Putting together our annual impact report is always a critical moment of reflection to evaluate the impact we’ve contributed to our organization, the governments we work with, their communities, and the world at large. We're proud of how much our community has grown and what we've accomplished together in the past year.

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As an organization, we were honored to be certified as a B Corporation in 2022. In line with our mission, the way we do business, our workplace culture and values, and the previous year’s decision to open all of our source code, this certification further engrains that we “walk our talk” and keeps us accountable to ensure best-in-class ESG practices. 

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In terms of impact on governments, we welcomed over 100 new governments to our CitizenLab community, and are now working across more than 20 countries. Throughout our client base, we continued to see a significant increase in the average number of participatory processes per platform, coupled with an emphasis on good internal collaboration structures. This has translated into strengthened cultures of engagement and increased organizational adoption in local governments and organizations. More than 1,000 public servants are active monthly on CitizenLab-powered engagement platforms—a milestone we’re proud of!

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In the coming year, we want to inspire our clients with good-practice participatory practices. To do this, we plan to develop good-practice templates and methodologies for the most pressing issues and projects governments are working on. We also want to continue strengthening the exchange of good practices between the governments we work with by fostering conversations among peers in our community. 

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On the product side, we want to enhance our vision to become the 360° hub for all participation in any given city or town. In the past year, we’ve expanded our toolbox by introducing our own survey tool, making our platform’s architecture much more flexible, and further developing our dashboarding and reporting capabilities. In the coming year, we want to focus on blending online and offline approaches, collaboration tools for admins, and integrations with the other tools governments are already using. 

The local-level impact of this is what keeps us particularly motivated. We helped over 200,000 community members actively participate in projects in their cities and towns. We’ve made efforts not only to help engage more community members, but also to contribute to more inclusive processes. With the introduction of our Representativeness Dashboard, we can now help governments evaluate how inclusive each project is based on their community’s demographics. Yet, we recognize that we have much more work to do in the coming years to help ensure that governments don’t only listen to the loudest voices in the room, but actively make space for equitable participation opportunities for everyone. Our multi-channel ambition - which will explore blending offline and online channels of participation to enable more inclusive participation processes - will be one important step in that direction. 

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Working on this mission of participatory governance has been an incredibly rewarding journey, and we’re proud of where we are today. As we reflect on what went well and what could have gone better in the past year, we’re doing so with a determination to work on the significant challenges ahead of us to continue building impact with governments and communities worldwide.