- Public Good App House website
- Accelerating Makers project website
- GitHub: Accelerating Makers
- Awesome List of DWeb use cases
- A web3 sandbox project showcasing basic IPFS upload and listing functionality using Web.storage/Filecoin and Vue.js
At TechSoup, we want every civil society organization in the world to have technology that meets their needs. Purpose built, to increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and transformative potential of the diverse range of groups working hard to address the issues and problems in their community.
Too often, we have tried to meet the unique needs of civil society with digital solutions that were built to be used, supported and scaled up in a for profit setting, to achieve for-profit goals.
In a review of existing research and interviews with people who make public good technology, we learned that those building these tools lack the support necessary to effectively meet the needs of civil society.
The issue boils down to this: the makers, people who possess the skills to invent and welcome new digital tools and solutions - small applications that could render our society's technological backbone not just more durable, but also more flexible, lack a shared set of data, tools and standards to describe the impact of their solutions in ways that create pathways to funding, adoption, and impact.
We're mobilizing a new network of makers, drawing from the leadership within civil society—makers working at nonprofits, libraries, social enterprises, and our public universities.
We're bringing them together with civil society leaders, so they can skillfully design, build, assimilate, and interact with emerging technologies, harnessing them for the collective benefit early in their development cycles.
We are creating a shared framework for how to view, comprehend, and create an ecosystem of technologies for the common good.
We are providing makers, leaders in civil society, and funders with the tools, frameworks, and standards they need to use public-interest technology to solve societal issues.
We're also providing a forum for this network to interact, communicate, exchange knowledge, and develop collectively over time, fostering a community of practice that thrives on reciprocal learning.
Beyond this, we'll be promoting the funding of cutting-edge projects in public good technology through the organization of funder roundtables designed to close the funding gap between makers' ideas and philanthropic resources.
Our plan is targeted and purposeful. We're supporting the design, data and delivery of public good technologies through a community process that leads to broader impact.
We will share public good technology development methodologies so makers have a structured way of building tools that reflect the values of civil society.
We will facilitate participation from civil society leaders to source their ideas and provide ways for them to participate in the development and adoption of these solutions.
And we’ll be equipping a network of passionate mentors and champions with the use cases, case studies, and research reports needed to help this network grow and flourish.
We’ll be working to guarantee that the demand for public good technologies is echoed across all sectors, and we're rallying support for the notion of constructing a more resilient civil society through common data models and fostering a public good technology stack that is not just more resilient but more adaptable for the benefit of civil society.
What does success look like to us?
We're establishing communities, and networks of practice, and pioneering early career mentorship programs, to improve awareness and spur engagement across civil society in the public good technology field.
We're forming working groups, organizing events, open office hours, and inviting participation from local makers, civil society leaders, and funders in municipalities to demonstrate how makers, nonprofits and local and state agencies can come together to leverage the power of public good technology to build a new stable of public good technology projects.
We acknowledge that communities don’t grow resilient with new services or solutions alone.
But, we believe that building a network of experts committed to a resilient civil society can foster the development and flourishing of a public good technology ecosystem that better serves the needs of local communities.
We're talking about a network of people who are driven not just by their own interests, but by shared values and a profound commitment to a thriving civil society.
TechSoup is committed to nurturing the development of a robust public good technology ecosystem, one that's designed to not merely exist, but to constantly evolve, and to serve the public good in ways we're just starting to fully appreciate.
Because we believe that when we harness the power of community, the possibilities are indeed endless.
Join us on this journey toward a future where technology serves everyone, not just a select few, and a more flexible and adaptable civil society that grows to meet the changing needs of our communities.