“Institutionalization” means ensuring your Ask Every Student strategy is integrated into the operations of your institution– even during non-federal election years. Institutionalization can be reached through creating and sustaining equitable and inclusive campus voting coalitions and having senior leadership actionably commit to full student voter participation. 

It also means establishing a meaningful nonpartisan culture around voting that includes students who are not eligible to vote in the United States, and making sure student leaders drive the work and receive institutional support. The work should be able to continue despite turnover between staff and student leaders.

Figure out the best way that you can use this Toolkit to Ask Every Student on your campus by filling out the First Step Form! After filling out the form, you’ll automatically receive an email response with your answers to help you apply these tools to your context.

Tools on this page:

• Navigate the Coalition Tools

• Creating Democratic Engagement Action Plans for Full Student Voter Participation

• Higher Education Presidents’ Commitment to Full Student Voter Participation

Navigate the Coalition

The Students Learn Students Vote (SLSV) Coalition is the national hub and largest nonpartisan network in the United States dedicated to increasing college student voter participation. We convene and connect partners, campuses, and students with each other and with resources and programming – all towards achieving our vision of ensuring every student has easy and equal access to participate in every election.

Whether you are just getting started in nonpartisan student democratic engagement or you are a veteran student voting partner, use these navigation tools to take your work to the next level.

This “Coalition Map” includes:

• Explainer Graphics to help demystify the national nonpartisan student democratic engagement space. They decode what commonly used acronyms stand for and how organizations collaborate and interact with campuses

• A Resource Library that contains toolkits, publications, or other resources to guide campus action planning or democratic engagement efforts

• A Partner Directory to search for, learn about, and contact SLSV Coalition partners

• #StudentVote Starter Packs to help you navigate recommendations based on common questions and concerns that come up from different types of partners. We highly recommend checking out the Transition Campus Staff Tomás and New Campus Staff Nadia for help learning how to institutionalize Ask Every Student on your campus!

Creating Democratic Engagement Action Plans for Full Student Voter Participation

Tools such as the Strengthening American Democracy Guide and Rubric and the interactive, collaborative activity Votes & Ballots help you create high-quality action plans to institutionalize democratic engagement on your campus! Action plans also serve as a helpful record-keeping tool for addressing student and staff leader turnover.

We encourage campuses to join and submit their democratic engagement action plans to a coaching and awards program like the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge or the Fair Election Center’s Campus Vote Project and NASPA’s Voter Friendly Designation program. We also highly recommend evaluating your plan and implementation after the election and building on your efforts for the next year!

Higher Education Presidents’ Commitment to Full Student Voter Participation

Encourage your institution’s senior leadership (e.g., president, provost, chancellor) to commit to Full Student Voter Participation! Higher education leaders have a responsibility to prepare students to become responsible and engaged participants in our democracy. That includes exercising their right and duty to register and to vote.

The ALL IN Challenge and its Higher Education Presidents’ Council is challenging our institutions to make a visible commitment to reaching full student voter registration and voter participation in all elections. Together we can embed messages about the central importance of voting and participating as informed members of our democracy into our campus culture by including opportunities for voter registration systematically into processes that reach virtually every college student.