AI for civic and social impact.
We help the organizations closest to public problems put AI to work where it matters most.
Our mission.
Civic and social impact organizations are sitting on decades of expertise, hard-won relationships, and deep knowledge of the problems they were built to solve. What many of them lack is the capacity to explore what AI now makes possible.
Backland Impact exists to fill that gap. We partner directly with cities, government agencies, nonprofits, and community organizations to help them leverage AI in ways that are practical, grounded, and aligned with their existing work.
How we do it.
We support organizations in two ways:
Impact Labs
Structured, collaborative events — free of charge — that pair domain experts with AI practitioners to build functional prototypes around real problems and real data. We handle the full lifecycle: partner preparation, event production, and post-event follow-through to keep the most promising projects moving toward deployment.
Consultative Services
Direct AI support for organizations that need help beyond a single event. This includes AI education and training, custom AI engineering, and strategic guidance on where and how to adopt AI within existing operations.
Both paths start the same way: with the problems your organization already knows need solving.
Built for the people closest to the problem.
If you work in city government, public health, housing, education, criminal justice, environmental policy, or any mission-driven organization where hard problems persist, this is for you. You don't need a technical background. You need the expertise you already have.
AI is a powerful accelerant, but it doesn't know what to solve. That takes people who have lived inside these systems, who understand the edge cases, and who know which approaches have already been tried. Backland Impact brings the technical builders and the structured process. You bring the knowledge that makes the output worth building.
Where we started.
The inaugural Claude Impact Lab, run in partnership with the City of San Diego and sponsored by Anthropic, brought 60 participants together to tackle challenges across public safety, permitting, government accountability, and municipal services. The event produced 28 project submissions in a single day, with the strongest projects now advancing through a structured follow-on program.
It proved a model: give the right people the right tools and a focused problem, and real solutions emerge fast.
60
Participants
28
Project submissions
1
Day
Who we are.
Backland Impact was founded by Max Krueger out of a conviction that the gap between AI capability and civic outcomes is not a technology problem. It is a coordination problem. The expertise already exists. The builders are ready. What has been missing is the structure to bring them together around problems that matter and keep the work going after the energy of a single event fades.
Max has led AI engineering efforts at Accenture and Casper Studios, founded the AI Tinkerers San Diego chapter, and has spent 6+ years building production AI systems. That builder community is one half of the equation. The organizations and domain experts who show up to tackle real challenges are the other.