1. A fairer society and a more sustainable future – with help from PJMF

    We are thrilled that the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation has chosen to support our work for another year, enabling us to put technology and data to use in service of a fairer society and a more sustainable future. 

    This funding will enable us to:

    • Improve our democracy sites to make them more effective in helping people understand democratic processes – including using machine learning approaches to enhance TheyWorkForYou and upgrading our WriteToThem platform with better tools and prompts around abuse, as well as creating a stronger systematic understanding of the subject of communications and challenges navigating access, closing the loop with higher quality information flowing both ways. 
    • Enhance the Local Intelligence Hub and amplify public data collaboration for scalable solutions. With the Hub beginning to deliver value for the climate sector, we’re now exploring if it could be used in other sectors, providing data to supercharge other policy work, e.g. within health or human rights. There are often intersections, such as campaigns that highlight the joint health and environmental benefits of making homes warmer and more energy efficient, so we are eager to explore how we can put data to the best use to bring about wider societal impacts. 
    • Utilise Freedom of Information to enable urgent climate risks to become known, and action to be accelerated with public accountability. And to offer the ‘projects’ functionality we build to facilitate this to the 20+ sites across the world who use our codebase to run their own sites – enabling greater transparency in increasingly hostile environments.  

    Through our work we have already demonstrated that technology can be used to prise open closed doors, and make decision-making more transparent. We have empowered those working for openness inside and outside the system – now we want to go further! If you want to join this mission please consider becoming a donor to enable our work to grow.

    Image: Gaelle Marcel