CiviForm: A Unified Benefits Platform for Seattle Families
“CiviForm is a great platform. I use it a lot to help SHA [Seattle Housing Authority] residents to apply or replace their transit pass and homeowners to apply to the weatherization program. It has a lot of potential once more programs are connected to it.
— Kerry, Navigator at North Helpline
Seattle set out to solve a long-standing challenge: residents must navigate dozens of disconnected benefit programs, each with its own forms, logins, verification steps, and confusing eligibility rules. Households and the case managers supporting them struggled to find, understand, and complete applications across multiple departments.
The goal was simple but ambitious: create one place where people could discover, qualify for, and apply to multiple programs with far less time and effort.
By the Numbers
- 20 benefit programs across 10 City departments
- $78 million in City of Seattle assistance to reduce basic expenses such as utilities and childcare for low-income populations in 2024
- Up to a combination of $65,000 in savings for a household through City benefit and discount programs
Challenge
It costs on average $150,000 for a family of four to live in Seattle, a 50% increase from 2020 to 2024. The City offers 20 benefit and discount programs that help decrease the cost to live in Seattle, but many go underutilized. It is estimated that only 40% of eligible households are enrolled in key programs.
Programs are administered by 10 City departments, each with their own forms and requirements. Residents could qualify for up to $65,000 in savings on childcare, home repairs, food, and other services, but the lack of marketing and cumbersome, redundant, and often conflicting application processes pose too significant of barriers.
Creating a Single, Easier Benefits Experience
The Innovation & Performance Team (IP) began with a 12-week design sprint to understand the resident experience and catalog key details about each program. Research showed that many residents did not identify as “low-income” and therefore assumed they were ineligible. The first prototype—a wireframed “affordability portal”—ranked programs by likelihood of eligibility based on income and household size without requiring a login.
Through the Innovation Advisory Council, Expedia built this prototype into a functional website that increased awareness, but didn’t reduce the burden of applying. Residents and their social workers find it prohibitive to complete many forms and manage many logins. To address the deeper problem, Seattle secured a Google.org Fellowship to build CiviForm, an open-source application platform that lets residents and trusted community organizations reuse information across programs. CiviForm is now used by multiple jurisdictions and has earned national innovation awards.
Today, an interdepartmental governance group continues simplifying policies, aligning verification requirements, improving data-sharing, and onboard remaining programs. We continue making improvements to CiviForm and are exploring partnerships across jurisdictions, bringing Seattle closer to a truly streamlined, resident-centered benefits system.
Results
- Over 50,000 applications since beginning in 2021
- 70% of City benefits programs currently on CiviForm
- 75% decrease in time to complete applications, from 30 minutes to 7 minutes
Partners
- Time: Seattle's CiviForm Named One of Time's Best Inventions of 2025
- Innovation Hub Blog: How Seattle is Making Access to Public Benefits Easier and Faster for Residents
- Innovation Hub Blog: Seattle’s Unified Benefits Application Tool recognized by Anthem Awards