PROGRAMS
The Students Learn Students Vote (SLSV) Coalition and our partners lead multiple programs and initiatives designed to make the democratic process more accessible for college students by weaving democratic engagement into the fabric of campus life. Whether by providing funding, resources, connections, and/or strategic direction, we ensure each of our programs and initiatives are accessible and impactful on campuses throughout the country.
Ask Every Student is a national initiative, managed by the SLSV Coalition, to help campuses ask every student to participate in the democratic process and achieve full student voter registration. We believe that it’s important to ask every student to participate in democracy, because our democracy only works when everyone votes, and every eligible student deserves the chance to have their voice heard.
AES uses a framework, based on research-driven insights, that full student voter participation comes from integrating voter registration into existing processes, such as student orientation or classes, executing inclusive one-on-one voter registration and nonpartisan democratic engagement tactics, and institutionalizing these tactics to be a sustainable part of campus culture.
The SLSV Coalition is the managing partner of the AES Steering Committee, which also includes the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge and the Fair Election Center’s Campus Vote Project – two partners we work closely with on a number of programs.
New voters often feel ill-equipped to participate in elections. Sometimes it’s because they overestimate how complicated it is to register to vote and cast a ballot – and sometimes it’s because it is unnecessarily complicated. Every fall we lead a national campaign – National Voter Education Week – to help voters, especially new voters, get all the information they need to vote with confidence and help others do the same.
Last year nearly 900 partners participated in National Voter Education Week (we call it “NVEW”), engaging millions of people via digital and in-person campaigns, with easy-to-use resources and information to help them cast their ballots with confidence.
Every fall we lead a program called “Campus Takeover of the Civic Holidays,” which provides resources and guidance to college campuses to help them lead fun and effective celebrations of the fall civic holidays – National Voter Registration Day, National Voter Education Week, Vote Early Day, and Election Hero Day.
Celebration is a natural part of campus life, and this program helps student vote leaders tap into that to make nonpartisan democratic engagement as part of the culture in their campus communities. Every year we see some pretty amazing mobilizations come out of it – parties that incorporate DJ’s, scavenger hunts, even things like “puppies to the polls” – all to encourage students to register and vote in the fall.
In 2024, our partners led Campus Takeover with more than 1700 celebrations on 1447 different campuses.
Each fall the SLSV Coalition unites nonprofit leaders, campus staff, administrators, faculty members, philanthropic partners, and students from across the country for our annual gathering, the National Student Vote Summit.
During the Summit, we work together to build connections within the nonpartisan student democratic engagement space, share lessons learned from the past year, provide training and resources, and ignite a shared momentum toward our collective goals for the year to come.
After conducting the National Student Vote Summit virtually for three years, we returned to in-person gatherings in 2023 and 2024 at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 2024 we had our largest gathering ever, with 330 attendees, including 200 students representing colleges from 35 different states plus the District of Columbia.