Awesome tech for good

A selection of projects, organisations and useful tools for social-impact tech. Inspired by awesome-python, awesome-dataviz and all the rest.

Contents

• Awesome tech for good projects
• Online directories
• Accelerators, incubators and fellowships
  • Accelerators
  • Incubators
  • Fellowships
• Funders
  • Grants
  • Angels and impact investors
  • VC
• Agencies and consultancies
  • Agencies
  • Consultancies
• Regular meetups and events
  • Meetups
• Contributing

Awesome tech for good projects

A selection of open source social good projects can be found on GitHub's Social Impact Showcase, but here are a few more for good measure:

• A11Y - community-driven effort to make web accessibility easier.
• Alidade - open source interactive tool that guides users to fit tech strategically into social change projects, and creates a structured PDF document for project planning.
• CharityBase - comprehensive database of 350,000 charities + an open source API.
• Chayn DIY Online Safety Guide - open source guide to help protect online accounts against harassment and stalkers.
• Code for America - making Government work for the people, by the people, in the 21st century.
• Find That Charity - search engine for UK charities, with elasticsearch back end.
• Free Code Camp nonprofit email service - helping nonprofits manage their email campaigns without having to use third party services.
• HelpText - open source app for SMS managment in nonprofit organisations.
• Humanitarian Open Street Map - open, free map data for humanitarian aid and development.
• KoBoToolbox - Simple, robust and powerful tools For data collection in demanding contexts.
• Luftdaten.info - International citizen science project to build particulate matter sensors cheaply and network the results. Map, GitHub
• Open Bionics - open source initiative for the development of affordable, light-weight, modular robot and prosthetic hands.
• Open Data Kit - Free and open-source set of tools for collecting data in challenging environments
• Open Knowledge Foundation - helping civil society groups access and use data to take action on social problems.
• Rapid SMS - open source framework for building interactive SMS applications, integrating with Django to provide a rich reporting interface. Created by the Innovation Team at UNICEF.
• SoGive - database of charities (mostly but not exclusively UK based at present) with models of the impact they achieve, with a donation-tracking / fund-raising web-app. SoGive has links with the Effective Altruism (EA) movement.
• Smart Elect - SMS voter registration, plus web and mobile tools that improve data accuracy, transparency, and visual reporting across the elections process.
• Tech Forward - collection of tech-focused projects organisations and tools working for social progress.
• Wayfindr - open standard of audio navigation for vision impaired people (+ demo iOS app).
• Wevolver - hardware projects repository hosting service. Robotics, drones, 3D printers etc.
• WikiHouse - an open-source, collaborative R&D project to bring about a digital revolution in the way we make homes.

Online directories

• +SocialGood - global community inspired by the Social Good Summit.
• Beehive Giving - funder recommendation and eligibility-checking platform.
• Digital Social Innovation EU - showcase your project, meet collaborators and find funding.
• Global Innovation Exchange - marketplace connecting funders, innovators, users and solution seekers.
• Humanitarian Data Exchange - open platform for sharing humanitarian data.
• Newspeak House Unmailing List - collection of links to civic tech open forums, groups and mailing lists.
• Social Tech Guide - largest database of global tech for good.
• Tech for Good Global - shining a light on the people & technology making our world better.
• The Toolbox - curated list of digital tools for humanitarian work.

Accelerators, incubators and fellowships

Accelerators

• Bethnal Green Ventures, London UK - for tech for good startups, invests £20,000 for 6% equity.
• CARE ScaleXDesign, New York, NY - to combat and reduce the underlying causes of poverty and social injustice.
• Climate KIC, Europe - 18-month programme for cleantech startups.
• Digital Impact, Paris, France - 10-month programme for tech for good startups 3 years old or younger.
• Dotforge, Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds, UK - for startups and social enterprises in the North of England.
• EPIC Cambodia, - Phnom Penh, Cambodia - 1-year Impact Hub programme supporting Cambodian tech for good startups with $20,000.
• Fast Forward, US - equipping tech nonprofits with the financial and human capital necessary to scale
• Fuse, UK - product accelerator for established nonprofits, run by CAST.
• Tech for Good Asia, Singapore - four-month tech for good startup accelerator.
• The Engine, Boston, MA - MIT's startup accelerator offering comprehensive support for entrepreneurs committed to societal impact through scientific and technological breakthroughs.
• Thinktech, Ireland - €1 million fund backing tech based solutions to Ireland’s critical social issues, from Social Innovation Fund Ireland and Google.org.
• Zinc, UK - 6-month programme for social tech innovators to create and launch new businesses that tackle a specific mission.

Incubators

• Blue Ridge Labs, New York, NY - incubator for tech for good ventures in NYC.
• Liberte Living Lab, Paris, France - collaborative workspace for tech, civic and social innovation.
• Norrsken Foundation, Sweden - tech for good incubator established by Niklas Adalberth, founder of Klarna.
• Léman Innovation Numérique, Switzerland and France - a regional consortium of actors/orgs for sustainable change and responsibility in technical and digital innovations.

Fellowships

• Outlandish, London UK - grants of £5k-£25k for Fellows to develop their own tech for good projects.
• CAST Digital Fellowship, UK - for CEOs and Directors of nonprofits.
• New America Public Interest Technology Fellowship, US - applying civic tech knowledge and skills to public service and policymaking
• SCVO One Digital Senior Leadership programme, Scotland - for leaders of Scottish nonprofit frontline service providers and digital inclusion organisations.
• Stanford PACS, Stanford, US - annual post-doctoral fellowship with the Stanford Digital Civil Society Lab.

Funders

Grants

• Comic Relief, UK - for charities who want to build digital products and services.
• Digital Impact Grants, Global - formerly Good Data Grants. Supports research and innovation to strengthen the safe, ethical, and effective use of digital resources in civil society.
• Elrha's Humanitarian Innovation Fund, Global - supports organisations to develop, test and share new technologies, products and processes that will make humanitarian aid more effective and cost-efficient in the future.
• DotEveryone Grants for Fairer Tech Events, UK - £500 grants to promote diversity and accessibility of tech event speakers, organisers and attendees.
• ICO Grants Programme, UK - for research and solutions focused on privacy and data protection issues.
• NESTA Innovation Lab, UK and Europe - funds and challenge prizes for innovation in education, local and central government, the arts, the collaborative economy and civil society.
• Nominet Trust, UK - the UK's largest tech for good funder.
• Social Innovation Fund, Scotland - grants of between £30,000 to £50,000 for partnerships between at least one social economy organisation and one academic/research institution.
• UNICEF Innovation Fund, Global - for startups in emerging markets building open-source technology that can benefit children.

Angels and impact investors

• ClearlySo, UK
• Growth4Good, UK
• Mustard Seed, UK
• Invest-in-Change, UK - Mailing list connecting angel investors with impact companies.

VC

• Ascension Ventures, London/Birmingham, UK - early-stage VC backing social tech businesses. Creating a new £15m 'Fair By Design' fund (June 2017) to eliminate the 'poverty premium' by 2027.
• Fifty Years, San Francisco, CA - an entrepreneur-run early stage VC, funding companies that, if successful, will be both massively profitable and make a serious dent in achieving one of the Sustainable Development Goals.
• NESTA Impact Investments, UK - investing in ventures with inclusive and scalable innovations run by outstanding entrepreneurs.

Agencies and consultancies

Agencies

• 3 Sided Cube, Bournemouth UK - mobile app studio, makers of Charity Kit app builder.
• Aptivate, Agile software design & development for International Development and the third sector since 2003. We use participatory methods to design and build software for M&E, MIS, Grant management, GIS, mapping, websites, mobile, native apps and data visualisation. We are specialists in low-bandwidth. See our open source contributions at https://github.com/aptivate and https://github.com/trademapper. We are a not-for-profit worker owned and managed coop.
• Agile Ventures, Virtual, International - UK charity delivering crowdsourced agile software development and training for nonprofits.
• DEV, Solihull UK - The Developer Society, a not-for-profit co-op digital agency working exclusively with charities, NGOs, activists and changemakers across front end, back end and design. Formerly Blanc Ltd.
• DWYL, London UK - community of people dedicated to helping people solve real problems with technology.
• Neontribe, Norfolk UK - tech for good product agency.
• Outlandish, London UK - co-op of designers and developers working on projects that make a difference.
• Podnosh, Birmingham UK - helps government, housing and third sector orgs use social and digital media to create civic good.
• Rareloop, Southampton UK - digital studio specialising in websites, mobile apps and bespoke software.
• Reason Digital, Manchester UK - websites and digital for charities and public sector orgs.
• Shift, London UK - designs consumer products and builds social ventures to help solve social problems.
• SimpleWeb, Bristol UK - digital studio specialising in SaaS and mobile.
• Snook, Glasgow & London UK - design agency solving problems that matter, with people at heart.
• Squareweave, Melbourne Australia - full-service digital agency specialising in social good.
• Super Being Labs, London UK - creating social impact using entrepreneurship, creativity and technology.
• Thoughtbot, London UK - Ruby on Rails and iOS development studio, offer pro bono dev work to charities.

Consultancies

• CITA, UK - IT consultancy and tech surgeries for charities.
• GRID Impact, Worldwide - Collective of behavioral science & Human Centred Design specialists focused on social impact
• Super Global, London - matches social enterprises with creatives/technologists around the world to amplify impact.
• The Engine Room, Worldwide - helps activists and social-impact organisations make the most of their data.
• Wonderwerk, Austria and Germany - combines design-thinking, strategy, technology, and organisational expertise to deliver creative excellence and innovation for social impact.
• Fabriders, Worldwide - helps advocates use technologies as part of long-term strategies, on issues including empowering marginalised communities and improving governmental transparency and accountability.
• The Dot Project, UK - supports social impact projects and organisations to strengthen their approach by integrating effective and appropriate digital solutions.

Regular meetups and events

Meetups

• Codebridge (meetup), Cape Town, South Africa
• CS+SocialGood, Stanford, CA
• Impact.tech, San Francisco, CA
• NetSquared, worldwide
• One Digital, Scotland
• Tech for Good Brighton, England
• Tech for Good London, England
• Tech for Good Manchester, England
• Tech4Good Sheffield, England
• Tech for Good Cambridge, England
• Tech for Good Near You, meetup-discovery app for the UK.
• Tech for Good Bath, England

Events

• For a list of global Civic Tech events, see this repo

Contributing

• This list needs more project repo links! If you know of any awesome open source tech for good projects or open APIs, please add them (though please check for duplicates first).
• Keep descriptions short, simple and unbiased.
• Please make an individual commit for each suggestion.
• Add a new category if needed.

Thanks for your suggestions!

License

CC0

To the extent possible under law, CAST has waived all copyright and related or neighbouring rights to this work.