🎉 Celebrating 10 Years of Polco: From a Big Idea to a National Movement in Civic Engagement

By Polco on June 6, 2025

Polco Blog - Celebrating 10 Years of Polco: From a Big Idea to a National Movement in Civic Engagement

Ten years ago, Polco started as a bold idea rooted in a simple but powerful belief: Democracy works best when everyone has a voice—and when leaders have the tools to listen, understand, and act. Now, a decade later, we’re proud to say that belief has grown into a thriving platform trusted by over a thousand communities across the nation.

How It All Began

Polco was founded in 2015, by Alex Pedersen and Nick Mastronardi, both military veterans and former economists at the Congressional Budget Office and the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Their experience at the intersection of public policy, national service, and data-driven analysis shaped a vision for a better way to connect governments and communities.

They saw a disconnect between traditional government processes and the everyday experiences of residents. So they set out to create a platform that would close that gap—a modern civic engagement system grounded in trust, transparency, and data.

Building Credibility with NRC

A major turning point came with the acquisition of National Research Center (NRC), the gold standard in public sector survey research. NRC brought decades of scientific rigor and benchmarking expertise to Polco, giving us the ability to deliver trusted insights through tools like The National Community Survey™ (The NCS™) and other statistically valid assessments.

With NRC, Polco gained not only data credibility but also deep institutional knowledge—solidifying our role as the go-to partner for local governments that want to measure what matters and engage their communities meaningfully.

Empowering Tough Conversations with Balancing Act

In 2022, Polco acquired Balancing Act, the award-winning suite of budget engagement tools. This addition allowed governments to make public finance more understandable and participatory. Residents could now interact with real budget simulations, explore trade-offs, and see how difficult decisions are made.

Whether helping school districts close budget gaps or assisting cities with rezoning and tax transparency, Balancing Act brought engagement from a passive experience to an active, educational one.

Introducing GPAL: A Smarter Framework for Smarter Communities

One of our proudest achievements has been the development of GPAL—Government Performance Action & Learning. Created in partnership with Stanford University and ICMA, GPAL is a groundbreaking data model that powers Polco’s Track dashboards.

It brings together public data, resident feedback, and expert benchmarks into one intuitive system. The result? Local leaders can understand trends, make data-informed decisions, and align action with community values like never before.

Staying True to Our Mission

Our mission—Empowering Engagement and Improving Communities—has guided every step of our journey.

From day one, we've worked to:

Make government more accessible.

Give residents a real say in the decisions that affect them.

Help leaders act with clarity and confidence.

We’ve done this by uniting representative data, powerful visualizations, and easy-to-use tools that remove the guesswork from public decision-making.

The Role of AI: Scaling Wisdom, Not Just Data

In recent years, we’ve expanded our capabilities with AI-powered assistants like Polly, Grace, and Annie—designed to help both government staff and residents get faster, smarter answers from complex datasets.

These tools don’t replace human judgment—they enhance it. Whether it’s generating grant narratives, interpreting survey results, or exploring trends, our AI expands capacity and removes bottlenecks.

Looking Ahead: The Next 10 Years

As we look to the future, one thing is clear: The work is far from done. Communities face new and evolving challenges—climate resilience, housing affordability, digital equity, economic transitions—and public institutions need better tools to meet the moment.

Polco will continue leading the way by:

Expanding AI-driven decision support.

Deepening integrations with public datasets and policy platforms.

Making engagement even more accessible across devices, languages, and demographics.

Helping communities not only hear from more voices—but act on what they hear.

Final Reflections

We’re grateful to every city, county, school district, and resident who has joined us on this journey. As we celebrate ten years of progress, we’re also celebrating you—the leaders, innovators, and everyday people working to build better communities.

Here’s to the next decade of engagement, insight, and action.