About CivicLex
We’re a nonprofit organization that’s strengthening the civic health of Lexington-Fayette County, Kentucky.
What do we do?
What is civic health?
You might have heard of public health, but chances are, the idea of civic health is less familiar. Think of it this way: how a community is configured to be able to address its biggest problems. Civic health can relate to how people engage with local government, how they interact with their neighbors, whether or not they volunteer or vote, and so much more.
How is CivicLex strengthening civic health?
Civic Education
We’re helping residents of all ages understand how our community works through educational programs, workshops, and resources.
Local News & Reporting
We’re helping residents engage with what’s happening in local government by attending public meetings and providing timely coverage of local civic issues.
Convening & Bridging
We’re bringing together residents from different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to learn from each other and build relationships.
Public Realm
We’re helping shape our city’s public spaces, parks, and infrastructure to make it easier for residents to meet new people and experience new parts of our community.
Civic Transformation
We’re changing how Lexington’s civic institutions work to make resident engagement a rewarding and meaningful experience.
How are we funded?
This is one of the biggest questions we get about CivicLex! We’re supported by a mix of donations and memberships from residents across Fayette County, private and public grant funding, and consulting work that we do in Lexington and beyond.
At the links to the right, you can find a full breakdown of our finances, including revenue and expenses, past years’ financials, IRS filings, and every donor that’s ever contributed to our work. You also can find policies that govern our work and how we engage with donors.
Who is on our team?
Our Staff
CivicLex’s staffing is a combination of full-time and part-time employees, placements through Americorps, paid fellowships, practicum students placed through the University of Kentucky, and internships.
Our Boards
We have a bifurcated Board Structure (a Governance Board and a Programmatic Board) that places a buffer between programmatic direction and financial decisions. This structure allows us to have the right people in the room for the right reasons, and tap into the specific expertise of these groups regularly.
What are people saying about our work?
“There’s something brilliant in what [CivicLex is doing] because they’re foregrounding the importance of relationships… Imagine if we could make it a basic principle that as we rebuild local journalism and information resources, we connect that to a project of relationship building on that scale.”
— Danielle Allen, Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University about CivicLex on WBUR’s On Point