Civic Tech Corps · Capacity, not code

The pipeline

We mapped the civic tech fellowship ecosystem. The South is the gap.

Six national fellowships place fellows nationwide. The American South, especially communities under 500,000 people, gets almost none of them.

Violet marks HBCU talent, teal marks national recruiting schools, illustrating what a Southern pipeline could look like. Switch to "Existing fellowships" to see where each of the six programs places fellows today.

The regional landscape

Under-resourced on money, connectivity, and capability at once.

The case for Civic Tech Corps rests on three gaps that compound. The South isn't merely poorer. It's systematically starved of the inputs that let a government function.

Philanthropy

0¢

Foundation investment per person in the South, for every dollar per person invested nationally. Only 30 cents for the structural work that changes systems.

Giving to the Southeast still rose 51% from 2014 to 2019. The smart money is beginning to move South.

Connectivity

Mississippi household broadband, last in the nation. The racial gap is wider still.

32% of Black households nationally lack home broadband, nearly double the 18% national rate.

Capacity

$0M

Atlanta's cost to recover from the 2018 SamSam ransomware attack. Six times the first estimate, with years of police records lost for good.

The city's own auditor had warned of 1,500 to 2,000 severe vulnerabilities for over a year. Missing capacity, not a missing product.

The model

Talent inside government that builds capacity that lasts.

Civic Tech Corps places early-career technical talent inside under-resourced Southern jurisdictions. It's the FuseCorps model, applied to the technologists these communities have never been able to hire.

An HBCU pipeline

Recruiting starts at the region's HBCUs. It's investment in leaders of color who stay in the South and build.

Fellows in pairs

Pairs embed inside a real government office, owning real work rather than shadowing it, long enough to leave lasting systems behind.

An open standard

An open API standard means each fellow's work compounds across the network instead of dying when the placement ends.

Field programs

Civic Tech Corps Fellowship

Recruits and places fellows directly inside local government offices. They're the people who show up, do the work, and stay long enough to leave real systems behind.

↓Tools, data & shared standards

↑Field insight & real deployments

The Lab equips the field. The Fellowship proves what the Lab builds.

Shared infrastructure

Open Civic AI Lab

Builds and sustains the shared technology: an open API standard and data infrastructure that keeps every placement connected long after a fellow moves on.

Funders are moving South after decades of neglect.

Capacity is the missing piece that makes those dollars land. Civic Tech Corps builds the governing muscle that turns hard-won local power into a government that can actually deliver.

Partner with us Revisit the evidence

Capacity, not code.