5 Years of CivicLex

Last week, CivicLex celebrated the end of our 5 year anniversary at the Kentucky Theatre, surrounded by 250+ of our closest friends.

Six years ago, we dreamt up the idea of CivicLex - a civic education website that would also put on in person events to get people more plugged in to local government.

We shook down all the friends and family we could get $50 from, worked to get buy-in, got a coworking desk, and built a website.

We launched in the fall of 2017 in Castlewood Park with an immersive data experience about housing in Lexington. Our first year’s budget was less than $20,000.

Between then and now, we’ve done a lot! We’ve attended and covered nearly 800 city meetings and released reporting and newsletters that have been read hundreds of thousands of times.

We’ve brought well over 10,000 residents and local government officials together in person to learn about civic life and learn from each other.

We’ve worked with tons of partners like the Lexington Herald-Leader or Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government (LFUCG) itself that could easily see us as a competitor or adversary

We’ve embedded artists in government, held trilingual workshops about park and planning policy, funded community mini grants, and much more.

We’ve been noticed by the national field and have been held up as an example of what a new generation of civic infrastructure could look like!

Six years out from our launch with me as a very part time contractor, we have an amazing team of eight staff members. We have an amazing board. But most of all, we’ve found an amazing community in Lexington.

A big thanks to everyone who came out to support us!

PS - We made a pretty important announcement about our direction at the event that I’m excited to share more about in the days to come :)