Jocelyn Howard, vice president of customer experience for CivicReach, recently showcased the startup at the Maritime and Defense Technology Hub event. Photo by Mark Parker.
A civic-focused startup is utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to help ensure that communities receive responsive, accessible assistance from overwhelmed nonprofits and local governments.
CivicReach launched in 2024 from North Carolina’s Research Triangle and recently opened an outpost in St. Petersburg’s Innovation District, at the Maritime and Defense Technology Hub. Jocelyn Howard, vice president of customer experience for the growing startup, said it exists to “improve lives by creating better systems to deliver social services.”
Howard, presenting at the hub’s monthly Tech X-Change on March 25, highlighted how CivicReach offers an AI-powered phone system that can handle every call, accurately explain program eligibility, securely capture intake information, and route urgent cases to staff. She said the startup’s founders realized that “the need was just so great,” and saw firsthand how limited capacity creates barriers to service.
A Chicago-area nonprofit that serves roughly one million people is one of CivicReach’s first enterprise customers. The organization was inundated with energy assistance requests during winter, Howard said, “and because they were spending so much time answering the phone, they weren’t processing the applications in a timely way.”
“We’ve just recently started going live, and there was a 12% reduction in denials to this energy assistance program,” Howard said. “And the reason is that the staff have their time back. I get really excited about this because that is actually 12% more people who don’t have their energy cutoff in the middle of a Chicago winter.”
A similar story unfolded locally when St. Petersburg, Duke Energy, and the Pinellas County Urban League launched a temporary Renter Utility Relief program in March 2024. Staff from multiple city departments, some not typically associated with social services, worked overtime to screen over 1,400 applications in a week.
Howard, who grew up in St. Pete, said she has spoken with city and county officials. While the startup is working with seven states, local governments are typically “waiting until they have very involved policies in place” before utilizing AI.
CivicReach’s multilingual voice agents handle high call volumes with a “very human-like” voice, Howard said. The technology first answers the “easy questions” regarding program information, eligibility, and documentation.
The platform can also route calls, complete forms, and provide referrals in real time. “What we are typically replacing is a phone tree, which we’ve all had the pleasure of experiencing, or a really bad voice recognition robot that is not actually using conversational AI,” Howard said.
She stressed the importance of working closely with partners to ensure accuracy, transparency, accountability, and compliance. Organizations retain full ownership and control of data, and CivicReach uses encryption and continuous threat monitoring to safeguard sensitive information.
The system provides analytics on trends, topics, and outcomes to help organizations analyze community needs. “It’s often the first time that the agency we’re working with actually has insight into the phone calls,” Howard said.
A lack of understanding, combined with bureaucracy, presents a challenge when pitching the platform to agencies. Howard said that explaining “what AI means in the context of CivicReach” is critical when securing new partnerships.
“The chatbots are usually not very good – they’re just not,” she said. “Where we fit in is increasing the efficiency at each of those steps … and giving staff back the time to do processing.”
Howard has a background in social services and public-private partnerships. She noted that CivicReach’s founder, an engineer, also operated a homeless shelter in Boston with his family.
“He was really oriented towards this and wanted to create a tech company with a mission,” Howard added. “So, government and social services were kind of baked in from the start. And, as I said, there’s just not a lot of companies filling that need.”
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