An awesomely cool campaign called  the Civic Data Challenge  is coming up on its deadline, and we want to make sure folks have time to get a team together and create some incredible apps and visualizations that help cities better understand their "civic health"!

We've also got some big news to share, as two new sponsors have joined, taking the total amount of cash and prizes available to winners over $100,000!

The Salesforce.com Foundation is contributing $25,000 in cash prizes, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a presenting partner in the Challenge, has also just announced another $25,000 for the winners. GOOD, Kaggle, and DataWeek are all offering additional prizes and promotion opportunities.

Plus, there’s the opportunity to get the most impressive work seen by 15 top-notch and influential judges, and highlighted at the 67th Annual National Conference on Citizenship on September 14.

Fission is very proud to help lead this Challenge alongside our good friends at the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) who, besides running the contest, is providing critical (and fascinating) civic health data, as well as other data on the important topics of health, safety, education, and the economy.

The goal of all this is to understand how community attachment and civic engagement help communities thrive. Go check it out and join at CivicDataChallenge.org!