Last month, Knight Foundation released a report titled “The Emergence of Civic Tech” which covered the breadth of activity and investment in new technologies advancing civic engagement, government effectiveness and the quality of life in cities. The feedback has been tremendous, confirming civic tech’s growth as a field and a desire among practitioners and investors for stronger coordination to nurture its development. Several themes in the feedback – defining what’s included in civic tech, measuring the impact of new tools and fostering stronger collaboration between investors – are topics we’re excited to explore in greater depth in the coming months.

In the short term, we’re planning to update the civic tech data visualization tool and organization directory in early February based on all the suggestions we’ve received.  We realized the report didn’t exhaustively capture all of the activity in the field, so we asked people to suggest more organizations and supply investment data not included in the first version. We’re grateful to the dozens of individuals who have reached out over the past month to provide input, and we’ll be working with our research partner Quid to analyze how the new data fits in the civic tech network.

If you have any final suggestions for us to consider, please email me by Wednesday, Jan. 22. Here are some general criteria for inclusion in the analysis:

· Organizations: Startups, private companies and nonprofits primary focused on building and support of discrete civic technologies are all included; organizations funded to support advocacy, research, events and other purposes related to civic tech but not directly tied to building tech-related projects are excluded.

· Investment Data: Grants and investments made between January 2011 and May 2013 by third-party investors – foundations, corporations and private investors – are included; projects financed through an organization’s internal budget as well as government and public funding for civic tech is excluded.

Your help is much appreciated!

Jonathan Sotsky, director of strategy and assessment at Knight Foundation

Note: Organization Directory link updated on 02/28/14.