City of Seattle, WA

08/01/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 08/01/2024 18:38

Seattle celebrates progress towards making benefits and discounts more accessible for all residents

(Originally posted on the City Innovation Hub, July 31, 2024)

Seattle is celebrating progress toward making public benefits more accessible for residents since the expansion of the Affordable Seattle program one year ago. Mayor Harrell announced the expansion of the Affordable Seattle initiative on July 12, 2023, part of his efforts to make City discount and benefit programs easily accessible to all. Since the Affordable Seattle Executive Order was signed, Seattle has onboarded three additional programs onto CiviForm, with more programs on the way.

One-Stop Shop for City Benefits

Civiform is an innovative portal designed to help residents and their trusted community-based organizations to quickly and conveniently apply for City services. This one-stop-shop saves residents time and money by making it easier to apply for multiple benefit and discount programs at the same time. For qualified households, the total available savings through programs on CiviForm is up to $25,200 per year, an increase of $2,200 from programs available since last year.

It takes users an average of five minutes to complete an application on CiviForm, down from an average of 30 minutes before CiviForm. 20% of applicants re-used their information to apply to two or more programs. 76% of responses to a feedback survey said that they were either very likely or extremely likely to refer others to CiviForm. In the year since the Executive Order was signed1, over 9,000 applications came in via CiviForm.

Applicants enrolled in programs saved on average $2,575 per year. The average household had three members with monthly incomes of less than $2,300. Over 15% of applicants preferred a language other than English, with Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Amharic as the top-requested languages.

Working with Community-Based Organizations

In the last year, Seattle has also onboarded more community-based organizations onto the CiviForm platform to help enroll their clients for benefits. There are now 143 staff across 40 community-based organizations signed up to use the platform. These organizations have helped 1,089 clients so far. CiviForm was designed knowing that case workers at trusted community-based organizations often apply for programs on behalf of their clients. This is critical for reaching many of Seattle's low-income communities, including those who may not have internet access at home.

Residents and community partners can learn about, check their eligibility, and apply for City of Seattle benefits and discount programs at seattle.gov/affordable. CiviForm is accessible via desktop and mobile in eight languages: English, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Somali, Amharic, Korean and Tagalog.  

Discounts and Benefits

Currently, the City of Seattle offers residents the ability to apply for the following programs via CiviForm: 

  • Gold Card: Residents ages 60 and older can save on retail, services, art, entertainment, and tourism with the Gold Card, including free passes to the Seattle Aquarium. 
  • FLASH Card: Residents ages 18-59 with qualifying disabilities can save on retail, services, art, entertainment, and tourism with the FLASH Card, including free passes to the Seattle Aquarium. 
  • Free Smoke and Carbon Monoxide (CO) Alarms: Seattle Fire Department provides free smoke and carbon monoxide combination alarms for qualifying Seattle homeowners. Strobe alarms are available for residents (homeowners or renters) who are deaf or hard of hearing.
  • Trees for Neighborhoods: City of Seattle residents can apply for up to 3 free trees per season for a lifetime total of 6 free trees. Residents also get help selecting the right tree and planting location, planting assistance, and a watering bag, and mulch for each tree.

Seattle is working to add more programs to CiviForm this year, with the goal of onboarding most City discount and benefits onto the platform by the end of 2024.

Innovative Partnerships

Seattle's user-centered approach is gaining attention in jurisdictions around the country. Seattle's CiviForm tool was named one the 50 most transformative smart projects of 2023 by Smart Cities Connect and was recognized with a 2024 Anthem Award in the Humanitarian Action & Services category. The Affordable Seattle team was also selected to present at three conferences to share our work on CiviForm​, most recently the Code for America Summit in May in Oakland, CA.

[Link]

Seattle IT's Matthew Sprenke speaking at the Code for America conference as part of a panel on community-driven product management

CiviForm was the brainchild of a design sprint in January 2021 with community-based organizations, City staff, and a team of pro bono Google.org fellows. From that initial design sprint, CiviForm was built in 9 months within the City of Seattle, with City staff and up to 14 full time pro bono Google.org fellows. Community-based organizations were involved from the start, with partners including El Centro de la Raza, Chinese Information and Service Center (CISC), and Refugee Women's Alliance (ReWA) providing invaluable input throughout development.

Since the initial launch of CiviForm within the City in June 2021, it has now been adopted by other City, State, and County governments. This is all possible by the open-source nature of the product; CiviForm was designed to be a free product that any government could adopt as a cost-effective was to improve resident access to needed benefits. The City of Bloomington, Indiana, and the State of Arkansas have also adopted CiviForm and the City of Charlotte, North Carolina, and the County of Miami-Dade are the latest additions to join the software collaborative. Exygy is the steward of the CiviForm shared open-source software project and is supported through a grant from Google.org.

Learn more about the CiviForm open-source tool or reach out to the team at [email protected].