What it is

Civic Tech DC is a non-partisan, volunteer-run community that uses open-source technology to support civic engagement, strengthen democracy and advance public-interest work in the DMV and beyond. It was founded in 2012 as Code for DC and became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2022. A board of directors provides governance, and a team of volunteer organizers runs events and day-to-day programming. Its four focus areas are civic technology, nonprofit tech, legislative tech, and election and campaign tech.

How it works

  • Project Nights: free, twice-monthly sessions where volunteers collaborate on active projects.
  • Code and Commit Nights: focused work sessions on delivering project milestones.
  • Special events: hackathons, workshops, show and tells and happy hours. Recent examples include a Pitch and Demo Night, a climate and energy hackathon, and a Build in Public session in Arlington with Unstuck Labs.
  • Async work: ongoing coordination happens on Slack and GitHub.

Active projects include VoteCatcher, Congressional Tech, the Data and Democracy Project, the DC Reentry Housing Project, Ride Score DC, SpicyRegs and WaterVoice DMV. Events are listed on the events page with RSVPs through Luma and Meetup.

Who it is for

Volunteers include developers, designers, data practitioners, researchers, project managers, policy experts and newcomers. It is not a startup accelerator, but it is useful for founders and technologists working in govtech, civic tech, nonprofit tech or policy-adjacent products who want to meet practitioners, test ideas in public and build skills alongside people who know local government and nonprofit workflows.

Starting or pitching a project

Anyone with a public-interest problem can propose a project by emailing team@civictechdc.org; a short, unpolished note is enough. The team explores need and fit, validates and scopes the work, and introduces ready projects at a Project Night when volunteer leadership is available. Good fits have real users, a committed problem owner, clear public benefit, an open-source approach and a feasible first milestone. Selected projects get no-cost, volunteer-led discovery, technical consultation, data help, design and open-source development support, though this is not guaranteed on-demand consulting and some outside costs may apply. Details are on the Start a Project page.

Why it matters in the DMV ecosystem

Civic Tech DC has been running for more than a decade in a region where government and nonprofits are major technology users. It offers a free, low-barrier way to meet technologists and policy people, see how civic problems are scoped, and contribute to open-source work. You can join the community Slack to get started.