GovFresh profiles Citizinvestor

Thanks to Luke Fretwell and the team at GovFresh (one of our favorite blogs) for this great profile on Citizinvestor! Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Citizinvestor is the latest startup to tackle public budget woes by offsetting lack of public funding with crowdsourced citizen donations targeted to specific projects. Citizinvestor founders Tony DeSisto, Jordan Raynor and Erik Rapprich share their vision.

What’s the story behind starting Citizinvestor?

One of our co-founders, Tony DeSisto, is an attorney who currently serves on the City of Tampa’s Budget Advisory Committee. On the Committee, Tony consults with the city on budgeting issues, trying to find new and innovative ways to fund local government projects at a time in which budgets at city Halls are tighter than ever before. Seeing the crowdfunding trend, Tony thought there needed to be a platform where citizens can micro-fund the local government projects they really want to see built. Thus, Citizinvestor was born.

We are planning to launch in late July in two major pilot partner cities, one of which is one of the five most populated cities in America. We expect to roll Citizinvestor out to new cities nearly every month.

Brief bios on the other two co-founders can be found below:

Jordan Raynor is a digital strategist who has spent his career solving difficult problems in government, politics and technology. Jordan most recently served as Client Director at Engage – deemed a “mega interactive agency” by Mashable. At Engage, Jordan’s primary client was the Voting Information Project – an initiative that works with election officials to put polling place location data in a uniform format. Jordan was honored as a Google Fellow at the 2010 Personal Democracy Forum.

Erik Rapprich is a web director, developer and strategist. Most recently, Erik served as Creative Director at Engage, where he met Jordan. At Engage, Erik lead product strategy for Multiply and iContribute – products used by leaders like John Boehner, Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan and Bob McDonnell. In 2010, Erik served as Web Director for the Republican Governors Association, managing a team that created 38 websites and applications in five months.

Be sure to check out the full profile on GovFresh!