Our Team
Tony DeSisto is a co-founder and Managing Director of Citizinvestor. Tony is an attorney with a wealth of experience working with municipalities' budgets including serving on the City of Tampa's Citizen Budget Advisory Committee which led him to co-found Citizinvestor as an alternative way to fund civic projects.
Jordan Raynor is a co-founder and Partnerships Director of Citizinvestor. A widely recognized digital strategist, Jordan has spent his career solving difficult problems in government and politics through technology. Jordan most recently served as Client Director at Engage - deemed a "mega interactive agency" by Mashable. At Engage, Jordan's primary client was the Voting Information Project - an initiative of Pew, Google and Microsoft that works with election officials to put polling place location data in uniform format. Jordan was honored as a Google Fellow at the 2010 Personal Democracy Forum.
Erik Rapprich is a co-founder and Technology Director of Citizinvestor. Erik is a seasoned web director, developer and strategist, currently serving as the Creative Director at Engage. At Engage, Erik leads product strategy for Multiply and iContribute - and has worked with countless national brands, US Senators, Presidential candidates and other athletic and non-profit organizations. In 2010, Erik served as Web Director for the Republican Governors Association, where his team created 38 websites and applications in five months.
Mathias Hansen is a Lead Developer for Citizinvestor. Mathias is responsible for development and deployment of the Citizinvestor.com website as well as the related development infrastructure. Mathias also plays an important role in strategic technical decisions. Mathias is studying IT Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark. He started his web development career at a very young age, and has already hundreds of projects behind him, with more than 10 years of experience.
Nick Walters is a Front-End Designer for Citizinvestor. At Citizinvestor, Nick is responsible for design, markup, and user experience. Nick is also the Front-end Developer at Engage, where his primary role is to design various websites, ads, corporate identities and to create semantic markup for any websites. Nick graduated from Shepherd University with a bachelor’s degree in fine art concentrating in graphic design. During his senior year of college he was voted best web developer in his class by his peers.
How it Works
Municipalities submit projects to Citizinvestor.com.
These are projects that have already been scored, department-approved and only lack one thing - funding. Projects range from building a new park to installing speed bumps or adding a few parking spaces to your neighborhood library. The list of these projects for any city is nearly endless. Currently, these projects sit on a long-list behind other budget priorities, especially now when local government budgets are tighter than ever before.
Citizens invest in the projects they care about most.
For the first time ever, we are giving citizens the opportunity to tell government exactly where they want their dollars spent. Citizens can find projects that their local government has posted on Citizinvestor.com and pledge to invest any amount they wish towards the project. Not only can citizens invest in projects from their local governments, but Citizinvestor also gives citizens the opportunity to petition for new projects that local government either hasn’t thought of or hasn’t approved.
Once a project is 100% funded, the project is built!
This is key - citizens only pay their portion of the project if other citizens step up to the plate and commit to fund 100% of the stated cost. This is a win/win for everyone! Citizens only have to invest money if there is a guarantee that the project of their choice will be built and governments only have to commit to building a project if they receive 100% of the funding they need. Not a dime changes hands unless everyone is happy. This ensures that there is no risk to citizens for pledging to invest and no risk to governments posting projects to Citizinvestor.com.