Designing a Pitch Event

Civic Tech DC’s community has always been split between two groups: contributors who plug into existing projects at regular Project Nights, and builders who show up with ideas and pitches, but who the Project Nights are not designed for. Those builders need a higher-visibility format where they can get direct feedback from the audience and find out who else in the community might want to help. Pitch nights are useful for this, so we created one to support builders and entrepreneurs. It is also a important addition to the variety of events Civic Tech DC runs, reflecting a broader conviction that civic tech can be startups, small businesses, govtech companies, and independent builders. Hopefully this event (and series) works to expands this definition.

Update: We launched the event! On June 17, 2026, Civic Tech DC and Learning Journey AI co-hosted the first Civic Builders: Pitch & Demo Night. Six builders pitched, 159 people RSVP’d, and the night closed with open breakout conversations. More on how it went can be found on the Matter of Public.