The Cleveland Civic Tech + Open Data Collaborative (The Collaborative) is a joint initiative of five original partner organizations, including the CWRU Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development, Open Cleveland, of Code for America, Hack Cleveland, OpenNeo, the Cleveland City Planning Commission as well as, and more recently, the Cleveland Shapers, of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shape
rs venture, and the Ward 14 office of Cleveland City Council. The Collaborative officially kicked off in the fall of 2015 in bid for partnership through the joint Living Cities, Code for America, and National Neighborhood Indicator’s Partnership (NNIP) grant. MacArthur Foundation, the grant supports teams of civic technologists, data practitioners and government officials in cities to develop data and technology solutions to address pressing problems. On September 10th, 2015, Cleveland was formally named a “Learning Partner”, having been awarded $10,000 to be used for events, relationship building, trainings, and or initiatives meant to build the Cleveland civic technology community. Cleveland, along with fellow Learning Partner cities Pittsburgh, San Antonio and Seattle, also engage in peer-to-peer learning and receive coaching from Living Cities’ national staff. In receiving the grant, The Collaborative has used the funding primarily for ecosystem mapping and network-weaving, the aim of which is to aid in better connecting organizations to our civic tech ecosystem as well as to build the capacity of existing local civic tech groups. The Collaborative meets on the morning of the 4th Monday of every month at the Rising Star Roastery in Cleveland's Clark-Fulton neighborhood.
