Q3 2026 Civic Experiment Cohort
Eight to twelve city or agency teams running rigorous 90-day pilots in parallel, with shared deadlines and weekly group office hours.
Applications open
June 22, 2026
Applications close
August 17, 2026
Kickoff
September 7, 2026
Readout
December 7, 2026
This is the first formal cohort program from The Experiment Society. The motivation is simple: pilots that run on a team's own internal timeline almost always slip, and many never finish. A cohort with shared, public deadlines, weekly peer accountability, and structured checkpoints converts vague intent into completed work. Even teams with experience running pilots tell us that the social dynamics of running alongside other teams substantially improves their own delivery.
We are selecting 8 to 12 teams from across the US (with up to two international slots) for a 90-day pilot cycle running September through December 2026. We will provide design support, methodological review, and the publishing infrastructure; teams will run the pilots and own the results. Teams retain authorship credit, with The Experiment Society credited as cohort sponsor on the resulting registry entry.
The program is free for participating teams. Travel costs to the kickoff convening (location TBD; likely Northeast US) are covered for one team representative. Small implementation costs (printing, SMS sending, etc.) are the team's responsibility, though we will help identify funding sources from our funders directory where helpful.
What the cohort provides
- Study design and randomization support from The Experiment Society team.
- Sample-size and power analysis tailored to each team's pilot.
- Templated IRB / ethics-review language and a written readiness checklist.
- Weekly group office hours with all cohort teams; biweekly 1:1 design review with our team.
- A peer-review session at the midpoint to surface design issues before data collection.
- Final write-up template and registry-entry publication slot at readout.
- Travel-cost stipend for the kickoff convening (if held in person).
What participating teams commit to
- Run the agreed pilot during the 90-day window (Sep 7 – Dec 7, 2026).
- Submit a preregistration to the public registry before data collection begins.
- Attend at least 8 of 12 weekly group office hours.
- Submit a written readout — including the result, whatever it is — within 4 weeks of pilot end.
- Publish the readout in the registry under CC-BY 4.0, regardless of result direction.
Eligibility
- City department, county agency, public authority, school district, library system, or nonprofit operating in close partnership with a public agency.
- Authority to implement a small randomized or quasi-experimental pilot in the team's domain.
- A specific pilot question the team wants to test, even if the design is not yet finalized.
- At least one named staff lead who can commit 5–8 hours per week to the cohort for 90 days.
Selection criteria
- Clarity of the question being tested. Specific beats sweeping.
- Tractability of the design at the team's scale and timeline.
- Capacity of the named team lead to commit the time.
- Geographic, demographic, and policy-area diversity across the cohort.
- Strength of the public-good case — would the answer change practice beyond the team's own jurisdiction?
Apply
Five minutes. We respond to every application within ten business days. Selected teams will be notified by August 31, 2026.