Civic Power Lab, The R&D arm of democracy. Helping build… The R&D arm of democracy. A mixed-methods research lab studying democracy, civil society, and the organizational practices that make collective action powerful (or fragile). See our research → Work with us New Research · POLIS Individual-level, longitudinal data across 38+ civic organizations in 10 U.S. states; built to measure the organizational work that converts civic participation into durable political power. View on Harvard Dataverse → New Practice · Groundwork A field-owned relational organizing platform, built by and for organizers (an alternative to investor-owned tooling). Read the brief → Research POLIS · Participation, Organizing, and Local Influence Study Active The first large-N dataset built to study organizing, not (only) mobilizing. POLIS follows state-based organizing groups across the country, looking at how they recruit, develop leaders, and build durable power in their communities. The database tracks, at daily resolution, one-to-ones, research visits, trainings, team meetings, and leadership development activities, alongside more traditional civic engagement work, such as voter contact, lobby days, direct action, and other forms of participation unique to the groups. What it lets us see Most civic datasets measure mobilizing (who showed up, who voted). POLIS measures the slower, relational work that happens between elections: the part scholars and practitioners know matters, but nobody has the data to study at scale. See more research → The network, by the numbers 38 Partner organizations 10 US states covered 5 yr Research horizon 86,237 Members & volunteers 5,035,135 Live person-to-person conversations 215,704 Voter registration forms processed Funded in part by the Carnegie Fellowship (2024–26), in partnership with the Pro-Democracy Campaign, State Power Fund, Democracy & Power Innovation Fund, and the Organizing Lab. New practice Groundwork · Open-source organizing platform · Alpha 2026 Most civic CRMs are designed for mobilizing. Groundwork is designed for organizing. An opinionated, open-source organizing platform built around the practices that turn participation into power: one-to-ones, leadership development, team formation, retention, and the relational work between elections. Read the memo → Pitch deck → 01Built for the phase you're in. What the dashboards amplify depends on what the org is trying to do: recruit a foundational base, convert an upsurge, deepen leadership, or move leaders into strategy and governance. 02Leadership is data, not a tag. Who recruited whom, who's developing others, where you have capacity, and where the pipeline is thin. 03Owned by the orgs that use it. Their data, exportable, on their terms. Open-source core, no lock-in, no extraction. 04Comes with people, not just code. Embedded engineering and practitioner training. Groundwork isn't a license you buy and figure out alone. 05Governed by the people using it. A standing board of partner organization leaders, practitioners, and researchers will review how Groundwork handles member data, what gets built next, and how acceptable use is defined. As far as we know, no civic-tech platform has been governed this way before. About the lab We take the work of building democratic power seriously enough to study it with care, and rigorously enough that organizers can use what we find. The research tends to be mixed-methods because most of the questions we study demand multiple empirical approaches. Quantitative network and longitudinal panel data help show the architecture of civic participation, while ethnography and interviews surface the texture, mechanisms, and heterogeneity that only close-range methods can reveal. We publish peer-reviewed research in books and in journals, and we build things organizers can actually use. We believe that the study of democracy should be accountable to the people practicing it. 01 · Research Books & selected publications. Full list → Under review The Revolution Will Be Organized A decade of fieldwork on why dense civic life sometimes builds democracy and sometimes corrodes it, and what that means for countries facing democratic backsliding now. About the book → 2014 · Oxford University Press Groundbreakers How the Obama campaign's 2.2 million volunteers transformed American politics. A multi-year study of movement-electoral politics at unprecedented scale, with Hahrie Han. 2021 · University of Chicago Prisms of the People Power, organizing, and twenty-first-century democracy. With Hahrie Han and Michelle Oyakawa. APSA Michael Harrington Book Award, 2022. 02 · Press In the press Recent coverage. All press → The New Yorker What MAGA can teach Democrats about organizing. Charles Duhigg Feb 2026 Boston Globe The Left knows how to have huge protests. The Right keeps winning elections. Oct 2025 Analyst Institute 2026 “Power to the People” Expy Award. For the Civic Power report with the Pro-Democracy Campaign. 2026 Harvard Gazette McKenna awarded Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. 2024 03 · Engage Work with the lab Three ways to engage. For organizations Propose a partnership We work with movements, campaigns, unions, and civic organizations on focused research questions. We ask partners to submit a research spec. Submit a research spec → For researchers Join the lab We hire research assistants, postdoctoral fellows, forward-deployed engineers, and visiting scholars. Methods chops and movement experience both valued. Express interest → For everyone Stay in touch Short notes from the lab, new work, field dispatches, things we're reading. Join the email list → Color scheme Seigensha-principled palettes. Single strong accent, everything else quiet. Mark tilt How much the snowflake leans in the hero.