A consulting practice for the unsexy software that runs your city.

ForwardMuni was founded on the belief that the gap between civic-tech vendors and the cities they sell to is mostly a translation problem. We translate.

§ 01 · Why we exist

A small town shouldn’t have to learn the entire civic-tech market to buy a permitting system.

Every city, town, and municipality—regardless of size or budget—deserves access to modern planning software and the expertise to use it well. The market has answers; what is usually missing is a translator who has sat on both sides of the procurement table and knows which vendor demos to trust.

We work case by case. We do not take vendor commissions. We document our recommendations in plain English. And when an engagement is over, your staff is more technical than the day we arrived.

A planner's desk, in situ — Fig. 6 — A planner’s desk, in situ

§ 02 · The Founder

Clayton.

Clayton is a civic-technology entrepreneur with a background in city planning and software. ForwardMuni grew out of years spent inside planning departments, watching expensive software get installed and then quietly abandoned because nobody had time to make it stick.

The practice exists to fix that—on the buy-side, with cities, against the gravity of every procurement cycle that picks the loudest vendor in the room.

Discipline: Planning · Software
Method: Buy-side · Vendor-neutral
Geography: Cities · Towns · Municipalities
Correspondence: [email protected]

§ 03 · Operating Principles

What we will and won’t do.

Honest about how we get paid

We earn referral fees from the software companies we partner with, and we say so out loud—on the front of the website. If a partner is the wrong fit, we will not recommend them; we will help you find the right platform at no cost. The fee never overrules the fit.

Plain English

Reports written for council to read aloud. Procurement language stripped of vendor copy. RFPs that ask the questions you actually need answered.

Staff-first

A platform nobody uses is shelfware. We measure success by how confident your staff is on day ninety, not by what got installed on day one.

Small enough to care

A practice, not a firm. You work with the founder, not a junior. Engagement count is bounded on purpose.

Honest about limits

Some engagements are not a fit. We say so on the first call and refer on. The work is too consequential for hand-waving.

Optimistic

Local government can be brilliantly run. The software is mostly there. The translation is what is missing—and that is a tractable problem.

— Next steps —

If we sound like the practice your city has been looking for, write us.

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