Where civic
stock runs thin

Methodology. The Civic Desert count score = (count of youth-relevant 501(c) entities) ÷ (under-25 population) × 1,000. The Civic Desert capacity score = (sum of those orgs' reported revenue) ÷ (under-25 population), reported in dollars per youth. "Youth-relevant" counts orgs in NTEE major categories O (Youth Development), A (Arts/Culture/Humanities), B (Education), and N (Recreation/Sports), plus any org with IRS classification code beginning "1000" (church / religious congregation). Two exclusions apply throughout: (1) registered-agent address clusters (≥25 orgs at one address — e.g. Foundation Source in Wilmington DE) are stripped; (2) zombie organizations are stripped — defined as orgs with no Form 990 filing since Jan 2021 AND no reported revenue or assets, where the org isn't a church or religious-exempt non-filer. About 18.6% of all BMF orgs are zombies; only 2–4% of youth-relevant orgs are (because most youth-relevant orgs are churches, which structurally never zombie out under this rule). Source: IRS Exempt Organizations BMF + ACS 5-year (2023) Subject Table S0101 + USDA RUCC 2023.

Why two scores. Count alone treats a $0 paper-filing 501(c) the same as a fully-staffed Boys & Girls Club. Capacity reweights to financial scale. But capacity has its own blind spot: churches are exempt from Form 990 filing entirely, so every classification=1000 entity reports $0 revenue regardless of actual budget — meaning rural counties whose civic stock is church-heavy will look low on capacity even when the churches are large and active. Similarly, 501(c)s with annual gross receipts under $50k file the 990-N postcard which doesn't report revenue. About 29% of all orgs and 34% of youth-relevant orgs report a non-zero revenue figure to the IRS. Double-Desert counties — bottom quintile on both scores — are the subset where neither blind spot saves them: few orgs, and the ones that exist are tiny.

Tiering. Counties are ranked by score and split into quintiles: bottom 20% = Civic Desert, next 20% = Civic Thin, middle = Mid, then Civic Solid and Civic Rich. Counties with under-25 pop < 500 are excluded as denominator-noise; Connecticut planning regions are excluded because the IRS join still uses the pre-2022 county FIPS.

Difference from CIRCLE. CIRCLE's 2017 survey of 1,000 millennials found 60% of rural youth in "civic deserts" based on self-reported access to civic resources. Our number — counties only, not individuals — sits much lower because IRS registration lists every active 501(c) regardless of operational vigor or distance to the youth who could actually use it. A registered VFW post 30 minutes from a 17-year-old without a car still counts here; in the CIRCLE framework, it doesn't. Use this index to find counties where civic stock is thin per youth, not as a measurement of lived civic experience.