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.

Book a call How we work

Three ways to work with us

01AI TrainingCohort Your team learns to build. 4 to 12 people 12 weeks
02Automation & AppsCoBuild We build it with you. 0 to 4 builders, plus stakeholders Scoping sprint, then 4 to 8 weeks per project
03AI StrategyAssessment and Fractional CAIO Know where AI fits, and who owns it. Leadership and department leads 4 to 6 weeks, then month to month

501 Labs, our founder’s nonprofit, is counting toward $1,000,000,000 saved or generated for nonprofits.

Live$12,453<0.1% of the wayHow it is countedNonprofit? Start here

01Three ways to work with us

Train your team, build it together, or plan it first.

Every lane ends the same way: automations running in your real work, documentation, and a Savings Ledger of what they returned. They differ in who does the building and who stays on afterward.

01 · Your team builds
AI Training
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.
About AI Training
02 · Built with you
Automation & Apps
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.
About Automation & Apps
03 · We map it, then lead it
AI Strategy
Assessment and Fractional CAIO
A fixed-fee assessment that maps your workflows and systems, baselines the hours, and ends with a ranked roadmap. Then, if you want it, a fractional chief AI officer who leads the work month to month.
People
Leadership and department leads
Duration
4 to 6 weeks, then month to month
Best when
You want to know where AI fits before you spend on it, and someone accountable once you do.
About AI Strategy

Not sure which lane? Two doors are open to everyone, and one is a fixed fee.

02The Savings Ledger

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
The Savings Ledger: monthly under the Fractional CAIO agreement, at demo day for a Cohort, at handover for CoBuild. The same arithmetic every time, and you can check it.

How the Savings Ledger works

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.
Live
CoBuild
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 2026
CoBuild
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 progress
Cohort
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

Who does the work

The person who scopes the work does the work.

Civic Dialog is a small practice. Our founder scopes every engagement, builds or coaches the build, and reads the Savings Ledger with you, so nothing gets lost between the first call and the finished work.

Erik OehlerFounder, Civic Dialog

About the practice On LinkedIn

20 years: across technology, data strategy, and organizational development
B.S. and MBA: computer science, then business
Salesforce: former administrator who built and led enterprise automations and integrations
$12,453: saved or generated for nonprofits so far through 501 Labs, the nonprofit our founder started

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.

Where nonprofits start 501labs.org