Sunlight Foundation

Who We Fund

The Sunlight Foundation offers “transparency grants” for organizations that are using the Web to further our mission of making government information more accessible to the American people. Our goal is to support groups and individuals who are going beyond the traditional, single subject public disclosure database, and who are interested in creating cutting-edge tools to enable the media, bloggers and citizens to sift, share and combine government data in ways that are useful for them.

To apply for a transparency grant from the Sunlight Foundation, contact us for guidelines. To apply for a mini-grant ($1,000-$5,000), submit a grant application.

Grants

To date, Sunlight's major transparency grants have included:

2011

$125,000.00 National Institute on Money in State Politics
To investigate lobbyist expenditures in the states.
$25,000.00 Media Standards Trust
To support an open-source release of the Churnalism project
$20,000.00 LittleSis.org
$10,000.00 New Orleans Coalition on Open Governance
To live stream and archive meetings of various city working groups.
$5,000.00 Aurora Lights
To jumpstart a secure whistleblower website that will allow governmental and corporate employees along with other would-be whistleblowers in the Appalachian region to safely leak information to the public.

2010

$263,970.00 Participatory Politics Foundation
To continue support for the OpenCongress project.
$75,000.00 MAPLight.org
$70,000.00 Center for Public Integrity
For its "Will the Agencies Be Open?" project.
$25,000.00 Harvard Kennedy School's Science, Technology and Public Policy Program
To support its Technology and Governance 2.0 Conference.
$25,000.00 National Priorities Project
To support their Federal Priorities Data 2.0 Project.
$25,000.00 Public Accountability Initiative
For continuing support of the LittleSis project.
$25,000.00 Wesleyan Media Project
To develop a public database that tracks all advertising by source in the 2010 U.S. Senate and House campaigns.
$15,000.00 Electronic Frontier Foundation
To create a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) search tool for their site.
$5,000.00 MuckRock.com
To support its namesake community-powered freedom of information request tool that files, tracks, publishes and helps analyze government documents and data.
$3,700.00 DemocracyWorks
To support the TurboVote project, which will help people keep track of every voting related date or deadline.
$3,000.00 PolicyPitch LLC
To develop a data scraper/extractor for City of New Orleans ordinances and its Home Rule Charter, and for technology upgrades for improved user experience.

2009

$1,200,000.00 Center for Responsive Politics
To continue to maintain money-in-politics resources, and convert files to open data that would allow for free access to downloadable archives. It will also create and release new APIs and widgets.
$1,000,000.00 National Institute on Money in State Politics
To move their data on state-level campaign finance to an open source data commons. NIMSP will also participate in Sunlight Data Commons which will include complete access to previous and current data collected on state-level political donors to candidates, political parties and ballot measure committees.
$150,000.00 OMB Watch
To support FedSpending.org, a project that encourages the government to improve the quality, accuracy and consistency of federal spending data that is disclosed. It will also advocate for the use of open source software in disclosing federal spending data.
$125,000.00 Taxpayers for Common Sense
To support their transportation earmarks research project.
$89,800.00 Public Accountability Initiative
For LittleSis, to support further development as well as the creation of a LittleSis API that will allow third parties to access raw data on demand.
$63,733.00 Center for Democracy and Technology
For continued support of its OpenCRS project.
$50,000.00 Public.Resource.org
For the Federal Register 2.0 project, which will purchase and repurpose raw data underlying the Code of Federal Regulation.
$50,000.00 Taxpayers for Common Sense
For the Subsidyscope project, an initiative that will research and investigate the federal government’s transportation subsidies.
$32,000.00 Columbia Journalism Review
For continued support of their transparency reporting.
$10,000.00 Code for America
To get volunteer or stipended developers together with cities to tackle software, leading to greater municipal accessibility and transparency.

2008

$180,000.00 MAPLight.org
To enable MAPLight.org to redesign its Web site to make it more user friendly, promote strategically more key money/votes stats about significant votes; develop video training and online tutorials; launch widgets of money/vote correlations; develop new "tabs" on its Web site to demonstrate "money near votes" and committee "exposure" highlights; add a sophisticated user comment system and continue its ongoing research on each bill.
$164,000.00 Metavid
Metavid to continue to build and improve the infrastructure, with an increased emphasis on developing a community of more collaborators and users to the site.
$134,177.00 Center for Media and Democracy
To continue investment in the joint Sunlight Foundation/Center for Media and Democracy wiki on Congress – Congresspedia.
$80,000.00 CorpWatch (Tides Center)
For its EDGAR 10-K data mashup/visualization project. The EDGAR database records U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings; this project will create an open database of relationships, with name standardization, of corporations, their subsidiaries and board members.
$72,600.00 Public Accountability Initiative
For the further development of a prototype of online database of information on powerful American individuals and organizations called Little Sis. Visitors can browse and search linked profile pages for current and former members of Congress, other government officials, Fortune 1000 companies and their leadership, top lobbying forms and lobbyists, etc. The profile pages integrate a wide range of public information and could certainly include information from the relevant databases that Sunlight currently funds.
$72,000.00 Watchdog.net, Inc.
To create a site which brings government data -- like census data, lobbying disclosures, voting records and campaign disclosures -- into a single place. It is distinguished by open-sourcing its software, its data and all the products of this data.
$70,397.00 The Focus Project's OMB Watch
To support a project that define a proactive agenda that will modernize and increase public disclosure of government information and the organization's FedSpending.org Web site. This project combines data from the Federal Procurement Data System and the Federal Assistance Award Data System to create a free, searchable database of federal government contracting and spending.
$41,188.00 Center for Democracy and Technology
To support its OpenCRS project which harnesses the power of the Internet to promote the distribution of Congressional Research Service reports to the public.
$38,000.00 Columbia Journalism Review
For an initiative to investigate the rollback of government transparency and expansion of secrecy, through a special issue of the magazine (January 2009), interactive online content, a public event and an agenda outlining specific steps.
$28,000.00 OpenTheGovernment.org (Fund for Constitutional Government)
For their “Most Wanted” federal information project. It will build a site (with Sunlight) where users can contribute to a list of government data and documents that should be released online. The site both compiles information about often obscure but valuable government records and, using a Digg-like format, lets others vote on the information they would most like to see.
$25,000.00 Mobilize.org
A youth-oriented organization, to support grants for young entrepreneurs who will develop ways to use Sunlight-funded databases and new technology to advance a "clean elections" agenda.
$19,000.00 National Institute on Money in State Politics
For work, in collaboration with the Center for Responsive Politics, to create standardized identifiers and a Web site with this information, which will make the data publicly available.
$10,000.00 Public.Resource.org
To support Open Government Working Group meetings, to discuss and promote open government techniques and activites using the Internet.
$10,000.00 Understanding Government
To support the Preventive Journalism Prize, for journalism that investigates problems before they become crises, new and effective solutions to problems and government responses to these situations.

2007

$522,838.00 Center for Responsive Politics
To create databases on lobbyists, 527s, personal financial disclosures and travel, and to expand its campaign finance databases.
$222,000.00 Taxpayers for Common Sense
To enable the organization to develop a comprehensive plan to integrate and advance the use of the Internet and related technologies into their overall work.
$200,000.00 MAPLight.org
To provide core funding to support the organization's federal search engine that interactively exposes the links between dollars donated by interested parties and congressional votes.
$157,000.00 Metavid
To create an open, online platform that contains a video archive of public domain U.S. House and Senate proceedings built completely on open source tools.
$140,000.00 Center for Media and Democracy
To continue investment in the joint Sunlight Foundation/Center for Media and Democracy wiki on Congress – Congresspedia.
$100,000.00 Capitol News Connection
To fund an interactive widget that will allow citizens, via public radio stations' Web sites throughout the country, to ask lawmakers specific questions and get responses.
$100,000.00 Center for Independent Media
To support an effort to establish a national branch of its New Journalist Program in Washington, DC for training of political news bloggers who will cover Congress, federal agencies, the presidency, Supreme Court and the influence of lobbying, the national press corps and campaign finance.
$75,189.00 The Focus Project's OMB Watch
Grants to OMB Watch support a project to define a proactive agenda to modernize and increase public disclosure of government information and the organization's FedSpending.org Web site. This project combines data from the Federal Procurement Data System and the Federal Assistance Award Data System to create a free, searchable database of federal government contracting and spending.
$55,000.00 Center for Democracy and Technology
To support its (OpenCRS) project which harnesses the power of the Internet to promote the distribution of Congressional Research Service reports to the public.
$50,000.00 The Focus Project's Fueling Democracy
For the 21st Century RTK Project.

2006

$405,090.00 Center for Responsive Politics
To create databases on lobbyists, 527s, personal financial disclosures and travel, and to expand its campaign finance databases.
$200,000.00 ReadtheBill.org
To provide initial funding for the public educations efforts of this new organization, the leading advocate for open floor deliberations in the U.S. Congress, to require legislation and conference reports to be posted on the Internet for 72 hours before floor consideration.
$199,128.00 The Focus Project's OMB Watch
A project to define a proactive agenda to modernize and increase public disclosure of government information and the organization's FedSpending.org Web site. This project combines data from the Federal Procurement Data System and the Federal Assistance Award Data System to create a free, searchable database of federal government contracting and spending.
$117,000.00 Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
To fund the launch of its Open Community Open Document Review System, which provides an online review process that enables people across the Internet to review, tag, comment on and rate the importance of government documents received by CREW through Freedom of Information Act requests.
$95,000.00 Center for Media and Democracy
To invest in the joint Sunlight Foundation/Center for Media and Democracy wiki on Congress – Congresspedia.
$77,000.00 MAPLight.org
Then TakeBackCA.org, to provide core funding to support the organization's federal search engine that interactively exposes the links between dollars donated by interested parties and congressional votes.
$50,000.00 National Institute on Money in State Politics
To support the development and implementation of several APIs so programmers can access and display in their own applications the Institute's data on campaign contributions to political campaigns at the state level.
$35,000.00 Room Eight
A grant to this blog, which covers New York politics, supported the expansion of its nonpartisan coverage of the 29 New York congressional members, including their legislative and budgetary activities and earmarks.
$25,000.00 Center for Citizen Media
To develop an Election Year Demonstration Project Web site to cover everything that can be reported on a congressional election, with an emphasis on drawing on the talents and ideas of local citizen journalists.
$25,000.00 People for the American Way's Young Elected Officials Network
To support a track on government transparency and accountability at its Young Elected Officials Network annual training and networking conference.
$10,000.00 NewAssignment.Net
To support its launch and work to spur journalistic innovation by grouping veteran journalists and passionate amateurs in online, collaborative reporting efforts.
$10,000.00 The Project on Government Oversight
A one-time grant supported its investigative reporting and blogging on the “revolving door” between the government and the private sector.

Mini-grants

To date, our mini-grants have supported:

2009

$5,000.00 TweetCongress
A non-partisan group of concerned citizens that are pushing for members of Congress to join Twitter to create a more open communication between members of Congress and the public.
$5,000.00 University of California Berkeley - School of Information
To develop specific technical specifications for information services that will enable independent and effective public oversight of Recovery Act money and to rate the effectiveness of Revovery.gov web services actually provided.
$5,000.00 WashingtonWatch.com
To support the development of a tool for a distributed project to capture 2010 earmark requests by lawmakers in to a single database.
$3,000.00 Swing State Project
For the Race Tracker wiki project, a non-partisan reporting project on the new OpenCongress wiki to track who is running in each congressional district in the 2010 elections. It will also feature district-speci?c data on the past three presidential elections.

2008

$5,000.00 Geocoder.us
Which provides free address look-up information based on the U.S. Census, so that users can enter any address or intersection and learn the longitude and latitude coordinates for that location. The mini-grant supports the creation of an API to show congressional district boundaries for all U.S. addresses and the improvement of the site's open source address recognition system. Ultimately, this funding will support the site's ability to ascertain a congressional district from an address without the need to manually look up a zip+4 code on the U.S. Postal Service Web site.
$5,000.00 Knowledge As Power
To support the creation of a legislator email management and constituent relations communications system to increase transparency between legislators and their constituents by organizing a more effective form of communication between the two groups. This Web mail service pairs with KAP's existing legislation-tracking service, giving legislators and their staff the tools necessary to efficiently manage incoming constituent emails and systematize corresponding responses with personalized or automated letters. Sunlight's mini-grant will support a pilot email management system for one to two congressional offices and the entire Washington State Legislature.
$5,000.00 Pacific Northwest Topic Hotlist
Aggregates over 100 political news blogs in the Pacific Northwest and organizes several hundred postings by topic, specifically highlighting coverage by local bloggers of legislative issues and their representatives in Congress. This grant provides funding for Web hosting services for this news aggregator site and its accompanying widgets.
$5,000.00 Speechology.org
To support the creation and maintenance of a Web site that will archive video of key political speeches-including debates, State of the Union addresses, convention speeches congressional testimony and campaign advertisements-and facilitate online public critical analysis. Using Speechology.org, citizens will watch, evaluate and comment on the truthfulness of the speeches.
$3,900.00 Public Justice Foundation of Texas
For their work to support a one-time fee for access to the Texas Supreme Court case management database, to allow exploration of the connection between Texas judicial campaign contributors and the rulings of Texas state courts.
$3,000.00 Public.Resource.org
To support the purchase of the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations for redistribution as a public good, thus upholding the value of making government information available by lowering barriers.
$2,500.00 Richmond Sunlight
The Richmond Sunlight Web site monitors the activity of the Virginia legislature. Sunlight's mini-grant supports the purchase of an entire session of the Virginia Legislature's closed circuit video broadcast. The video will be then converted to QuickTime, posted on YouTube on a daily basis and integrated into the Richmond Sunlight Web site.
$2,400.00 Philbrick-James Forum
A volunteer, non-profit citizen newspaper for its “i on NH Congress” section, for non-partisan coverage of the New Hampshire congressional delegation.
$2,000.00 Utah News Aggregator
To support the creation of a Web news hub service and email newsletter subscription service for bloggers, political activists, legislators, candidates and concerned citizens of Utah. This forthcoming Web site will provide citizens with a full picture of daily politics in Utah, specifically focusing on local blog and mainstream media coverage of political news; congressional news updates, press releases and votes; a calendar of events including legislative meetings and messaging from all viable political parties and candidates.
$1,600.00 WhereABill.org
To create a new, dynamic bill-viewing system for GovTrack.us.

2007

$10,000.00 NewsTrust.net
To support its work to harness social wisdom to aggregate and highlight quality online journalism about elected representatives, with a focus on accountability, corruption and transparency in Congress.
$10,000.00 Public Resource, Inc.
In support of the development of a series of conferences on open government.
$5,000.00 OpEdNews
To create a volunteer moderated Web site system that aggregates news articles, blog coverage and links to Congresspedia articles for every member of Congress.
$5,000.00 WashingtonWatch.com
To support its outreach and efforts to determine the average cost, or savings, per individual of each bill introduced in Congress by performing calculations on government estimates compared to the US population.

2006

$4,500.00 More Perfect
To support its development of a wiki designed to involve the public in creating and collaborating on laws and policy.
$2,500.00 BluegrassReport.org
To fund software upgrades that power its Web site, which educates voters as it highlights the issues of political corruption and transparency in government, particularly in Kentucky.
$1,600.00 Arizona Congress Watch
For the acquisition of polling data and a clipping service to support its work to report on the activities of the Arizona congressional delegation.
$1,600.00 Connecticut Local Politics
For the acquisition of polling data, a video camera and the cost of Web hosting for this nonpartisan, not-for profit blog that covers Connecticut politics from town halls to the state's delegation in the U.S. Congress.