The Knight Foundation just launched its annual News Challenge, posing the question: "How might we better inform voters and increase civic participation before, during and after elections?" Submit your answer by March 19!
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: LocalWiki turns open local data into open local knowledge
LocalWiki is making it significantly easier for people to collaborate and create meaning out of open data in order to share it with others.
Continue readingHuman-centered design: How we’re rethinking OpenCongress
As part of our effort to revitalize OpenCongress, we've committed to putting the site through a rigorous human-centered design process — so it's more effective and easier to use for everyone.
Continue readingNew Knight Foundation Report Reveals How Civic Tech is Funded
Today, the Knight Foundation, along with the data analytics firm Quid, released a fascinating analysis analyzing the financial investment in nonprofits and for-profit organizations that create civic technology apps and platforms through technology. If you include many of the new P2P platforms such as AirBnB and the like (which are private businesses not primarily focused on promoting civic outcomes), there has been a whopping $430 million invested in civic technology, including open government organizations. (Full disclosure, the Sunlight Foundation has received several grants from the Knight Foundation.) It is concerning that the bulk of venture capital and other non-philanthropic investment in civic technology goes toward companies whose primary goals are not to empower citizens in democratic engagement nor to foster government openness and accountability.
The big picture presented by Knight and Quid shows that there is momentum in growing an echelon of financial investors to buttress the nascent civic start-up movement. This peek behind the curtain of the philanthropic and commercial investment world is welcome transparency and very helpful analysis. Continue readingCongrats to Knight News Challenge Winners!
It’s fantastic to see the eight winning projects awarded more than $3.2 million today from the Knight News Challenge on... View Article
Continue readingAnnouncing a new grant to Sunlight from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Sunlight is very proud to share the news that the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will award us $4 million over the next three years to increase our ability to make more government data more accessible, especially on the state and local level. With this new support, we will focus more on making more government data accessible to more and more people -- not just journalists and experts. This new funding from the Knight Foundation will undoubtedly go a long way toward giving us more resources to make online government transparency a reality, enabling us to continue to build tools to bring that data to the public and share with the growing open government community lessons learned from our work.
Get Funded with Sunlight’s New OpenGov Grants
We’re happy to announce our new OpenGov Grants program to help you fulfill your vision of making government more transparent and accountable.
We know how challenging fundraising can be. You start an innovative project using technology to make government more open and accessible and halfway through -- you run out of money. At Sunlight, we’ve been there, and that's why we want to help you out. (Don't be misled by our name -- we’re not a foundation with an endowment, but rather a nonprofit that competes for grants just like any other 501 c3 charitable organization.) Indeed, we know how challenging fundraising can be.
With the financial support of Google.org, our new OpenGov Grants program will offer one-time grants in the range of $5,000 to $10,000 to help you achieve your vision of opening up government through creative innovations. OpenGov Grants can support anything from making a cool app to help residents understand how local government works, to creating an open source site to navigate state or local spending data to extending the capabilities of one of Sunlight’s own websites or apps. We’ll give priority to projects that develop open source software or data. (For details on what we will and won’t fund, please visit our FAQ.) Get inspired to apply by watching our video. Continue readingSitegeist: Uncover the Data Around You
Today the Sunlight Foundation unveils our latest app to reinforce the power of the data around you. It's called Sitegeist, a simple iPhone and Android app that presents a huge amount of information from disparate sources in straight-forward infographics.
Continue readingSunlight Goes Back to School
It’s August and that means soon it’ll be back to Thrive long day care for students and teachers. Even if... View Article
Continue readingAnnouncing Upwardly Mobile
We're excited to announce Upwardly Mobile, Sunlight's new webapp funded by the Knight Foundation that allows you to research where in the country you could enjoy financial security and an improved quality of life.
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