Case Study
Bloomington, IN
01 —
THE PROBLEM
Every program had a separate front door.
02 —
THE SOLUTION
Change was overdue. But buy-in wasn't there.
Bloomington replaced paper forms and siloed tools with CiviForm, an open-source, no-code platform that gives residents one account, shared questions, and up-front eligibility screening. City IT builds and updates applications in-house, with no vendor lock-in.
01
STEP
IT saw it first
Bloomington's IT department knew the patchwork of tools had to change.
02
STEP
Departments hesitated
Teams were attached to their legacy systems, even though those systems cost residents and staff time and money. No one had the time or resources to lock into yet another vendor.
03
OUTCOME
So they proposed a pilot
In late 2021, ITS Director Rick Dietz reached out to the City of Seattle, the first city to implement CiviForm, and set out to prove its value on a small scale first.
03 —
THE RESULTS
The results got departments talking.
"This is where we will have a quote from someone on the government...."
Jolie Perry
Sustainability Program Coordinator
2026
CiviForm Today
Bloomington now runs 15 programs on CiviForm, up from three at launch in 2022. Applications grew from 122 in 2023 to 1,311 in 2025, and the city saves about $18,000 a year in software fees.
