I have been a part of the Students Learn Students Vote (SLSV) Coalition for over 10 years now. It’s been a time of extraordinary disruption and challenge and change for our country. Many other organizations have come and gone during this time. But the SLSV Coalition endures and thrives. 

The SLSV Coalition endures and thrives even under challenging conditions because we invest in our people. Our dedicated staff. Hundreds of coalition partners. Thousands of faculty and staff leading campus coalitions all across the country. When we give this network the space and support it needs to strategize thoughtfully and act together, we’ve found that we can do incredible things no matter what challenges we encounter. 

And so I was not surprised to see the SLSV Coalition thriving in 2025: Helping partners to learn from the 2024 elections and build plans for educating and engaging student voters in 2025 and 2026. Helping campus leaders navigate an increasingly uncertain and resource constrained landscape for student voting work in higher education. And succeeding in preparing our movement to make sure every student at every college in America is ready and able to vote confidently in another massively consequential election in 2026. 

The purpose of this report is to introduce you to the work of the SLSV Coalition and persuade you that this organization is a worthy place to invest your time, money, expertise, networks, and other resources to help move towards 100% student voting in the United States. It tells the story of a trustworthy, rigorous, and consistently effective organization doing cutting edge work on some of the most important challenges of our time – not just over the past year, but over the past decade. I invite you to join us, get involved, and be a part of doing really important work together in 2026 and beyond. 

Sam Novey

Chief Strategist, University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement

When we founded the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition 10 years ago, our initial vision was based on a question: “What if we worked together?” To that point, the answer among the philanthropic partners, nonprofit organizations, and colleges and universities who made up our Coalition’s founding members was “I don’t know.” 

But what we lacked in knowledge, we made up for in belief. Specifically, a shared belief that if we built a Coalition together – based in trust and genuine collaboration – we could create something that lasts beyond any one election, team, or generation. 

A decade later, that belief has become knowledge. Throughout this report, you will read about the many ways the SLSV Coalition has grown into (and in some cases, beyond) the promise of our initial ideation, on a foundation built to last for many years to come. In 2025 our programming saw participation levels previously unheard of in non-federal-election years, including some of the largest virtual and in-person gatherings in our history, massive participation in Campus Takeover of the Civic Holidays, and $158,000 in grants distributed to 48 colleges and universities to implement strategies based on the Ask Every Student framework. 

More importantly, in this report, you will see the ways we’re showing up for our partners at a moment of need, in a fraught time for our country, our democracy, the higher education sector, and the students it serves. 

Reaching students where they are

In April, Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) and Protect Democracy published “How Does Gen Z Really Feel About Democracy?” While the report shows a clear majority of young people still “value the basic values and practices of democracy,” nearly 40% of young people feel either “checked out” of US democracy, or “hostile dissatisfaction” to the point that they would “consider political violence to achieve change.”

Their perspectives reflect the experiences of a generation that has only seen dysfunction in our country’s national politics since becoming politically conscious. They are also influenced by growing isolation – according to CIRCLE, half of all young people rarely or never spend time in-person with other community members – and widespread struggle to meet basic financial needs. (In both studies, CIRCLE saw similar results among students and non-students). 

Any attempt to inspire civic action among today’s college students has to address the psychological barriers that come with the food, housing, and safety insecurities that too many of them face on a daily basis. In recognition of this emerging reality, in 2025 we placed a greater emphasis on building belonging and community within our Coalition and for the students we serve, leaning into the community-building opportunities of our virtual and in-person gatherings, and building resources such as the Reaching Students Where They Are guide to help partners foster belonging through nonpartisan student voter outreach. This year, we plan to push further by building partnerships with groups that work to address students’ basic needs, accounting for them as a core component of effective, inclusive nonpartisan voter engagement. 

In doing so, we believe we can seize on a significant opportunity. As the 2025 state and local elections showed, young voters are ready and willing to show up in large numbers despite structural barriers. We also know that higher education institutions are among the few institutions with high trust levels among their students. In helping colleges and universities become engines for nonpartisan civic engagement, we can build positive on-ramps for our country’s future leaders to become lifelong voters. 

Higher education and democracy at a crossroads.

Since last January, our partners at colleges and universities throughout the US have seen their work disrupted by new federal oversight practices that sought to eradicate diversity, equity, and inclusion practices; overhaul or eliminate key funding sources through the US Department of Education; and redefine higher education’s relationship with student civic engagement and nonpartisan voter engagement. 

At the same time, state and federal bodies have sought to institute new policies that would require voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship at polling places, restrict access to mail-in voting, remove large groups of voters from state voter rolls, and dilute voter power via partisan gerrymandering. Many of these measures would disproportionately impact college student voters, and in some cases, they have been coupled with actions directly targeting college students’ right to vote. 

Our nonpartisan Coalition is clear-eyed about these measures’ intentions and potential impacts, as well as the likelihood that more will emerge in 2026 and beyond. In 2025 we responded with an intentional pivot toward a greater emphasis on rapid support, reshaping our Coalition-facing communications to be more flexible, streamlined, and targeted. We worked to ensure specific partners received outreach and resources from us during critical times when immediate needs arose. We also crafted new resources, including the Scenario Planning and Rapid Response Guide, to help our partners prepare to meet the moment at a time of frequent change and unpredictability. 

We will lean even further into these adjustments in 2026 as we enter the second year of this new and more complicated landscape. And while the overall backdrop remains dark, there are silver linings that offer reason for optimism: By the end of 2025, we saw noticeably stronger solidarity among higher education institutions in dealing with encroachments on their operations and their students’ rights. We also saw voters in Maine stand up for voter access in a rare rebuke of legislation to restrict voting rights. 

We expect more actors in our space to rise up and meet the moment in 2026. As we have for the past decade, we will make sure they have the support they need: resources, training, connections, and a Coalition standing alongside them to strengthen our democracy, together. 

Clarissa Unger

Co-Founder and Executive Director of the SLSV Coalition