Civil society groups, non-profits, media organizations, and campaigns are often in need of additional resources to do their difficult work. With this ever-growing collection, we hope to make the path to finding funding a little shorter.
Fundraising tools and platforms
This is our collection of fundraising tech. Fifty tools and platforms here are seeking to reinvent donation solicitation and collection, employee matching of funds, and other aspects of getting money in the door.
This is our growing list of funders and donors that have supported civic tech efforts over the years. Not all fund exclusively civic tech, but if they’re in this collection, they either currently support this work or have at some point in the past.
These are broader efforts by foundations to create or re-shape entire fields with dedicated waves of funding. A historic example is the Ford Foundation’s popularization of legal clinics at law schools to provide pro bono services to the poor.
Funders offer both regular and one-off prizes to recognize and fund civic tech and its practitioners. These are usually granted for work already done, whereas the Challenges category sets a goal and offers to reward those who meet it.
Competitions seek to generate progress in a given domain, such as AI, with rewards for those who win.
The challenge model of innovation became popular in recent years due to its perceived effectiveness in spurring innovation. The challenges are usually open to all, in the hopes that the challenge program itself will generate increased interest in the problem area from a variety of potential innovators.
If you’re looking for funding, you should subscribe to our calendar of upcoming opportunities and deadlines. We also regularly share these funding opportunities on Twitter (@civictechguide).
Recommended Reading
- Identifying the Effects of Various Ways of Giving: Using the ‘Natural Experiment’ of the Covid19 Crisis by Caroline Fiennes at Giving Evidence (2020).
- Ashoka’s primer on civic crowdfunding platforms like Kiva. By Mark Cheng and Laura Kromminga (2016).
- Innovation Inducement Prizes: Connecting Research to Policy. Heidi Williams published this helpful recent history of government agencies sponsoring innovation prizes since 2010 (2012).