Getting Started Right: Planning Your Civic Tech Initiative

Why Most Community Technology Projects End Before They Should

Every year, hundreds of community technology projects launch with enthusiasm and good intentions. Volunteers gather to build platforms that make government more transparent, help neighbors connect, or improve public services. Yet within three to five years, most of these projects shut down. The websites go dark, the volunteers move on, and communities lose tools they had come to rely on.

This is not about technical failures or bad ideas. The research shows that most community technology projects end because of decisions made during the planning phase, long before the first line of code gets written. The good news is that these early mistakes can be avoided when project founders understand what makes the difference between initiatives that last and those that do not.

This article examines how the earliest decisions shape whether a community technology project will thrive or struggle. By learning from projects that have already shut down, new initiatives can avoid repeating the same costly mistakes.