The grants cover two areas:

• Building organizational capacity
• The provision of expertise to develop open source websites for transparency-focused organizations in Africa

We’re really delighted because these grants help us do two things we really need to – share our knowledge and skills more widely, and improve our ability to run ourselves as a mature organization, better able than before to look after our legal and financial affairs on the one hand, and our community and users on the other.

Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the organization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic and social change. To date, Omidyar Network has committed more than $330 million to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple investment areas, including microfinance, property rights, government.

Omidyar Network also funds some projects by friends of mySociety, such as Ushahidi and Global Voices. A fine day, all in all.