AI and automation consulting · Rochester, NY
Automation that gets built. Savings that get measured.
Civic Dialog builds internal applications and automations for small and mid-sized organizations: with your team, by teaching your team to build, or as the fractional chief AI officer who leads the work month to month. Every engagement ends with a ledger of the hours and dollars it returned.
501 Labs, our founder’s nonprofit, is counting toward $1,000,000,000 saved or generated for nonprofits.
01Three ways to work with us
Pick by who does the building.
Every lane produces the same things: automations that run in your real work, documentation, and a measured result. They differ in who does the building and who stays on afterward.
01 · Your team builds
Cohort
A twelve-week program for 4 to 12 people who scope, build, deploy, and measure their own automations, with our coaching.
- People
- 4 to 12 people
- Duration
- 12 weeks
- Best when
- You want the capability to stay in the building after the engagement ends.
02 · Built with you
CoBuild
Custom automations and internal apps, built in weeks with your stakeholders in the room and anywhere from none to four of your people at the keyboard, on tools and accounts you own.
- People
- 0 to 4 builders, plus stakeholders
- Duration
- Scoping sprint, then 4 to 8 weeks per project
- Best when
- You need it built now, with your people as involved as they have time to be.
03 · We lead, month to month
Fractional CAIO
A fractional chief AI officer on a monthly agreement: the roadmap, the vendor and policy calls, keeping what was built running, and a ledger of what it returned every month.
- People
- Leadership and one point person
- Duration
- Month to month
- Best when
- You want someone accountable for the AI roadmap and the number, without a full-time hire.
Not sure which lane? Two doors are open to everyone, and one is a fixed fee.
02How we measure
The same arithmetic in every engagement.
A number that is not baselined is a guess. A guess is not a result. Here is how a result gets made.
Step 01: Baseline
Before anything is built, we time the process as it runs today: who does it, how often, how long, and what an hour of that person costs your organization.
Step 02: Build
The automation or app goes live against that baseline. Nothing counts until it runs in real work, on real records.
Step 03: Log
Every run is logged. Hours saved are valued at your staff rate, not a national average. Revenue an app generates counts only when it is collected.
Step 04: Report
A monthly ledger under the Fractional CAIO agreement, a demo-day report for the Cohort, a handover report for CoBuild. The same arithmetic every time, and you can check it.
03Recent work
What has actually been built.
Client names are withheld here and shared on a call. Statuses are current as of this month.
Fractional CAIO
Grants platform for a nonprofit advisory firm
A multi-tenant, white-label platform: AI-matched funding, funder research with citations, go/no-go scoring, a pipeline, and a client portal. Built as a CoBuild with the firm’s partners defining requirements; live in production and run under the monthly agreement.
LiveCoBuild
Registration and learning platform for a leadership program
Replaces a WordPress and LearnDash stack. Built with the program’s director defining requirements and testing each release. Registration records the actual fee per seat, so revenue can be verified against the platform instead of a spreadsheet. The first cohort runs on it this month.
Launching September 2026CoBuild
Operations platform for a three-person government contractor
Their operations lead builds. We review the architecture, set weekly milestones, and keep the pace. A fixed-fee scoping sprint first, then month to month.
In progressCohort
Twelve-week automation cohort for a manufacturer
Four in-person workshop days, one DMAIC cycle per project, weekly build check-ins, a mid-program tollgate review, and a demo day that ends with control plans. Designed around NIST SP 800-171 constraints.
Curriculum complete
04 · For nonprofits
If you are a nonprofit, most of what you need is free.
501 Labs is the 501(c)(3) our founder started to save or generate $1,000,000,000 for nonprofits. Its software is free, funded by donors.
Blocks covers the back office. The Funding Hub covers the money. The Lab builds what does not exist yet. Civic Dialog is the paid door, for when a nonprofit needs a build on a deadline; the measured savings still land on the 501 Labs scoreboard.
Start with a conversation.
Thirty minutes on a call. Bring the process that is eating your week. You will leave knowing which lane fits, or that none does yet.
Prefer email? erik@civic-dialog.com