Sandy Springs Mayor Rusty Paul faced a complicated challenge last summer.
He wanted to open a dialogue in his community about social justice and inclusion in response to nationwide protests, but the Covid-19 pandemic prevented safe, in-person gatherings. That’s why he turned to Civic Dinners, an Atlanta startup that provides a platform for community conversations on social issues.
After 44 dinners with about 340 participants, Paul gathered feedback that led him to create a 10-person diversity task force to work on some of the issues discussed.
Creating that type of actionable change is the goal of Civic Dinners, founder Jenn Graham said.
It's also a factor in the startup closing a $1.1 million seed round that will expand the platform and its reach. Atlanta Seed Company led the funding round, which included participation from the Jump Fund, Techstars and angel investor Becky Winkler.
"I see Civic Dinners becoming a new way of engaging people so they can have a voice and a seat at the table,” Graham said.
'An environment where people felt secure'
In under three years, Civic Dinners has facilitated about 2,500 conversations.
Revenues doubled in 2020, in part fueled by cities and corporations doing the same thing as Sandy Springs in the wake of a summer of social justice protests. Graham said she quadrupled her team to 28 people, expanded into 11 languages and launched a back-end admin dashboard with the funding.
"If we can help create a more welcoming and inclusive Atlanta, we’ll influence the South and then the whole United States,” Graham said.
The platform enables hosts to pick a conversation topic generated by Civic Dinners and plan discussions over a meal to brainstorm the topic. When the pandemic prevented in-person meetings, Graham said it took only 10 days for the startup to start virtual dinners. Instead of supplying a restaurant or community room location, the host could put in a link for a video chat.
Through Sandy Springs' Civic Dinners meetings, Paul said he found out that while people felt safe in the community, not everyone felt welcome to participate in the inner-workings of the city. His diversity task force aims to tackle that issue, and Paul said the city is starting another round of dinners to “dive deeper” into the conversations from the summer.
“Civic Dinners created an environment where people felt secure enough that they could be honest in their expressions,” Paul said. “It also made sure everyone had an opportunity to provide input.”
Graham's first customer was the Atlanta Regional Commission. The initial scope of Civic Dinners focused on local government issues, such as affordable housing and transportation.
Uncomfortable conversations ... are popular
The conversation series on racial divisions and inclusion have become the most popular, Graham said, especially within corporations, which has been a huge market of growth for Civic Dinners as businesses try to follow through with proclaimed commitments of inclusion and equity.
Civic Dinners partnered with Coca-Cola on its "Together We Must” campaign, which included about 5,000 participants in conversations about allyship and bridging the racial divide. Graham said food delivery services also partnered to keep with Civic Dinners model of sharing discussions over meals.
Civic Dinners has about 40 clients, mostly based around Atlanta, and intends “to invite 1 million people to the table” in 2021, Graham said. The startup, which plans to raise a Series A in the fall, is building out strategies to become more widespread online and building diversity algorithms to encourage more and different people to attend meetings.
Graham bootstrapped the company until March of this year, when she started this seed round, and was able to bring on another developer to help her build out the product. Her most recent hiring has focused on sales, marketing and customer success teams. She said she’s proud of the diversity of her team and its leadership.
“We’re trying to walk the talk as far as inclusion and diversity, that’s really important to me,” Graham said.
