By Catherine Komp, Engagement Director
When Leslie Garvin considers the findings of the NC Civic Health Index, she acknowledges that we don’t rank high compared to other states. But Garvin, a lead author of the 2024 Index, sees a lot of potential to leverage our strengths.
“I find that people here are very family-oriented and passionate and care about the future for their children,” said Garvin. “So to be able to leverage that, to help people think how that can be translated into the public square—I think there’s a real opportunity there.”
Garvin is Executive Director of North Carolina Campus Engagement, a 30-year-old collaborative of colleges and universities housed at Elon University that focuses on community and civic engagement. This is their fourth NC Civic Health Index, a unique partnership with the National Conference on Citizenship and NC-based education and civic groups.
The Index uses Census and state data to examine three core areas: social connectedness, community engagement and political action and participation—which includes insights on how often North Carolinians consume local news.
In this category, North Carolina ranks 45th out of 50 states plus D.C., with more than 35% saying they read, watch or listen to news about political, societal or local issues “infrequently” or “never.” The index also offers breakdowns by gender, age, race, education, income and geography.
While we rank low compared to other states, Garvin says there are opportunities especially when thinking about other areas of the index like discussing politics and social issues with neighbors and participating in public groups and meetings.
“We know that a big piece of civic health is the way that communities are organized to solve their problems,” said Garvin. “And the media has to have a role in that—getting the information out, convening folks, and sharing what’s relevant to people’s lives.”
This year, Garvin says they’re doing something new with the Index—organizing a daylong Summit at Elon University on June 11 in partnership with GenerationNation, the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University and other groups.
They’re inviting news and information organizations to join other stakeholders for a day of learning about the data and helping develop more pathways to boost civic health in our communities.
We recently chatted with Leslie Garvin about the 2024 NC Civic Health Index, the upcoming Summit and the Index’s recommendations for local news and information organizations.
NC Local: Let’s talk about some of the findings. There are some bright spots including community relationships and collaboration with neighbors. Can you share what you found here?
Leslie Garvin: We divided the data into three main categories: social connectedness, community engagement, and then political action and participation. Our strength is and has been, over the years, every time that we have done an index, the social connectedness component.
Within that, the indicators are things like talking with or spending time with your family and friends, talking with or spending time with neighbors, working with your neighbors. And so that tends to be where we perform the best. So our top area is spending time with family and friends, talking, spending time and collaborating with neighbors, doing favors for neighbors, frequency of volunteering (which is actually a community engagement indicator), participating in groups (which is also a community engagement indicator), and then voter registration is under political action and participation, and we have a high voter registration rate in North Carolina.
I always use the word “comparatively” when I say those are the areas where we perform the best. That is because even compared to other states, many of these areas tend to be high anyway. Most people say they spend time with their family and friends. We don’t necessarily stand out in these areas as much as we affirm this being something that people in our country clearly are really connected with — their family and friends.
So for example, if we look at social connectedness — talking with and spending time with our neighbors — we’re ranked 19th in the country. The percentage is 28%. So even when you look at the places where we rank the highest, those numbers tend to be not that high. Then of course when we talk about spending time with family and friends, 81% say that, but the national average is 79% so we ranked fairly high on that, 27th. We’re not much higher than the national average, but it is an area of strength for us.
People can dive a little bit deeper into all of these categories and look at age and income, education, and education and you do have some racial and ethnic data but just white, non-Hispanic, and Black, right?
Leslie Garvin: Yes. We didn’t have enough data from any other groups to do the comparison. That’s an area that has remained consistent throughout all of the civic health indexes that we produce. These gaps. On almost all measures except for one, folks who are designated as white rank higher. When it comes to urban, rural — folks in rural communities tend to be less engaged than others. And then there’s a very clear distinction across the age continuum. The younger you are, the less likely you are to rank high in these areas.
Then there’s this funny thing that happens with the age data where clearly the oldest group, the Silent Generation, of course their numbers start to go back down low. But the peak is really that sort of middle age and seniors. And then when you get to the oldest group of seniors, the Silent Generation, those numbers start to decline for obvious reasons.
Just glancing at the data, some things come to mind for me. Like somebody who’s making $35,000 a year might not have time for volunteering.
Leslie Garvin: There’s always an income gap as well.
Tell me about the voting results. This would have been data before 2024, right?
Leslie Garvin: We try to give a lot of caveats to this. We are curious about the possibility that there was some confusion when folks even answered, which is why, again, we chose not to use the actual reported data, but to look at the actual numbers. When we ask people, “Did you vote in the last election?” that would have been the 2022 midterms and the 2021 local municipal election. If you say “in the last year,” we’re unclear as to which of those elections people were answering about.
And North Carolina always does much better in midterms and general elections than we do in local municipal. We think that probably aligns with the place where we rank the lowest — we are 50th in the nation for connecting with your local officials. Those two things seem to be fairly closely aligned. But yes, compared to many other states, our ranking for voter registration is high. A lot of our folks definitely register to vote. We’re curious if that would change over time as there have been lots of changes to the process, since this data came out. This would have been before the implementation of Voter ID.
The 50th ranking for connecting with elected officials — what does “connecting” refer to?
Leslie Garvin: It’s specifically contact or visit public officials. We’re 50th in the nation for that. It’s an area we want to think more deeply about and try to figure out how to bridge that divide.
We have a lot of curiosities about the whole voting and election area — anything that falls under political action, which is where our lowest rankings. Consuming news, donating to political organizations. We have a lot of curiosity about the connection between that and us being a battleground state and the inundation that happens every four years — whether there’s something there.
Even for posting our views on political, social, or local issues on social media, we rank low in that. You’d have to ask yourself, does that make sense because when you’re purple, you’re not really sure who your audience is, who your friends are, how they vote. So we just have a lot of curiosity about it. Some of it seems logical, some not.
One indicator that for us, we’ve gotten a lot of learning from is our neighbors in the region. I’ve been in conversation and doing presentations with folks in Arkansas, Alabama, and Georgia. In general, the South has fewer civic health indexes than other regions. The one that is the most curious to us is the question about donating to charitable or religious organizations. Our neighbors have dug into it a little more through some focus groups, and it seems to be a language barrier.
In terms of, when you ask someone who’s of faith, particularly Christian, “Do they donate to a religious institution or organization?” in their mind, using the word “organization” means something like Samaritan’s Purse or some faith-based organization — as opposed to their church or congregation. For them, the language is more around tithing, offerings, that sort of thing. That’s the one we have the biggest questions about — that we would rank so low in that area.
Of particular interest to a lot of the our newsletter readers will be news consumption. What have you found there?
Leslie Garvin: For the most part, when we did the comparison over time, it’s been fairly consistent. There are really very few areas where it shifted significantly. We’re always in that middle of the rankings or below the rankings. When we ask, “Do you read, watch, or listen to news or information about political, social, or local issues?” or if we ask the question “Do you discuss political, social, or local issues?” or “Do you post your views about it?” — in all of those, the ranking is fairly similar.
Reading, watching, or listening to news or information about political, societal, or local issues frequently — we are ranked 45th. The question about posting your views — 46th. Discussing local issues with family or friends — 34th. Discussing societal or local issues with neighbors frequently — 31st. So we have a curiosity also about this, I use that word a lot because we haven’t had the opportunity to do some of the focus groups yet–that’s one of our lead recommendations is to start digging into this more. We suspect there’s a connection between those two things. If you’re not reading, watching or listening to the news and information, or tuning it out in some way, it’s likely you’re not discussing it either.
But this seems to be a trend across the country. When I say we ranked 45th on reading, watching, or listening to news or information frequently, 63% of folks reported doing it. It’s a pretty high number we think. More than half say they do — it’s just compared to other states, it appears they do it more than we do.
For discussing, does the question indicate where you would be doing that — social media vs. in real life?
Leslie Garvin: I think when they say “discuss,” that’s intended to be in real life. Then the question later about posting your views — that’s more about online platforms. But again, everyone interprets these sorts of questions differently. Discussing is 35% — folks say they’re discussing these things.
I think about how so many people use Facebook as a primary source of information, including Facebook groups that often have a “no politics” policy. Do you think that affects how often people may talk about those things?
Leslie Garvin: I’ve got a lot of personal opinions about it. I grew up in the era of “we don’t talk about religion or politics.” The irony is, it’s pretty much all we talk about. The whole notion of the personal is political. So in reality, there is a political undertone to our lives and everything we do.
We know from the bridging movement and other places — I’m active with Braver Angels and other groups — that the online community’s loudest voices tend to be the more extreme voices. Sometimes we’re missing the political conversations happening underneath, because people aren’t yelling or saying negative things, but they are actually stating political opinions or preferences in terms of the policy issues they care about.
This is one area we feel like, as a state, we could really address. We can create pathways for folks to have conversations. My organization does a lot of work with college students to help them know how to have civil discourse, civil dialogue, deliberation. We believe we could scale that up and do a lot more of that in our communities.
I think we’re talking about these things. We just need the skills to do it well — to have conversations that are deliberative and actually move us toward common ground for action. That’s what we all really want, right? We want to solve these problems. But the talking has become so toxic. We don’t have enough spaces for civic dialogue.
Could you share a little about the index’s recommendations, especially around media and public information?
Leslie Garvin: I should preface this by saying we have six pages of recommendations. But when it comes to media, we had two main recommendations. First, to help develop the capacity of local communities to report the news. We thought that would especially help close the rural news gap. We were finding the possibility that there news deserts in rural communities, so many of the smaller newspapers have closed. So how do we create citizen reporters? Because they have the lowest rate of the frequency of engaging with the news and other indicators—except connecting with family, friends, and neighbors. So we thought the dialogue work—civil discourse training, opportunities in the local community — they might want to get involved with that because they already have strong relationships.
We also talked about the importance of working with grassroots organizations and community colleges to help fill gaps to help folks know about local happenings. North Carolina is fifth in the nation for the number of community colleges — 58. They’re accessible — 20 minutes from everyone. That was the intention, that all 100 counties would have access. To mobilize our community colleges to fill this gap — that would really be a powerful solution.
And the notion of more specialized news, things that are highly relevant or specific to that community and what their needs are.
Our second recommendation really centered around making the news more relevant: the notion of more specialized news, things that are highly relevant or specific to that community and what their needs are. Also, making it accessible. There was a pretty precipitous dip between education and your ability, desire or capacity to engage with the news. So supporting local news to make sure the content is tailored and the language is accessible was a key recommendation.
Let’s talk about the NC Civic Health Summit, which is taking place June 11 at Elon University. Have you done this in the past?
Leslie Garvin: We haven’t. We figured, instead of just pushing this data out and hoping it catches on. I should mention that when the 2015 index was produced by the Institute on Emerging Issues, they did take some of those recommendations and create working groups and do more intentional conversations. I think they developed some programming around that as well.
Historically, we have not had a summit. And so we decided let’s bring stakeholders, together and we’ve been trying to reach out to every sector we can think of—from business to media to youth service organizations, senior-serving organizations. Our intention on June 11th at Elon University is to have a day where we look at the results or the information, the data from the index and actually also look at some frameworks that are out there. There was a new report that was produced called Habits of Heart and Mind: How to Fortify Civic Culture. That was done by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences last fall with some very clear recommendations for how folks can build their civic health or shift their civic culture. So we’re going to dig into some of that.
And then there’s this idea of community capitals. It’s a framework that looks at the seven different types of capital that help a community thrive. You’ve obviously got the physical, the built space, you’ve got the social capital and other things. So we want it to be where we’re learning some models, but also looking at our data. Then we’re going to break off into groups in three major categories where we organized our index—and try to build some ideas. We’ll look at the recommendations already provided and then also use the expertise in the room of folks who do this work or live this work every day.
And from that, our intention or our hope is that working groups and some other paths forward emerge to actually keep the work going.
You’re encouraging North Carolina journalists and editorial leaders and publishers to come. What kind of value do you think that they’ll bring?
Leslie Garvin: I think the biggest value is that they live here as well, right? And just as a regular citizen, I believe there’s a desire that we’re a civically healthy state. But also, we obviously want the media to see that they have a role in this as well.
Again, back to those recommendations—the idea that these gaps, in particular where folks talk about their disconnect from news, that they would think of some pathways or look at what’s already happening and amplify some of that—help be part of the solution, right?
Because we know that a big piece of civic health, or the way that we define it, is the way that communities are organized to solve their problems. It’s a simple definition. And the media has to have a role in that—getting the information out, convening folks, and sharing what’s relevant to people’s lives.
Do you have other ideas about how local news and information organizations could use the index to better understand community needs? It is statewide, so you can’t really drill down into counties or regions necessarily, but it still could be used to understand their audience needs.
Leslie Garvin: I definitely think that they can look at the data and compare it to what they’re seeing or the stories that they’re telling and see if those match. In places where it doesn’t match, I think there’s an invitation for the media to tell a different story. To complicate that narrative.
If they’re in a rural area and in fact they do not see these gaps—if folks really are connected to the politicians in their area or what’s happening—I think we’d all love to know those stories. Many of us who do statewide work in particular probably don’t know those stories. So I think there’s that opportunity to complicate that narrative and show where in fact it doesn’t align with what we found.
But also, where are the places the index reflects the way that civic health or civic life looks locally. I’m sure that—what we tried to put in the index—bright spots where there is someone, somewhere who, if the media were to say, “By the way, there is this interesting gathering of citizens” or “There’s a really neat neighborhood group that’s doing work”—that those things could possibly be scaled up by other people in that community because the media has amplified it.
I think there’s both sides, right? To tell a different story and/or to affirm what’s happening. Or if this is the reality in their local community where they are telling stories—to figure out a leader who needs to be in the room to address some of these gaps, to create more pathways, particularly for young people to become civically engaged.
What kind of sparks or ideas does the data give you about civic engagement in communities? What do you think is possible?
Leslie Garvin: I’ve been in North Carolina for 20 years. And I find what this data says—that people are generous and loving and kind to their friends and neighbors and that people care deeply. And, I think there’s such an opportunity because we are a battleground state, because we’re a purple state, to do politics differently.
Building on that—this idea of a culture of care. And what that could look like beyond just, “I’m going to care for my neighbor or care for my family,” but to help translate that into community care. To start thinking about and using language around our shared future.
I find that people here are very family-oriented and passionate and care about the future for their children—our posterity, right? That’s in the preamble. So to be able to leverage that, but to help people think how that can be translated into the public square—I think there’s a real opportunity there. I think it can absolutely happen.
The fact that this whole notion of volunteerism—that we don’t rank high in general for being volunteers, but when we volunteer, we rank high for the frequency of volunteering. I think some of that is showing up in faith communities and in PTOs, again with our family. I think that the invitation to do that in a broader context in our communities—that’s an easy translation. If we could give those nonprofit organizations and volunteer groups more media, more opportunity, more resources to tap into that spirit that’s already there in the areas where we’re strong.
So for me, it’s really the possibilities of leveraging our strengths to address those issues. I think there’s a real possibility and opportunity for that. But I do think that it’s all hands on deck.
There are some other states or cities who are doing some really interesting work. CivicLex is a group in Lexington, Kentucky that is community-driven. They do activities constantly in the community. It can be anything from something that’s just fun—pickleball tournaments—to bringing people into the political space to talk about the issues and dialogues and action teams.
There’s an organization called Warm Cookies of the Revolution, based in Denver. They have made civic life joy—just making it fun and creative. I think that builds on people that care deeply about their families and friends and neighbors. We show that. We do that. I honestly don’t think it’s a big bridge to move someone who cares about their family and their future to being more connected to the community and the politics around them.
I think about how incredible everybody was in Western North Carolina after Helene: so many people helping each other and in really innovative ways. There was a lot of civic engagement following Helene. How do you document that and build on this natural tendency to help?
Leslie Garvin: That’s why I love that question about: have you taken action with your neighbor on an issue that you all care about? We don’t rank very high in that, but again, I don’t think there’s a big leap. When you look at North Carolina, whenever there’s a disaster, it’s all hands on deck.
I also have an interesting curiosity that has started to emerge. We’re also a very, very committed sports state, hardcore. When we care about our team, we care about our team. I think there’s a “there” there. I don’t know what it is yet—a tapping into that sort of energy that North Carolina has uniquely. If you’re Duke, you’re Duke. If you’re UNC, you’re UNC. And if you’re a Panthers fan, you’re a Panthers fan.
So I think there’s even a culture we can draw upon—not just that whenever there’s a disaster we’re all in and show up, but also this sports culture. And the fact that we have 114 institutions of higher education. There are so many things that are just distinct to North Carolina, even with our neighboring states, that this data doesn’t speak to—but that I think we could leverage to move people out of the sort of family care into this community civic health area.
And we’re one of the fastest growing states in terms of in-migration. People want to be here. So to create a place that’s civically healthy, where we really are solving our problems together and that would roll up itself up into how the formal politics act in our state, I think it’s very possible.
