OpenAccessPHL Will Launch CivInc, A Microgrant Program for Innovative Civic Technology Projects

On Monday, April 20, OpenAccessPHL held a special edition of its monthly convening as part of Philly Tech Week. During the event, which was celebrating five years of existence, organizer Yuriy Porytko announced the program’s new microgrant program, CivInc, which will provide microgrants for innovative civic technology projects that have been impacted by the OpenAccessPHL community.

Earlier this year, Code For Philly and OpenAccessPHL began collecting impact stories about how OpenAccessPHL has impacted its members and their lives.

“Many of these conversations [at our events] have led to led to mentorship and advisory relationships and have led to projects developing, collaborations, people having found jobs, dream jobs, and even a few budding startups. OAP and Code For Philly are now in process of collecting these stories, these impact stories [and] those that meet the values of OAP will be eligible for microgrants,” Porytko said.

“We’re here today to announce that we’ll be accepting more impact stories and looking to place several $1k microgrants in 2015.  This will be a rolling process that will begin evaluating these impact stories in June 2015 looking to award the first microgrant in July 2015,” he added.

According to Porytko, the selection committee will comprise of civic technologists from government, academia, the business world and the OpenAccessPHL community. More information about the program and selection committee will be announced soon.

Also at the convening, we heard from Story Bellows, co-director/founder of Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics Philadelphia, Todd Baylson, technology procurement advocate of City of Philadelphia, Office of Innovation & Technology, and Archna Sahay, manager of entrepreneurial investment for the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Commerce.

Generocity.org will be releasing its videos of each of the speakers on Fridays over the next few weeks, but for now, here’s OpenAccessPHL’s Storify recap:

Image via Kristen Gillette