Giving Thanks to the Helpers

This year has been challenging to so many of us and our communities that I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for the work you all are doing and supporting both inside and outside of our own groups. 2025 was a year marked with the decimation of many premier organizations in our field including the United States Digital Service, 18F, as well as countless civil servants within federal agencies being forced from public service. The cuts to SNAP benefits, even before the shutdown threatened to cut them off completely, are greatly concerning to those who want everyone in our communities to have access to healthy food. For cities like mine with large immigrant populations, the actions of federal immigration agents kidnapping our neighbors and deploying tear gas on the streets in which we live has been the stuff of nightmares.



It’s times like these that I’m particularly thankful for the helpers and those bringing people together to find solutions to problems in our neighborhoods. Florida Community Innovation recently launched a resource map to help people find food, aid, and shelter. The efforts from Civic Tech Atlanta to support Solidarity Food Pantry are paying further dividends as the need for food aid increases.

It’s also been a year of bringing people together. BetaNYC had over 600 registrations for their NYC School of Data event! Their annual gathering brings together civic technologists, data enthusiasts, and community leaders to learn, collaborate, and drive innovation. ACT members also hosted nine different CityCamps throughout the country helping bring together technologists, public servants and community leaders to find ways that technology can enable good work in our neighborhoods. OpenAustin held a twelve week fellowship to develop aspiring technologists’ confidence, technical competence, and collaboration through experiential learning and mentorship. 

While these examples have mostly been civic tech focused, we’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge the community organizing and activism that occurs outside those spaces. The challenge of the times will take work from all of us in many different ways - and I’m thankful for them all. 

ACT Virtual Holiday Party

ACT will be hosting its second annual virtual holiday party on Thursday, December 18th, at 9PM EST / 6pm PST. Join us as we share wins, network, and commiserate before the new year. The event is free and open to anyone in the civic tech space. You can register online here.

Network Roundup

Here are some quick notes, about what’s been happening in the network!

BetaNYC’s Noel Hidalgo selected to serve on Mayor-Elect Mamdani’s transition team 

BetaNYC Executive Director Noel Hidalgo was selected to serve on Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team as part of the Committee on Technology.  BetaNYC recently published a list of 8 tech ideas for the Mamdani administration’s first 100 days. BetaNYC is a civic organization dedicated to improving lives in New York through civic design, technology, and data. BetaNYC helps all New Yorkers access information and use technology for the public interest. Noel Hidalgo has been organizing BetaNYC since 2008 and serves on ACT’s Board of Directors. 

Florida Community Innovation seeking coordinator

Do you love using your organizational and project management skills for good? Florida Community Innovation Foundation could use your help! Specifically, our executive director, Caroline Nickerson, PhD could use support coordinating with both our community partners and student teams to keep our civic tech projects on track. Some of these projects include: FCI’s public affairs efforts, the Florida Resource Map, and more. Please email info@floridainnovation.org if you’re interested!

City Camp Survey and Thank You

Thank you to everyone who attended and hosted CityCamp 2025 events! Throughout September and October of 2025, ACT partnered with CityCamp to organize nine different events across the country to bring together technologists, community leaders, and city stakeholders to foster civic collaboration and innovation. Many of our member orgs are still working on follow up to CityCamp, so follow them on social media to hear more! Check out BetaNYC’s recap to learn more about how they sparked conversations for a more transparent, inclusive, and resilient city. 

Please share any pictures fromCityCamp events in your city’s Google Drive folder.  We hope to make this a successful event for years to come - which is why we want to hear feedback from organizers and attendees. Please fill out one of the surveys below so we can improve (feedback will be shared with organizers):

• CityCamp 2025 Follow Up Survey (Attendee)
• CityCamp 2025 Follow Up Survey (Organizer)

Stay in Touch

Interested in chatting with the community in real time, join our public Discord server!

Does your local civic tech organization have a story to tell? Want to be featured in our next newsletter? Reach out to us at hello@civictechnologists.org.

Director’s Update

It’s finally here! We wanted to shoot a quick note before the weekend to talk about CityCamp. We’re proud to partner with CityCamp to organize nine different CityCamp events across the country to bring together technologists, community leaders, and city stakeholders to foster civic collaboration and innovation.  This is a great opportunity to find ways we can help reduce harm in our communities - particularly in light of the One Big Bill.

BetaNYC held their CityCamp on September 6th with over 200 people in attendance. During their morning class, they launched an updated Introduction to Open Data class that includes City and State open data platforms, as well as several open data tools we use. This whole video is presented in American Sign Language (ASL) with spoken audio and text subtitles.

We’ll be following along on all the CityCamp events on social media using the hashtag #citycamp. You can check out all the events at the CityCamp website at citycamp.com.

We’d like to extend a huge thank you to all our organizers for making this happen including our events committee chair Nicole Dan from Florida Innovation Council for spearheading this effort.

We’ll be reaching out to all of our organizers after CityCamp to help tell their stories, so be on the lookout for news coming out of CityCamp in our October newsletter.

Stay in Touch

Interested in chatting with the community in real time, join our public Discord server!

Does your local civic tech organization have a story to tell? Want to be featured in our next newsletter? Reach out to us at hello@civictechnologists.org.

Director’s Update

With the passage of the One Big Bill, the social safety net in our communities are facing dramatic cuts as the effects of the bill become law.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that nearly 16 million people will lose access to Medicaid. The Urban Institute estimates that 22.3 million families would lose some of all of their food assistance. In addition, the Executive Order signed in late July is set to undermine state and local efforts to address homelessness.

These developments are alarming and should be viewed as a call to action. Member organizations across the country were already at work to try to mitigate harm and boost community non-profits that have been in the trenches working on these difficult issues. 

Open Source San Jose is currently actively working on Tally Up - a small web based application for tallying the meals handed out to children in need in partnership with the California Department of Education. Civic Tech Atlanta provided data support services to Sanctuary Food Pantry. Code for Philly is working on Phlask, a map of food, water, bathrooms, and foraging. 

And the CityCamp events this fall will provide additional opportunities for us as civic technologists to find ways we can pitch in to help. CityCamps are unconference events that will bring together city officials, technologists, and community non-profit leaders to ideate on ways we can work together to reduce harm in our communities. ACT is an organizing partner for CityCamp and if you’re interested in holding one in your city please reach out! 

Open Source San José

We’re excited to welcome Open Source San José (OSSJ) as the newest member of the Alliance of Civic Technologists! This collective is uniting volunteer coders, designers, researchers, community members & more in solving local issues for the San José area of California. Their work in harnessing open source tools and community-driven innovation to make local government more transparent, inclusive, and responsive aligns seamlessly with ACT’s mission to support local organizations building better public services through tech and design. We’re thrilled to officially be their partner and included on their journey to creating more equitable civic solutions for San José. 

Civic Spark

Part conference, part unconference, Civic Spark, happening in-person from August 16-17, brings together civic technologists, organizers, and community builders from all across North America to share what’s working, name what’s not, and ignite action for a more equitable public future. Join them for two days of connection, collaboration, and candid conversations to build what’s next, together! Learn more & register at: civic-spark.com

While at Civic Spark make sure to stop by and say hi to our member Code for Boston, they will be presenting at the conference. You can also check out their work ahead of time at codeforboston.org/projects. Our Executive Director Christopher Whitaker will also be there as part of a panel discussion on regional cooperation in civic tech.

Network Roundup

Here are some quick notes, about what’s been happening in the network!

MAPLE

Code for Boston is reimaging civic participation with MAPLE, the Massachusetts Platform for Legislative Engagement. A new digital tool making it easier than ever for residents to submit testimony to the Massachusetts legislature and read what others are saying. By creating a public archive of testimony, simplifying the submission process, and fostering ongoing dialogue between constituents and lawmakers, MAPLE opens the doors of the statehouse to more voices. A bold step toward a more transparent, accessible, and responsive legislative process.

Civic Tech Stories & Tools

Real change starts with real stories. Code for Dayton’s Civic Tech Stories & Tools project brings problem-solving to life, showcasing how everyday tools, human-centered thinking, and a little creativity can tackle big community challenges. From the first spark of an idea to the measurable impact, each story reveals the full journey and tech that made it possible. Whether you’re new to civic tech or seeking proven approaches, these stories offer inspiration and practical insight. Dive in and discover how accessible tools are powering change across the ACT Network.

Benefit Decision Toolkit

What if benefit experts could build their own tools, without needing a team of developers? Code for Philly’s Benefit Decision Toolkit makes that possible. Designed to streamline the creation of eligibility screeners, this toolkit empowers subject matter experts to translate their knowledge into digital services quickly and accurately. No need to start from scratch or reinvent the wheel. The toolkit simplifies complex rules management so communities can launch helpful, human-centered tools faster. It’s a smarter way to build and a great example of civic tech in action.

Upcoming Events

8/17 - Summer Delegates Meeting

ACT’s Summer Delegates Meeting, happening August 21st 2025, is your space to connect with fellow civic tech leaders across the United States, get feedback on what you’re working on, and ask for support where you need it most. Whether you’re refining a project, launching a new idea, or just want to listen and learn, this is a collaborative space for open conversation and real-time connection. Bring your questions, your wins, and you’re work-in-progress. Let’s make this summer count. See you there!

Everyone interested in civic tech is welcome. Delegates are encouraged to attend. All required to RSVP.

Network Events 

Events happening across the Alliance, for the next month, from August 12th to September 4th!

This month’s events were organized by Brianda Hernandez.

• 08/12 - Code for Philly’s August Hack Night
• 08/12 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 08/12 - Open Austin’s Data & Dev Community of Practice: August
• 08/12 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday at PLAY Eugene
• 08/13 - CityCamp’s Virtual Meet
• 08/13 - Civic Tech DC’s Project Night at Taoti
• 08/13 - Code with the Carolina’s Monthly Welcome, Community, and Project Meeting
• 08/13 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 08/13 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 08/14 - Open Austin’s Design Community of Practice: August
• 08/19 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 08/19 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday at PLAY Eugene
• 08/20 - CityCamp’s Virtual Meet
• 08/20 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 08/20 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 08/25 - Code with the Carolinas Civic Hacking for Affordable Housing
• 08/26 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 08/26 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday at PLAY Eugene
• 08/27 - CityCamp’s Virtual Meet
• 08/27 - Civic Tech DC’s Project Night at Virtru
• 08/27 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 09/01 - Open Austin’s Online introduction (for newcomers)
• 09/02 - Code for Dayton’s Monthly User Group Meeting
• 09/02 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 09/02 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday at PLAY Eugene
• 09/03 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 09/03 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 09/04 - Open Austin’s Design Community of Practice: September

Beyond ACT 

Events from groups that aren’t officially a part of the Alliance of Civic Technologists network.

Want to be included? Add your event, by filling out our Newsletter Submission form.

• 08/16 - Civic Tech Toronto’s In-Person Civic Spark (Un) Conference
• 08/29 - NYC Tech Policy Meetups’ In-Person NYC Coffee & Tech Policy

Work Opportunities

Network Opportunities

Work Opportunities available within the Alliance of Civic Technologists network.

• Volunteer - AI Fellow with Florida Community Innovation’s Florida Resource Map (Application)

Beyond ACT

Work Opportunities outside of the Alliance of Civic Technologists.

Want to be included? Add your opportunity, by filling out our Newsletter Submission form.

• Regular - Production Manager with Los Angeles’ Metro
• Regular - Web Systems Developer with Los Angeles’ Metro

Stay in Touch

Interested in chatting with the community, in real time? Join our public Discord server!

Does your local civic tech organization have a story to tell? Want to be featured in our next newsletter? Reach out to us at hello@civictechnologists.org

Director’s Update

I want to give a big thank you to everyone who participated in our first ACT Congress. The joy of these unconference events is that you never quite know where the conversations are going to go. I appreciate people’s willingness to take on hard topics and ideate on how we can make this community and our country better.

The next big event on our calendar will be CityCamp starting in the fall and culminating in World CityCamp Day on September 20th.  CityCamp is a global movement of community-focused events that foster civic collaboration and innovation. These events bring people together to improve their communities. ACT is an organizing partner with CityCamp with Nicole Dan from Florida Community Innovation leading efforts on our side.

With the passage of the One Big Bill, we’re looking at drastic cuts to the social safety net including food assistance, Medicaid, and healthcare. Community organizations and local governments will be on the front lines working to stem the damage. They’ll need support.

CityCamp will provide us an opportunity to bring local government officials, technologists, and community organizations together to find ways to enable the work of taking care of each other.

New Board

ACT is pleased to announce the results of our first Board Election! This election expanded our board from three to five. Our new ACT board is:

• Harlan Weber, Code for Boston
• Noel Hidalgo, BetaNYC 
• Nicole Dan, Florida Community Innovation
• Brianda Hernandez, Open Sacramento
• Aslan French, Open Austin

New Member

Civic Tech DC has joined the Alliance of Civic Technologists as our 18th member! Founded in 2012, Civic Tech DC is a non-partisan, non-political group of volunteer civic hackers working together to solve local issues and help people engage with the city.

Network Roundup 

Here are some quick notes about what’s been happening in the network!

Ice Cream Summer Social

Get ready to beat the heat with Open Austin! This year on Thursday, July 17th they’re partnering with Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams to serve up some yummy ice cream, in celebration of the 300+ volunteer hours spent in Q1 building tech for good.

In addition, this annual event is being used as a fundraiser for two Civic Data Fellows, starting in mid-August. To support Open Austin’s campaign you can buy a raffle ticket, make a tax-deductible donation, get some Grassroots Civic Hacker merch, or just enjoy some ice cream! 25% of all ice cream sales during the summer social will be donated by Jeni’s to Open Austin.

Civic Hack DC 2025

On Saturday, July 26 from 9:30 AM to 6:30 AM ET, ACT’s newest member, Civic Tech DC, is bringing together engineers, designers, policy pros, and curious minds for a one-day hackathon focused on making federal rulemaking more transparent. They’ll be building open-source tools to unlock and explore public comment data from Regulations.gov, because civic tech can and should make the government easier to understand and participate in. No matter your background, there’s a place for you. They’ll provide the food, data, and mentors, so you just need to bring your ideas and a laptop.

Intro to Florida Community Innovation

Curious about how civic tech is making a difference in Florida communities? Join FCI, on Wednesday, July 16th, for their Introduction to Florida Community Innovation! This virtual session is a great way to learn how Florida Community Innovation is using technology, community input, and public sector collaboration to improve civic life across the state. They’ll walk through their approach and share the exciting projects featured within their handbook. Whether you’re new to civic tech or just want to experience their amazing work, this is a great place to start!

Civic Data Fellowship

Open Austin is actively recruiting for their 2025 Civic Data Fellowship, starting this month! If you’re a novice data analyst with low-to-no professional experience, the program will pair you with experienced mentors, to learn how to work with local advocacy groups to explore local civic issues, while building professional presentations and data-driven projects. If this sounds like a good fit, please fill in this interest form, before August, to receive alerts about info sessions, key dates, and submit the application form. For more information, read this brochure.

Upcoming Events

07/17 - Summer Town Hall

What’s next for civic tech and for ACT? Let’s figure it out together!

Join us on Thursday, July 17th  for our ACT Summer Town Hall, a relaxed and collaborative space for members old and new to shape the future of the Alliance of Civic Technologists. Whether you’ve been part of ACT since day one or you’re just getting started, this is your moment to speak up, connect, and co-create. We’ll share what’s working, surface what’s not, and spark ideas together, with real conversations and community-led energy.

RSVP now to be part of the conversation and help steer where we go next. Together, let’s make this summer count.

9/20 - World CityCamp Day

We’re thrilled to announce that plans for the Alliance of Civic Technologists’ first CityCamp are nearly complete! CityCamp is an “unconference” designed to bring together technologists, nonprofit leaders, and local government stakeholders to collaborate on innovative ways to improve our cities. This fall, we’ll be hosting a series of CityCamp events across the country, leading up to World CityCamp Day on September 20, 2025. If you’d like to be a part of shaping this exciting initiative, please contact Nicole from our Events Committee by email.

Network Events 

Some events happening in the Alliance of Civic Technologists network across the United States, for the next month, from July 10th to August 7th!

• 07/14 - Civic Tech Atlanta’s Civic Hack Night at Tech Square ATL (TSQATL) Social Club
• 07/14 - Code with the Carolina’s Civic Hacking for Affordable Housing
• 07/15 - Chi Hack Night’s In-person and Online: Nicole Steeves, Director of Library Technology @ Chicago Public Library
• 07/15 - Code for Boston’s In-Person Weekly Hack Night
• 07/15 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 07/16 - FCI’s Intro to Florida Community Innovation
• 07/16 - Open Fresno’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 07/16 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 07/16 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 07/17 - Open Austin’s 2025 Ice Cream Summer Social
• 07/22 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 07/22 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 07/23 - Code Tech DC’s Project Night at Virtru
• 07/23 - Open Fresno’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 07/23 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 07/23 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 07/25 - Civic Tech Atlanta’s Civic Tech Morning @ the Atlanta History Center
• 07/26 - Civic Tech DC’s Civic Hack DC 2025
• 07/28 - Code with the Carolina’s Civic Hacking for Affordable Housing
• 07/29 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 07/29 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 07/30 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 08/05 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 08/05 - Code For Dayton’s Monthly Meeting
• 08/05 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 08/06 - Open Fresno’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 08/06 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 08/06 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night

Beyond ACT 

Events from groups that aren’t officially a part of the Alliance of Civic Technologists network. 

• TBD - NYC Tech Policy Meetups’ In-Person NYC Coffee & Tech Policy
• 08/03 - Developing the Doughnut Economics EcoCivic Game

Stay in Touch

Interested in chatting with the community, in real time? Join our public Discord server!

Does your local civic tech organization have a story to tell? Want to be featured in our next newsletter? Reach out to us at hello@civictechnologists.org.

Director’s Update

The Alliance of Civic Technologists is running full steam ahead as we enter summer. We’re excited to announce three major milestones as we continue to grow and support the network of civic tech volunteer organizations: ACT Congress, Board Elections and City Camp! 

While I’m excited to see this progress, I want to state emphatically that none of this would be possible without the support of our volunteers. Our secretary, Brianda Hernandez, has been making sure this newsletter goes out every month and has done a great job making sure all your stories get told to the wider network. Behind the scenes, Ben Sheldon has been updating our website and Jake Durell has been working to ensure our 501c3 status. Our involvement in bringing back City Camp, an unconference event that brings together technologists and civic leaders, would simply not be possible without the leadership of Nicole Dan and Nikhil Sangamkar. 

And of course, we’re grateful for the work that civic technologists across the country are putting into their communities. From helping to prepare for disasters in San Francisco, to gathering over 600 people in New York to learn and innovate, to helping reduce gun violence in Philadelphia by cleaning and greening vacant properties, your work during these difficult times is impressive and important.

So thank you, for all that you do. 

First ACT Congress

We’re excited to invite you to the first-ever ACT Congress, hosted by the Alliance of Civic Technologists, happening virtually on Saturday, June 28, 2025! This groundbreaking, half-day unconference is open to everyone and will feature engaging, participant-led sessions focused on shaping the future of our community, our mission, and civic technology as a whole. 

The day will begin with an exclusive delegates-only breakfast session, where we’ll make key decisions about the organization’s future, including a member vote of the 2025-2026 budget and holding our inaugural board election, a major milestone. For those not attending the delegate breakfast, we’ll be hosting a meet and greet session in parallel. 

Following breakfast, virtual doors will open to the broader public for a dynamic and interactive lineup of sessions driven by YOU, the attendees. Whether you’re a civic technologist, nonprofit leader, public servant, or simply curious about the future of digital civic engagement, ACT Congress will be a space to connect, contribute, and co-create. 

For more details and registration please visit Eventbrite. Then, don’t forget to mark your calendar and stay tuned, because you won’t want to miss this! 

First Board Election 

ACT is holding our first board elections during the first session of ACT Congress! Our bylaws, passed earlier this year, calls for a board of seven each serving three year terms that are staggered. Currently, the board is at three members and this election will bring the number of board members to five. Our board is selected by the delegates of each member organization who join prior to June 28th. 

We encourage anyone who is interested in helping guide ACT’s future to consider a run. We estimate a time commitment of three to five hours a month. Board members are expected to attend our monthly meetings and help steer one of our working committees.

For this election, we’ll be voting on four seats. Three of these will be for three year terms and one for a two year term. Anyone from our member organizations can run for a board seat by filling out this short form. If you have any questions or want to talk with us before running, please email hello@civictechnologists.org. 

In Celebration of 🌈Pride Month🌈

We are proud to share a list of events, people, projects, and resources focused on tackling LGBTQIA+ issues and improving queer lives either from within our wonderful ACT network or recommended by our members’ leaders. 

• Melody Tremallo - is an amazing individual out of Texas organizing protests, leading marches, and speaking to thousands of people about labor and trans rights. Including the May Day, (also known as International Workers’ Day,)  march from the Texas State Capitol to Austin’s City Hall. 
• Since 2017, Out in Tech Digital Corps has provided web services to LGBTQ+ activists and social entrepreneurs, building over 250 WordPress.com websites for 100+ grassroots organizations in 70 countries.
• While The Trevor Project’s A Guide to Testifying Against Harmful Bills for Parents and Supportive Adults has many important tips & advice for taking care of yourself during the process of testifying, they also provide a plethora of data driven insights. The latest of which are in their 2024 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People.
• The Gilbert Baker Foundation fights bans of the rainbow flag across the United States with the American Civic Liberties Union. The locations can be seen on a map on the Gilbert Baker Foundation’s website homepage.
• An organization working to bridge the technology gap for all LGBTQ individuals across the nation, with programs like PowerOn, PATHS, and Digital Navigator, is the LGBT Technology Institute. 

Network Roundup 

Here are some quick notes about what’s been happening in the network!

FCI Civic Hack Day

Looking to create real-world impact with tech or just meet other changemakers Don’t miss Florida Community Innovation’s virtual Civic Hack Day on Saturday, June 21, 2025, from 11 AM to 5 PM ET via Zoom! Work alongside students from top universities like University of Florida, University of California Berkeley, and the University of Michigan to co-build tools that support access to food, housing, jobs, and more. Whether you’re into coding, research, user design, or just have some big ideas, there’s a place for you, no tech experience needed! Register now and build with, not for, Florida communities. Email questions to info@floridainnovation.org. 

Civic Data Fellowship

Open Austin is actively recruiting for their 2025 Civic Data Fellowship, starting this month! If you’re a novice data analyst with low-to-no professional experience, the program will pair you with experienced mentors, to learn how to work with local advocacy groups to explore local civic issues, while building professional presentations and data-driven projects. If this sounds like a good fit, please fill in this interest form, before August, to receive alerts about info sessions, key dates, and submit the application form. For more information, read this brochure. 

Digital Newsracks

Have you ever wondered what happened to those old newspaper racks? Julia Gitis, founder of Community News Lab, did and they’ve been on a mission to bring them back with a modern twist. In partnership with SF Civic Tech and others, they’re helping transform these fixed-pedestal news racks into digital neighborhood bulletin boards, showcasing local updates, civic resources, and community events. 

At their recent Castro Feedback Day, the temporary prototype installation received overwhelmingly positive feedback from both event attendees and curious passersby. A wonderful glimpse into how legacy infrastructure can be reimagined to serve today’s neighborhoods in fresh and meaningful ways. 

Upcoming Events

6/19 - Spring Social on✊🏾Juneteenth✊🏿

Join the Alliance of Civic Technologists as we come together to celebrate community, connection, and civic innovation at our Spring Social on Thursday, June 19, 2025, Juneteenth. This special gathering will offer us a chance to reflect, recharge, and build meaningful diverse relationships across our growing network of civic technologists. 

6/28 - Congress

Join us for the inaugural ACT Congress hosted by the Alliance of Civic Technologists on Saturday, June 28, 2025! This virtual, half-day unconference is open to the public and will feature interactive, participant-led sessions focused on advancing our mission and envisioning the future of our community. 

The day will begin with a delegates-only breakfast session, where our Members will cast votes on the upcoming year’s budget and conduct our first-ever board election, a pivotal step in ACT’s growth.

9/20 - World CityCamp Day

We’re thrilled to announce that plans for the Alliance of Civic Technologists’ first CityCamp are nearly complete! CityCamp is an “unconference” designed to bring together technologists, nonprofit leaders, and local government stakeholders to collaborate on innovative ways to improve our cities. This fall, we’ll be hosting a series of CityCamp events across the country, leading up to World CityCamp Day on September 20, 2025. If you’d like to be a part of shaping this exciting initiative, please contact Nicole from our Events Committee by email.  

Network Events 

Some events happening across the United States, for the next month, from June 5th to July 2nd!

• 06/09 - Civic Tech Atlanta’s Civic Hack Night at Tech Square ATL (TSQATL) Social Club
• 06/09 - Open Austin’s Online introduction (for newcomers)
• 06/10 - Chi Hack Night’s Online: Open Hack
• 06/10 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 06/10 - Code for Philly’s June Hack Night
• 06/10 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 06/11 - BetaNYC’s Discovering NYC Open Data: Online Session
• 06/11 - Code with the Carolina’s Monthly Welcome, Community, and Project Meeting
• 06/11 - Open Fresno’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 06/11 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 06/11 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 06/12 - Open Austin’s Design Community of Practice: Open Austin
• 06/16 - Code with the Carolina’s Civic Hacking for Affordable Housing
• 06/17 - Chi Hack Night’s Online: Promontory Point: How to Save the Point
• 06/17 - Code for Boston’s In-Person Weekly Hack Night
• 06/17 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 06/18 - Code for BTV’s Action Night (formerly Hack Night)
• 06/18 - Open Fresno’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 06/18 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 06/18 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 06/19 - Open Austin’s Data Community of Practice: June
• 06/21 - Florida Community Innovation’s Civic Hack Day
• 06/24 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 06/24 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 06/25 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 06/27 - Civic Tech Atlanta’s Civic Tech Morning @ the Atlanta History Center
• 06/30 - Code with the Carolina’s Civic Hacking for Affordable Housing
• 07/01 - Code for Boston’s In-Person Weekly Hack Night
• 07/01 - Code For Dayton July Meeting
• 07/01 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 07/02 - Code for Philly’s Code for Philly 101
• 07/02 - Open Fresno’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 07/02 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 07/02 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night

Beyond ACT 

Events from groups that aren’t officially a part of the Alliance of Civic Technologists network. 

• TBD - NYC Tech Policy Meetups’ In-Person NYC Coffee & Tech Policy

Stay in Touch

Interested in chatting with the community, in real time? Join our public Discord server!

Does your local civic tech organization have a story to tell? Want to be featured in our next newsletter? Reach out to us at hello@civictechnologists.org.

New Stickers!

Our union-made two inch hex stickers are finally here! Over the next week, member organizations that submitted designs, should expect to hear from us and will have their stickers shipped to them.

Those not a part of the Alliance of Civic Technologists or its member organizations, but still want a sticker, will have a chance, by as Open Austin says “keeping the lights on” and donating between now and May 15th, (with your email included.) All profits from this donation drive will be used to help support our CityCamp initiative in the fall.

CityCamp Comeback

For those that don’t remember or know, CityCamp is a global movement of community-focused events that foster civic collaboration and innovation. The first CityCamp was held January 2010, in Chicago, Illinois. It was then established as an open source brand so that anyone could host events anywhere.

This year, the Alliance of Civic Technologists, with our member organizations, has been partnering with CityCamp, as an Organizing Partner, to host events across the country! Our series of unconferences will follow the same blueprint as previously held CityCamps, casual community-focused events designed to foster participant-led civic sessions with local residents, elected officials, government staff, civic leaders, entrepreneurs, designers, developers, and journalists thoughtfully discussing or engaging in activities surrounding the themes of arts, civic engagement, civic technology, economics, education, environment, housing, human services, open government, safety, emergency management, health and transportation. Ending with World CityCamp Day 2025 on September 20th, 2025. To register for your city’s CityCamp, visit citycamp.com.

Network Roundup

Civic Data Fellowship

Open Austin is actively recruiting for their Civic Data Fellowship starting in June! The program pairs novice data analysts from underrepresented communities with mentors, culminating in professional presentations and data-driven projects used by local advocacy groups, and developing workforce-ready tech job candidates. If you would like to be a Fellow or this sounds like a good fit for someone you know, please submit the interest form.

FCI Project Process

Did you know that Florida Community Innovation works with students and volunteers of all ages for a better Florida? That’s right! They’ve even detailed their current process on how they provide stipends and engaging work, while scoping and building sustainable, high-quality, community-driven projects. Make sure to check it out and send them any feedback at info@floridainnovation.org.

Boundaries Map Migration

BetaNYC recently migrated their Boundaries Map, from Carto to Supabase, and it’s now running twice as fast, enabling users to look at the political and administrative districts in New York City. Just in time to properly prepare for the primaries.

mRelief Highlight

Chi Hack Night was featured in a video and newsletter by Baratunde Thurston showcasing their work with the Chicago community like mRelief, a project making food stamps more accessible.

Upcoming Events

ACT Delegates Meeting

Our next Delegates Meeting is scheduled for Thursday, May 15, 2025, at 6:00 PM PT / 9:00 PM ET. This event will focus on plans for the Alliance’ upcoming ACT Congress, the return of CityCamp, and other key initiatives. The Board and Delegates from our 18 member organizations have received personal invitations via email. If you’re a member of the public, you’re more than welcome to join, just use the registration link to sign up.

ACT Congress

Mark your calendars for the first-ever Alliance of Civic Technologists’s ACT Congress on Saturday, June 28, 2025! This virtual, half-day unconference will be open to the public and will feature dynamic, participant-driven sessions focused on the future of our community and mission. The day will kick off with a delegates-only breakfast session, where we’ll vote on next year’s budget and hold our inaugural board election. More details are coming soon, so stay tuned!

ACT CityCamp

We’re excited to share that plans for the Alliance of Civic Technologists first CityCamp, an unconference that brings together technologists, nonprofit leaders, and local government stakeholders to explore how we can collaboratively improve our cities, have nearly been finalized! This fall, we’re planning a series of CityCamp events across the nation, leading up to World CityCamp Day on September 20, 2025. If you’re interested in helping shape this exciting initiative, please reach out to our Events Committee member Nicole via email.

Network Events

Here are some events happening in the network!

• 05/02 - BetaNYC’s Open Data Week 2025 Spring Meetup
• 05/05 - Code with the Carolina’s Civic Hacking for Affordable Housing
• 05/05 - Open Austin’s Online introduction (for newcomers)
• 05/06 - Chi Hack Night’s In-person and Online: i.c.stars
• 05/06 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 05/06 - Code for Dayton’s Monthly Meetup
• 05/06 - Open Austin’s Data Community of Practice: May
• 05/06 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 05/06 - OpenOakland’s Civic Tech for the Community
• 05/07 - Code for BTV’s Action Night (formerly Hack Night)
• 05/07 - Code for Philly’s Code for Philly 101
• 05/07 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 05/07 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 05/12 - Civic Tech Atlanta’s Civic Hack Night at Tech Square ATL (TSQATL) Social Club
• 05/13 - Chi Hack Night’s Online: The Illinois Assistive Technology Program
• 05/13 - Code for Boston’s In-Person Weekly Hack Night
• 05/13 - Code for Philly’s May Hack Night
• 05/13 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 05/14 - Code with the Carolina’s Monthly Welcome, Community, and Project Meeting
• 05/14 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 05/14 - SF Civic Tech’s Civic Tech in San Francisco
• 05/15 - Open Austin’s Design Community of Practice: technology for non-profits
• 05/19 - Code with the Carolina’s Civic Hacking for Affordable Housing
• 05/20 - Chi Hack Night’s Online: Open Hack
• 05/20 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 05/20 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 05/21 - Open Eugene’s Working Open Wednesday with CodeChops at Nexus
• 05/21 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 05/21 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 05/27 - Code for Boston’s In-Person Weekly Hack Night
• 05/27 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 05/28 - Open Eugene’s Working Open Wednesday with CodeChops at Nexus
• 05/28 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 06/02 - Code with the Carolina’s Civic Hacking for Affordable Housing
• 06/03 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 06/03 - Code for Dayton’s Monthly Meetup
• 06/03 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 06/04 - Code for Philly’s Code for Philly 101
• 06/04 - Open Eugene’s Working Open Wednesday with CodeChops at Nexus
• 06/04 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 06/04 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night

Beyond ACT

Events from groups that aren’t officially a part of the Alliance of Civic Technologists network.

• TBD - NYC Tech Policy Meetups’ In-Person NYC Coffee & Tech Policy

Stay in Touch

Interested in chatting with the community, in real time? Join our public Discord server!

Does your local civic tech organization have a story to tell? Want to be featured in our next newsletter? Reach out to us at hello@civictechnologists.org.

BetaNYC Hits 600+ for NYC School of Data!

We’re excited to announce that BetaNYC has reached an incredible milestone—600+ registrations for their NYC School of Data event! This annual gathering brings together civic technologists, data enthusiasts, and community leaders to learn, collaborate, and drive innovation. With such an overwhelming response, this year’s event promises to be an incredible opportunity for networking, skill-building, and exchanging ideas that will shape the future of data in New York City. We’re proud of BetaNYC for the hard work and dedication they’ve put into organizing this amazing civic tech event, and we’re equally grateful to everyone who registered and supported it. Here’s to continuing the momentum and creating lasting impact!

ACT & Member Stickers Coming Soon

Great news! The Alliance of Civic Technologists (ACT) is placing an order for a set of stickers, and we want you to be a part of it. These stickers will be a fantastic way to show your support for civic tech and the amazing work our network is doing. If you represent an official ACT member, please reach out to Brianda Hernandez to discuss design updates and changes. You can contact them via email or through the ACT Discord server. Be sure to get in touch by next week to have any requests considered or included. 

Important Message from FCI

We’re pleased to share an important message from Florida Community Innovation, who’s seeking support to meet some key project needs. Including a a request for LangChain mentors who know AI pipelines, API integration and website parsing for their resource mapping tool the Florida Community Resource Map (FRM), a tool built for social and community workers to find and manage information about local services like food banks, job resources, and housing support. 

Network Roundup 

Here are some quick notes about what’s been happening in the network!

• SF Civic Tech is developing the SafeHome project, which involves creating a web dashboard to assess earthquake risks for specific addresses in San Francisco. They are nearing the release of the Alpha version and are seeking volunteer front-end developers to assist in building and enhancing the website.
• Florida Community Innovation is helping one of their volunteers, Anna Lanzino, a UC Berkeley researcher graduate and bringing Miami’s history to life by offering interactive, online biographies of individuals buried at the Miami City Cemetery, through the GoBituary project. 
• Code for Dayton is looking to refresh a few of their projects including their Friends of the Florence Nightingale Museum website and a tool for monitoring demolition permits for the city of Dayton in support of Preservation Dayton. 

Upcoming Events

ACT Spring Town Hall

We’re excited to invite you to our next town hall, happening Thursday, April 17, 2025, at 6:00 PM PT / 9:00 PM ET! This event will be a fantastic opportunity to discuss the future of civic technology, share your ideas, and build relationships with like-minded individuals looking to drive positive change. Don’t miss out on this chance to connect, learn, and contribute to the future of our communities. Use our Zoom registration link and mark your calendars—we can’t wait to see you there!

Network Events 

Here are some events happening in the network!

• 04/07 - Open Austin’s Online introduction (for newcomers)
• 04/08 - Chi Hack Night: Chicago Neighborhoods Project
• 04/08 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 04/08 - Code for Philly April Hack Night
• 04/08 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 04/09 - Code for BTV’s Action Night (formerly Hack Night)
• 04/09 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 04/09 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 04/10 - Open Austin’s Design in Civic Tech: Community of Practice
• 04/10 - Talking bikes and maps at Open Cleveland’s hack night
• 04/14 - Civic Tech Atlanta’s Civic Hack Night at Tech Square ATL (TSQATL) Social Club
• 04/15 - Code for Boston’s In-Person Weekly Hack Night
• 04/15 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 04/16 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 04/16 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 04/22 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 04/22 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 04/23 - Code for BTV’s Action Night (formerly Hack Night)
• 04/23 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 04/29 - Code for Boston’s In-Person Weekly Hack Night
• 04/29 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday
• 04/30 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night
• 04/30 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night

Beyond ACT 

Events from groups that aren’t officially a part of the Alliance of Civic Technologists network. 

• 04/25 - NYC Tech Policy Meetups’ In-Person NYC Coffee & Tech Policy

Stay in Touch

Interested in chatting with the community in real time, join our public Discord server.

Does your local civic tech organization have a story to tell? Want to be featured in our next newsletter? Reach out to us at hello@civictechnologists.org

First Resolution

During the most recent delegates meeting, the first resolution for the Alliance of Civic Technologists (ACT) was unanimously passed. RESOLUTION ONE - TWENTY-TWENTY-FIVE is a direct response from ACT and its members to the current administration’s executive orders and actions that are adversely impacting the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ+) individuals, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) initiatives, immigrant communities, and the federal workforce. This resolution also serves as a strong statement of support for these communities and programs by ACT’s members.

“In short, our communities welcome all - but compassionately reject harmful actions.”

Join Our Network: Organizers Needed

The Alliance of Civic Technologists is actively recruiting organizers to support member organizations in Tulsa, Baltimore, Dallas, and Nebraska. If you’re passionate about making an impact, we’d love to hear from you! Reach out to hello@civictechnologists.org to get involved.

We Support 18F

As of March 1, 2025, 18F, a program within the General Services Administration (GSA), has officially been shut down. However, the talented team of tech consultants and engineers, who built open-source tools to improve digital services across the federal government has come together. Their dedication to helping, “the government to fix things,” is absolutely inspirational, and we’re excited to witness their work as they continue their mission, driving a positive change in the civic tech community.

Network Roundup

Here are some quick notes about what’s been happening in the network!

• Code for Philly is building an ultimate toolkit, called Clean & Green Philly, for local community groups to reduce gun violence by cleaning and greening vacant properties.
• BetaNYC celebrates over a decade of observing March as “Sunshine Month”, where open government, freedom of information, and the City’s open data law are at the forefront, by co-hosting NYC Open Data Week and NYC School of Data.
• Chi Hack Night recently held their sixth Board of Directors election, with a majority of their official members turning out to cast their vote.
• Florida Community Innovation (FCI) released their new handbook, detailing what FCI is, their projects, and more.
• Open Sacramento celebrates their new name with a new website.

Spring Virtual Happy Hour

Join the Alliance of Civic Technologists for a Spring Happy Hour where we’ll commiserate and celebrate our wins during the start of 2025. This is an open meeting for the entire civic tech community. You can register for the event here!

Network Events

Here are some events happening in the network, in the next month!

• 03/06 - Open Austin’s Design Community of Practice: Service Design at the City of Austin 
• 03/07 - FCI + UMich’s Social Services Technology Community Research Showcase 
• 03/08 - FCI’s GRAT - Community Dialogue & Volunteer Sign-Up 
• 03/10 - Civic Tech Atlanta’s Civic Hack Night at Tech Square ATL (TSQATL) Social Club 
• 03/11 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night 
• 03/11 - Code for Philly’s March Hack Night 
• 03/11 - Chi Hack Night’s In-person and Online: Digital Equity with “Retired” Computers 
• 03/11 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday 
• 03/12 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night 
• 03/12 - Code for BTV’s Action Night (formerly Hack Night) 
• 03/12 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night 
• 03/18 - Code for Boston’s Hybrid Weekly Hack Night 
• 03/18 - Chi Hack Night’s Online: Open Hack 
• 03/18 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday 
• 03/19 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night 
• 03/19 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night 
• 03/22 - BetaNYC’s NYC Open Data Week 2025 
• 03/25 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night 
• 03/25 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday 
• 03/26 - Code for BTV’s Action Night (formerly Hack Night) 
• 03/29 - BetaNYC’s NYC School of Data 2025 
• 04/01 - Code For Dayton’s Monthly User Group Meeting 
• 04/01 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night 
• 04/01 - Open Austin’s Data & Dev Community of Practice: April 
• 04/01 - Open Eugene’s Tech Tuesday 
• 04/02 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night 
• 04/02 - Open Sacramento’s Virtual: Community Action Night

Stay in Touch

Interested in chatting with the community in real time, join our public Discord server.

Does your local civic tech organization have a story to tell? Want to be featured in our next newsletter? Reach out to us at hello@civictechnologists.org.

By Christopher Whitaker and Derek Eder

The past few weeks have featured an unprecedented assault on the United States Constitution, civil rights, and America’s public servants.

And contrary to some media narratives, there’s fierce opposition to everything that’s happening. That opposition will play out in the courts. It will play out in the streets and it will eventually play out at the ballot box.

These efforts will take time. As most of us are non-partisan, non-profits, these efforts take place outside our lanes. This does not negate those efforts, this post is mostly aimed at what civic tech volunteer groups can do.

Authoritarian regimes want to crush the opposition. Part of this means ensuring that if you’re not compliant, things will be unbearable and unsustainable.

With this in mind, one of the best uses of our time and effort is in harm reduction. Reducing the harm brought on by the new administration will buy time and space for vulnerable communities.

Reducing harm will mean empowering and enabling community organisations that are on the front lines supporting vulnerable communities helping to solve their problems and enhance their capabilities.

One of the biggest wins that civic tech likes to brag about is Clear My Record — a product that helps to expunge weed convictions from criminal records. For one thing, this only works in states that allow for that. And how did we states that allowed for that? Years and years of grassroots activists doing the work of community organizing and advocating for change. The biggest piece and the hardest part had nothing to do with tech. You had to literally change laws.

The activists and their advocates in the legislature were the ones driving the effort. Civic technologists came in during the implementation phase and helped to enable it.

Civic Tech Atlanta partnered with Solidarity Food Pantry to help clean up their data and create user friendly improvements to their reporting system. The pantry, started in March 2020 to help food-insecure families during the COVID shutdowns. That grew into a community movement to help overlooked families. Civic Tech Atlanta was honored to help those families feel uplifted, supported and food secure. Solidarity Pantry has helped serve over 100,000 people since its opening.

While taking the opportunity to make some internal changes during moving physical locations, Solidarity realized they had a need to improve their current data quality and data intake system. Partially for the sake of organization and reporting, but primarily to prepare for a future data migration, Solidarity needed to review their historical data and reporting.

Civic Tech Atlanta worked with Solidarity to review historical data and identify data validation issues (potential duplicates, invalid addresses, entry errors, etc.), propose simple improvements to the current ad-hoc reporting system and understand the data and assist in preparing a data structure for a future migration.

It’s important to keep the concept of enablement in mind - because what we enable is important. Government efficiency, in it of itself, is not harm reduction.

There’s a lot of work to be done to push back against the oligarchy. Some of this work will be political, some of this work will be in the courts, and some of it will be on the streets.

With that in mind, here are some steps you can take to support your communities.

Step One: Find your team

Developing technology is a team sport, and even more so in the field of civic technology. There’s very little you can achieve solo. So, the first step is to find a team. If you’re in Chicago, your starting point will be Chi Hack Night at one of our weekly hack nights. For those outside of Chicago, the Alliance of Civic Technologists is a network of local organizations with member organizations in 13 cities and recruiting brand new volunteer civic tech volunteer groups. (You can find a list of our current members on our website!)

Ideally, you want to have enough skillsets on your team to be able to take on a variety of challenges.

Step Two: Find your allies and understand their needs

You probably have a particular set of skills and experiences that make you great at creating code, or designing great user experiences, or understanding how to use and manipulate data. These are usual skills, but you likely lack domain knowledge and expertise for problem sets like immigrant rights, investigating corruption, health care, and criminal justice reform.

For every major problem we’re facing, there’s likely a group that’s been working for years on the front line. They know what needs to be done. Your job is to unblock and boost their efforts.

Your first task should be to find that group and start to build trust with them. Building trust is important and necessary, particularly now when the most visible technologists are the ones doing the most damage. The most important thing you do is listen and learn. Understanding what your partner organization is doing and why is vital for knowing how to best help them.

Step Three: Do the work

Early civic tech, and maybe even today’s civic tech, has a hero problem. There was this idea that we could drop teams of talented technologists into a city hall or government agency and solve all the problems! We had all the good ideas!

This is not that scenario. It didn’t really work back then and it’s not going to work now. Leave the heroics at the door, you’re a tech grunt now and you’re going to be doing a lot of grunt work. Necessary. Vital. Grunt work.

That’s teaching cybersecurity basics. That’s putting up a website. That’s helping with social media. That’s doing excel magic. That’s right, a lot of organizations are run by spreadsheets.

There may be times when they will need an app, but a lot of the work may end up being basic block and tackle technology work. It’s still important. Remember, civic tech is an enabling function and we’re enabling the organizations that are reducing harm.

Step Four: Share wins and lessons

In the times ahead we’ll have both challenges and wins. As we do, it’s important to share those stories with other groups doing this work so they can learn from your mistakes and victories. Blogging and telling those stories is work, but if another group faces the same challenges you did they’re now at an advantage.

You can help share those stories through ACT newsletter or your own blog.

We will get there

The next few years will be difficult, but the key thing for us to remember is that our jobs will be to reduce harm wherever we can. If food prices go up, helping a food pantry get food on the table is a win. If the administration targets our cities for mass deportation campaigns, every door that doesn’t open without a warrant is a win. Every activist that doesn’t get hacked because they were coached on cybersecurity is a win.

We’ll get there, and we’ll be there with you.

First Official Member List

We are thrilled to share a monumental milestone for the Alliance of Civic Technologists (ACT)—our very first official list of members! This is an exciting moment for ACT as we continue to grow our community of like-minded civic tech enthusiasts, innovators, and changemakers who are passionate about using technology to create positive social impact.

• Civic Tech Atlanta
• Code for Dayton
• Code for Boston
• Code for Philly
• SF Civic Tech
• BetaNYC
• Chi Hack Night
• Code for BTV
• Florida Community Innovation
• Open Austin
• Code for Charlottesville
• Open Oakland

⠀ This list represents not only a milestone in our journey, but also a celebration of the incredible diversity and expertise that our members bring to the table. From data scientists and software developers to policy advocates and community organizers, ACT members are united by a shared passion for tech-driven civic engagement.

Thanks Chi Hack Night & Open Austin

We would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to Chi Hack Night and Open Austin for their incredible support. As pillars of their respective civic tech communities, they have been a constant source of inspiration and collaboration.

Chi Hack Night graciously hosted our Executive Director, Christopher Whitaker, for a special event, back in October 2024, where he shared the launch of ACT. More recently, they also penned a thoughtful blog post about ACT, detailing its origins, mission, and their decision to join our growing network.

Meanwhile, Open Austin partnered with us on a successful social media campaign to promote their Welcome 2025 ATX Public Interest Tech Mixer, which resulted in the event selling out. The mixer brought together 37 attendees, including resident activists, community and nonprofit leaders, and local government staff—40% of whom were people of color, and 31% were women and non-binary folks.

This is exactly the kind of collaboration we aim to amplify within the network—strengthening local civic tech communities and fostering an inclusive, engaged network of individuals and organizations across the country.

A huge thank you to Chi Hack Night and Open Austin for their continued support and commitment to advancing the civic tech movement!

Goal Setting

ACT’s members have been renewing their focus on setting impactful goals. From advancing civic tech projects to fostering stronger community connections, our members are defining their objectives for the year ahead. For example Civic Tech Atlanta has shared this simplified list:

1. Structure a formal project lifecycle pipeline.
2. Keep a pulse on volunteer relations.
3. Build up their network with local and public organizations.
4. Mature our administrative operations for sustainability. ⠀ We invite you to check out Civic Tech Atlanta’s website, along with those of our other members, to see how each of them is strategically setting the course to make a meaningful impact in the civic tech space!

Delegates Meeting

ACT will be holding its next Delegates Meeting on Thursday, February 20, 2025, at 6:00 PM PT / 9:00 PM ET, with a Zoom link provided to each member’s delegates directly. During this meeting, there will be discussion and vote on a resolution and action plan, as outlined in our joint statement with the Technologists for the Public Good. This is an important opportunity for all members to engage in shaping the future direction of ACT and its collaborative initiatives. Be sure to join us and have your voice heard!

This Month’s Events

Here are some events happening in the network!

• 02/10 - Civic Tech Atlanta’s Civic Hack Night at Tech Square ATL (TSQATL) Social Club
• 02/10 - Open Austin’s Design for the Public Good: Community of Practice
• 02/11 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 02/11 - Code for Philly’s February Hack Night
• 02/11 - Chi Hack Night’s In-person and Online: Illegal evictions in Chicago
• 02/12 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 02/12 - Code for BTV’s Action Night (formerly Hack Night)
• 02/18 - Code for Boston’s Hybrid Weekly Hack Night
• 02/19 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 02/25 - Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night
• 02/26 - SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night
• 02/26 - Code for BTV’s Action Night (formerly Hack Night)

Stay in Touch

Interested in chatting with the community in real time, join our public Discord server.

Does your local civic tech organization have a story to tell? Want to be featured in our next newsletter? Reach out to us at hello@civictechnologists.org

In light of the current administration’s executive orders adversely impacting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ+) rights; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) programs; immigrant communities; and the Federal workforce, the Alliance of Civic Technologists and Technologists for Public Good are issuing a joint statement reaffirming our commitment to support all individuals working to improve civic society and public government.

This includes technologists who are trans, queer, immigrants, disabled, remote workers, and technologists across disciplines and issue areas. Our communities welcome all individuals without regard to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual identity or orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, age, race, color, culture, language, nationality, citizenship, country of origin, profession, religion, political beliefs, veteran status, genetic features, genetic information, or any other any other identity or characteristic. Our support extends to their rights regarding access to healthcare and benefits, dignity, freedom of movement, and protection from harassment and discrimination.

Our organizations believe that programs supporting diversity, inclusion, equity, and accessibility improve our government workforce and aid in making government more innovative and responsive to the needs of everyone in our communities. Our organizations believe that better solutions come from embracing diversity, not excluding it.

While our organizations primarily support technologists, we’re lucky enough to partner with dedicated folks in public service and across multiple sectors and organizations and work together to provide needed solutions to the American people. Our jobs simply aren’t possible without all of the people it takes to deliver effective public services; we value all of them.

This joint statement is a first step. We will continue to support and highlight efforts in our communities to advance this commitment. Technologists for Public Good has been and will continue to proactively provide resources and programs for people to reference and take action as well as are building out advocacy priorities with members over the coming months. The Alliance of Civic Technologists will work with Technologists for Public Good to promote these resources and the Board of the Alliance of Civic Technologists will submit a resolution and action plan for a vote by the full membership at our next delegate meeting in late February.

The success of our communities and the positive impact their work has had on improving the lives of Americans is made possible because of the contributions of our LGBTQ+, immigrant, disabled, remote, and other diverse peers. The Alliance of Civic Technologists and Technologists for the Public Good stand in solidarity with our friends, neighbors, and colleagues in these communities.

Alliance of Civic Technologists
Christopher Whitaker, Director
On behalf of the Board

Technologists for the Public Good
Anicia Santos, President
On behalf of the Board

First Town Hall

We will be holding our first Town Hall, to provide anyone and everyone in our network a chance to have a voice and brainstorm with us on how to make our community even better than it already is. The meeting will be hosted using Zoom on the third Thursday of January, (01/16/2025) at 6:00 PM PT/9:00 PM ET. Please use the Zoom registration link to sign up.

Meeting Cadence

The announcement of our First Town Hall marks the beginning of a quarterly cycle of monthly meetings, scheduled for every third Thursday of the month. Our goal is to establish a sustainable approach to consistent communication and engagement with both our members and the broader community, while actively implementing and responding to valuable feedback. Each quarter will feature a series of three meetings, beginning with the Town Hall to foster brainstorming and ideation. This will be followed by a Delegate’s Meeting to further promote collaboration and partnerships, and will conclude with a Mixer to celebrate our successes and achievements.

Help Wanted: Join an ACT Committee!

The Alliance of Civic Technologists is looking for volunteers to help staff our working committees. These committees will help us manage the day to day operations of our network including helping craft our website, recruiting new members into the network, and hosting our first ACT Congress. Volunteers to work on committees must come from member organizations, but they do not have to be the delegate. We’re specifically recruiting for the Communications, Membership, and Events Committees. If you are interested, please email hello@civictechnologists.org

ATX Public Interest Tech Mixer

We’re excited to share an upcoming event hosted by Open Austin! On January 9th, they will be hosting a mixer to help ring in the new year, while bringing together like-minded individuals for a day of valuable insights, collaboration, and fun. Including a short panel about data-informed journalism, with local civics celebrity speakers from The Austin Common, a civics education platform, and Democrasexy, a women- and LGBTQ-centered civic engagement platform. Don’t miss out on the chance to be part of this exciting gathering and register today!

This Month’s Events

Here are some events happening in the network!

January 7

• Chi Hack Night’s Online: Open Hack
• Code for Boston’s Hybrid Weekly Hack Night
• Code for Dayton’s Monthly User Group Meeting

January 8

• SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night ⠀ January 9
• Open Austin’s Welcome 2025: ATX Public Interest Tech Mixer
• FCI’s Workshop Series for Social Good Leaders

January 14

• Chi Hack Night’s In-Person and Online: Community Feedback Session
• Code for Philly’s January Hack Night
• Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night ⠀ January 15
• Code for BTV’s Action Night
• SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night

January 21

• Chi Hack Night’s Chicago Landlord Mapper
• Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night

January 22

• SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night

January 28

• Chi Hack Night’s Housing Politics Lab
• Code for Boston’s Virtual Weekly Hack Night

January 29

• Code for BTV’s Action Night
• SF Civic Tech’s Virtual Civic Hack Night ⠀

  Stay in Touch

Interested in chatting with the community in real time, join our public Discord server.

Does your local civic tech organization have a story to tell? Want to be featured in our next newsletter? Reach out to us at hello@civictechnologists.org

ACT Welcomes First New Members

The Alliance of Civic Technologists welcomed its first batch of eight members into the network this month. Our inaugural members include Civic Tech Atlanta, Code for Dayton, SF Civic Tech, Code for Philly, BetaNYC, Chi Hack Night, Code for Boston, and Code for BTV. We plan to onboard more members soon and are still accepting applications for new members. Interested groups can apply on our homepage!

Come hang out with us

On December 19th at 9:00 PM EST / 6:00 PM PST, ACT will host a virtual Civic Technology Holiday Mixer. It’s been too long since we’ve gotten together, and we wanted a chance to celebrate the launch of our new network. All are welcome! Register for the event here!

Civic Tech Atlanta Helps Feed The People

Civic Tech Atlanta partnered with Solidarity Food Pantry to help clean up their data and create user friendly improvements to their reporting system. The pantry, started in March 2020 to help food-insecure families during the COVID shutdowns. That grew into a community movement to help overlooked families. Civic Tech Atlanta was honored to help those families feel uplifted, supported and food secure. Solidarity Pantry has helped serve over 100,000 people since its opening.

While taking the opportunity to make some internal changes during moving physical locations, Solidarity realized they had a need to improve their current data quality and data intake system. Partially for the sake of organization and reporting, but primarily to prepare for a future data migration, Solidarity needed to review their historical data and reporting.

Civic Tech Atlanta worked with Solidarity to review historical data and identify data validation issues (potential duplicates, invalid addresses, entry errors, etc.), propose simple improvements to the current ad-hoc reporting system and understand the data and assist in preparing a data structure for a future migration.

Network Roundup

Here are some quick notes about what’s been happening in the network!

• Florida Community Innovation recently launched its digital humanities project, www.gobituary.app. Registration is open for their social good innovation workshop series: www.floridainnovation.org/store .
• OpenAustin will be hosting a social event on January 9th. Come join if you’re in the area!
• If you want to support ACT in the new year donate here!

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Membership Applications Open October 29th During Virtual Session of Chi Hack Night

On October 29th, our Executive Director Christopher Whitaker will be speaking at Chi Hack Night to announce the launch of the Alliance of Civic Technologists inaugural membership drive.

We’ll be talking a bit about the history of local volunteer civic tech organizations, the advantages of being part of a network, and how ACT can support the future growth of the civic tech movement by working to convene, enable, celebrate and advocate for civic volunteers across the country.

The event will be virtual and will start at 7:00 PM CST. You can join the zoom call here.

We hope you’ll join us.

Christopher Whitaker named Executive Director

Over the past year, the Board and our counsel have been working to secure our non-profit status and build the ACT organization. We’re now at the point where ACT is stable and ready to grow.

In order to accelerate this and set ACT up to be the organization we all want it to be, the Board has asked Christopher Whitaker to be the Executive Director of ACT, and charged him with the development of the organization, its strategic direction, and bylaws. Noel Hidalgo, Jill Bjers, and Harlan Weber will continue to act in our roles on the Board of Directors through at least the process of establishing the organization, supported by Matt Zagaja as Treasurer, Brianda Hernandez as Secretary, Jill Bjers as auditor, and Jake Durrell as Counsel.

Christopher has been a long time organizer in the civic technology space as one of Code for America’s first volunteer captains in 2013 as well as being a long time member of Chi Hack Night.

Christopher has a hybrid background in public administration and product management having served in both delivery and operations roles at the Defense Digital Service, United States Digital Service, and Code for America. Christopher was recently hired by Skylight to support the US Air Force BESPIN software factory.

Preview of our Bylaws and MOU

As we approach launch day, we wanted to share a preview of the ACT’s draft bylaws and the MOU’s that we’ll ask member organizations to sign when they join the network.

The Alliance of Civic Technologists will be a decentralized network run by the membership. The member organizations will each be represented by two delegates and an alternate who will have the ability to vote in board elections, our budget, as well as propose resolutions to state ACT’s stance on important issues.

ACT intends to conduct business in an open and transparent manner. As a good first step, we want to offer a preview into our bylaws and our memorandum of understanding. We’ll open these documents up for feedback until the 29th before formally adopting them. During our first ACT Congress in Summer 2025, we’ll also have the chance to amend our bylaws as needed.

Join our Discord

ACT maintains a Discord server where we facilitate conversations between volunteer civic technology leaders across the country. Join us today!

Welcome to the ACT July Newsletter! We’re hoping that everyone is staying safe and cool during the extreme weather we’re having.

Writing out our values

After a few weeks of reviewing what volunteer groups put together in 2017, we now have an initial draft of our mission, values, and operating principles. Thank you to everyone who contributed their feedback!

The next step will be to share the draft document with our delegates for feedback. We’ll meet at a delegate-only meeting on July 27th to review the proposal and possibly vote for its approval. In the meantime, you can read and comment on the proposed document here!

Code for Boston’s MAPLE Testimony goes live in Massachusetts

As mentioned in the Boston Globe and Commonwealth Magazine, Code for Boston’s MAPLE app - the Massachusetts Platform for Legislative Engagement - aims to make it easy for MA residents to submit testimony to the state Legislature on the bills that determine the future of the Commonwealth. MAPLE will launch their v1 app on Thursday, July 20 after a year of amazing work by a dedicated team of Code for Boston volunteers, led by Matt Victor, in partnership with the NULawLab at Northeastern. Learn more about the project (and check out the code!) on Github.

Florida Resource Map

In recent months, student interns and the developer team at Florida Community Innovation (FCI) have been creating version three of the Florida Resource Map. The Map is a tool for Floridians to find social services (food banks, job resources, healthcare, etc.) near them on a unified digital platform. Our tool is also designed so social workers can customize suggestions of resources for their clients. The Map will compile a database of resources gathered from our nonprofit partners across Florida.

ACT reaches twenty members

ACT continues to grow, with three more members signing on and bringing our total number of members to twenty. We were recently joined by Code for Atlanta, Code for Hawaii and OpenSTL (St Louis). 

Does your local civic tech organization have a story to tell? Want to be featured in our next newsletter? Reach out to us at hello@civictechnologists.org

Thanks for all you do!

Thanks again for all of your support and everything you do.

– ACT Comms Team 

Happy Friday! The Alliance of Civic Technologists would like to invite you to a virtual social hour on June 29th at 8:30 PM EST / 5:30 PM to celebrate our filing as a 501c3!

This is our first step in becoming a fully-fledged non-profit. We’ll be filing in Illinois on Thursday and we’ll work with delegates from member organizations across the county to write our bylaws and continue the work supporting the civic technology volunteer network.

You can register for the social hour here!

Thanks so much for all you do,
Christopher, Jill, and Harlan

Hello! Welcome to our first newsletter! It’s been a month since we first launched the Alliance of Civic Technologists and we wanted to give an update on our progress and what’s next.

But first we wanted to give a big thank you to our initial volunteers and donors. Our launch would not have been possible without people raising their hands to help us stand up the network! Thank you! 🎉

Our First ACT Meeting

We’re giving former members of Code for America Brigades and interested local civic tech organizations until Friday, June 16th to sign their letters of intent and name their delegates. On Monday, June 19th we’ll send out a pool asking delegates to indicate their availability for our first meeting. If you are a local leader and haven’t received your letter of intent, please email hello@civictechnologists.org.

New Logo!

If you’ve visited our website, civictechnologists.org, in the last week, you may have noticed that we have a new logo! The connected star logo was inspired by Code for Australia’s original ‘network’ design with ACT taking a page out of Canada’s book and using the flag star to represent the US. Our colors are Old Glory Red and Democracy Blue. We wanted to give a big shout out to Molly McLeod (https://www.mollymcleod.com/) for the design.

Call for Feedback on our Vision, Mission and Values

In 2017, the civic technology organizations came together at Code for America’s Brigade Congress and drafted a Mission/Vision/Operating Principles document that reflected the values of the Brigade network. Since that time, Code for America has taken the finalized document off their website. However, this document was preserved in Github and ACT has forked it as it’s a useful starting point for setting our own vision, mission, and values. You can comment and suggest changes here. We’ll keep the comment section open until we formally adopt our governance structure.

Stay in touch via Discord

If you’re interested in chatting with the community in real time, we have an open discord server at https://discord.gg/EM6ywtMhkP

Thanks so much,
The ACT Comms Team
(Christopher, Brianda, Ben and Jill)

Does your local civic tech organization have a story to tell? Want to be featured in our next newsletter? Reach out to us at hello@civictechnologists.org