With four years until the next presidential election, Americans have a long runway to improve our national culture around politics and elections. It gives us time to build healthier civic habits and ways of treating one another. It gives us time to practice building trust and relationships, and the muscles for respectful, productive debate. It gives us time to approach local elections with more shared purpose and bridge-building.

It gives us time to strengthen our civic culture. But what will we do with this time?

Civic culture consists of the norms, habits, and narratives that shape how we treat one another as Americans, and whether we show up to help solve common problems. You might be familiar with the parts of our culture that are weak and unhealthy: a tendency toward despair and apathy, individualism over collaboration, hoarding of power, and narratives that reinforce division, competition, and zero-sum thinking.

What is civic culture?

Read how Americans are contributing to a more vibrant, resilient civic culture that is strengthening our social fabric and catalyzing more care for community, responsibility-taking and acts of citizenship…

1. Practice Mutualism and Mutual Aid

Silos? Resource scarcity? Competition? No, not here. Atlanta is choosing a different path: mutual aid, trust, and friendship.

Once a quarter, these civic and community leaders gather with the purpose of offering each other help. A few members present a project they’re working on, and the rest raise their hands to offer time, connections, and even funding. It’s called a civic collaboratory.

“The ATL Civic Collaboratory gave me the biggest single push in one day,” says member Blake Stoner.

Citizen University developed this mutual aid model to support networks like this one in Atlanta. A civic collaboratory is a trust-builder and project-catalyzer because it is cross-sector. Comedians connect with CEOs. Academics lend a hand to journalism orgs. It strengthens the fabric of local partnerships which allow members to respond more effectively to community needs.

But importantly, the ATL Civic Collab is a culture-changer. They’re choosing to build habits of connection and generosity, in a time of immense divide. They’re making it a norm to nurture trust, cross-partisan friendship, and joy, in a time of polarization. They’re building a stronger civic culture, all through a mutuality that pays off.

Read more about the ATL Civic Collab →

💡 Try this: Promote mutual aid in your community with an emphasis on building solidarity rather than charity.

Two people smiling together

2. Promote Habits of Service

Picture this: civic matchmaking. The room is full of neighbors and community organizations, and there’s a tangible energy of connection in the air as people bounce from table to table.

Kate Tucker set up this day of civic matchmaking because she noticed a disconnect between supply and demand in her hometown of Akron, Ohio: on one hand, community members were looking for ways to get involved, and on the other, organizations needed volunteers and support. But there weren’t opportunities for the two sides to meet. So as part of her Civic Saturday gatherings, Kate hosted civic matchmaking to close this gap.

Kate is volunteering her own energy into actively shaping the culture in Akron. She’s making it a habit for the community to connect on Saturdays, and new norms of serving others are blooming.

This culture of service can have a snowball effect: as more people give their time to helping others, acts of service become the norm, encouraging more people to do the same. It fosters a mindset that it is possible to engage across difference and indeed fruitful to do so.

And while service is unselfish, it also comes around to benefit each of us, starting with feeling part of something bigger. “I didn’t just meet my neighbors,” said one Akron volunteer. “I connected with them. I got their numbers. We made plans.”

Read more about civic culture in Akron →

💡 Try this: Make sure anyone with an instinct to serve does not face obstacles to do so. Identify underused places, resources, and people within a community that can plug gaps where there is a need.

Civic culture is bigger than politics and government. It extends to all the facets of how we live together as citizens, behave in public, deal with common problems, relate to our neighbors, and identify with one another and our communities and nation.

— Habits of Heart and Mind: How to Fortify Civic Culture

3. Engage People in Codesign and Decision-Making

The rising generation is filled with passionate young people who are committed to sharing their perspectives and ensuring their voices are heard. But only 35% of young people report having people, organizations, or resources in their community that can help them take action on issues they care about.

With our nation’s 250th anniversary approaching, National Civic Collaboratory member and History Made By Us Executive Director Caroline Klibanoff wanted to make sure Gen Z played a significant role in the celebration.

Birthed from this idea came Youth250 — a nonpartisan initiative capturing young people’s imaginations, ideas, and input as the United States turns 250 years old in 2026. Consisting of 100 young adults, the Youth250 Bureau is using its civic power to support leaders, organizations, and communities throughout the nation to help commemorate America’s 250th anniversary.

This approach empowers community members to engage in co-design and decision-making. As a result, people feel empowered to participate civically, gain a sense of ownership, build trust, and more.

Read more about Youth250 →

💡 Try this: The next time you are developing a program or policy in your workplace or community, pause and consider who your decision will impact, and make sure they have a central voice in the decision-making process.

4. Spread Narratives of Common Purpose

It’s all too easy to poke fun at other generations — from TikToks that parody how boomer parents act, to boomers rolling their eyes at their phone-obsessed kids.

These ideas can get a laugh, but they also quietly reinforce distance among generations. And this narrative of generational divides can reinforce mistrust or prevent intergenerational collaboration. This wears at the fabric of society.

That’s why we teamed up with CoGenerate to tell a new story about generations finding commonality and being more powerful than the sum of their parts. Younger and older members of National Civic Collaboratory sat down to explore what conditions create trust and eagerness to work together.

“What I love about this space is you guys are always asking us questions,” said college student Eric Ye about a room of civic professionals and leaders.

By being intentional around the norms and habits we have in cogenerational spaces, we’ll not only strengthen relationships but build a narrative of commonality, leading to a stronger civic culture.

Read the article, 5 Ways to Make Your Collaboration with Teens a Success →

💡 Try this: Create opportunities for shared learning. Cogenerational collaboration isn’t just about working together — it’s about learning from one another. When youngers and olders take turns being the “teacher” or “learner” or better yet, experience learning together, people move beyond stereotypes.

5. Root Activity in Shared Place

Shamichael Hallman and his son Omari are a civic powerhouse. This father-son duo shares a deep commitment to building community in public places.

Shamichael has helped transform the Cossitt Library in Memphis into a cultural and community hub. Our ideal was to cultivate a deep sense of shared responsibility, he shared, where the library wasn’t merely a service but a space that everyone felt invested in and inspired to advocate for.

And Omari inherited his dad’s spirit of catalyzing connections. This year, he’s been organizing regular events in a neighborhood park to help his peers connect in real life. I want to form this community where people aren’t afraid to interact with one another and create these new connections, he wrote.

Their efforts arent just about getting people together occasionally. They are both actively choosing to be countercultural. Instead of accepting that it’s normal to be lonely or stay distant from neighbors, they’re taking responsibility for building a new culture that turns shared places into civic spaces.

Shamichael and Omari have both gone through Citizen University programs, where they learned new skills for building civic culture and built relationships that bolster their work. They are both the definition of a civic catalyst!

💡 Try this: Consider what it would take to turn a passive shared space — a place where neighbors pass through — and create opportunities and experiences for them to slow down and connect with one another. How could you use art, for example, to help people root into that place?

6. Practice Civic Love and Joy

How can we be hopeful (and even joyful) about the future — without bypassing what is worrisome about the present? Lisa Kay Solomon has a plan for that.

Civic imagination fuels hope and agency, she writes, countering apathy and fatalism that can undermine democratic participation.

Lisa, a futurist and educator, developed The Futures Happening Playbook — a guide to sparking civic imagination and creative possibility. It invites us to consider, what could go right? What if our school, community, or organization’s values were realized and expressed in their highest forms?

Civic joy is a commitment to creative possibility in the face of pain and struggle. And civic love is the bond of trust and affection that turns strangers into neighbors and place into home.

If we make 2025 a year of meaning, imagination, possibility, and joy… what might go right?

Explore the Futures Happening Playbook →

💡 Try this: Lead with civic imagination. We cannot build a future we haven’t first imagined. It’s hard to do our most creative and expansive thinking about what we truly want when we feel boxed in by reacting to near-term challenges.

Two people laughing together.

7. Create Space for Free Exchange of Ideas and Model Being Unafraid

Do you value being able to express yourself freely? Many Americans do — hence the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

But free expression is just the forerunner to free exchange — an act of engaging with other perspectives, acknowledging ideas, and welcoming conversation.

“The point of living in a self-governing democratic republic is that the nation is able to tap the broadest range of ideas from its diverse residents.” — Habits of Heart and Mind report, released by American Academy of Arts & Sciences

At National Civic Collaboratory meetings, members and nationwide civic leaders model this kind of culture. During the last gathering of 2024, NCC member and facilitator Kale McMonagle reflected:

“We came together as a mutual aid effort in support of civic initiatives. These efforts give me energy and hope as we face the uncertainty of the election. There are deeply brilliant people out there who will stay committed to the kind of culture needed to sustain democracy. One where we listen and serve to meet our collective needs.”

Our nation thrives when diversified perspectives are embraced, making room for curiosity, fostering empathy, and even welcoming debate.

💡 Try this: Promote “confident pluralism.” Establish that it is OK to have different opinions and that it is OK to argue. Normalize the expectation that you will, especially in public spaces, have to engage alongside people of diverse identities and divergent ideologies.