young people grow up hearing civil rights stories from grandparents, pastors, and neighbors who lived the struggle firsthand—an inheritance that one leader described as “ancestral roots in organizing.”

Leaders noted a broad spectrum of engagement with youth across organizations. Some have no youth-specific programs, others engage young people through internships or junior boards, and several are intentionally centering youth leadership or building intergenerational teams where adults play more supportive roles. In a few groups, most staff and volunteers are under 35, signaling a generational shift already underway.

But working across generations can introduce tension. As one organizer explained, elders “expect things to look a certain way,” while younger activists bring new approaches to organizing and communication. The result is sometimes siloed work, with older and younger generations “working parallel instead of together.” Yet these differences can also be generative. By “holding older people accountable and pushing the envelope,” youth “provoke and dislodge advocates who get comfortable in their positions and uplift new ways of thinking.” CIRCLE’s research affirms that youth–adult partnerships— where young people are equal collaborators in strategy and decision-making—strengthen civic skills, deepen agency, and make organizations more innovative and inclusive. In Alabama and beyond, thoughtful investment in intergenerational collaboration can transform generational differences from a friction point to an asset.

Recommendations for Funders and Practitioners

Alabama’s story is ultimately one of resilience in the face of constraint. The civic leaders we heard from are not waiting for ideal conditions but are already building youth power with what they have. Their experiences illustrate that when young people have mentorship, accessible entry points, and institutions that trust their leadership, civic participation flourishes even in difficult contexts. Strengthening youth civic engagement in Alabama, and in similarly resource-lean states, will require not just appreciating this resilience, but investing in the infrastructure and relationships that allow it to grow.

• Fund early, consistently, and beyond election cycles: Provide multi-year, flexible funding that stabilizes staffing, prevents boom-and-bust cycles, and supports year-round youth engagement.
• Prioritize staffing and staff development: Invest in organizers, campus/youth liaisons, membership coordinators, and communications specialists along with training in relational organizing, leadership development, and data/tech skills.
• Strengthen place-based civic anchors: Resource HBCUs, community colleges, churches, and statewide coalitions as long-term organizing hubs, with dedicated staff to coordinate student and youth engagement.
• Design programs intentionally for non-college and rural youth: Meet young people where they are (workplaces, churches, community centers) and pair programming with transportation support, technology access, or employer partnerships.
• Support intergenerational collaboration: Fund initiatives that build shared leadership between generations, offer structured mentorship, and help organizations mediate generational tensions productively.
• Reduce structural barriers to participation: Support local efforts that help young people navigate ID requirements, registration deadlines, absentee rules, and the digital divide through school-based registration, civic literacy programs, and broadband advocacy.
• Leverage Alabama’s civil rights history as a civic learning asset: Engage local elders, movement veterans, and historic sites as partners in civic education and leadership development.
• Create durable pathways for youth leadership: Expand fellowships, ambassador programs, paid internships, and pipelines that keep young people connected to civic work beyond a single semester or election.