open source

4 Free Open Source Projects to Help You Run Your Nonprofit

Posted on by Case Foundation

Finding the right software for a nonprofit organization can take up valuable time and resources, but open source can often provide cost-effective solutions. We are thrilled to see the number of open source options for nonprofits expanding. These projects—created in and out of the social sector—are examples of the fantastic potential open source has to better equip nonprofits with cutting-edge software, often at a reduced operating cost. The continued development of open source projects for nonprofits also allows for increased collaboration between developers and nonprofits, with the potential to support communities everywhere.

At the Case Foundation, we have long been advocates for expanded use of open source by nonprofits and wanted to flag four examples of this growing trend:

If You’re Looking for an Effective CRM: CiviCRM

Customer Relation Management Systems (CRMs) are key for companies that must manage individual relationships to drive revenue, but they are also often necessary for nonprofits who must manage various types of external relationships. CiviCRM manages donors, suppliers and anyone else who helps a nonprofit achieve its mission. For example, the software can digitize and organize HR resources as well as generate reports on contributions to an organization. It allows nonprofits to both fundraise and create advocacy campaigns, like ‘Get Out the Vote’ initiatives. More than 11,000 organizations currently use this platform, showcasing the breadth of impact open source software can achieve. The National Hispanic Voter Educational Foundation, for example, implemented CiviCRM to create a database to organize over 60,000 contacts and conduct surveys in the community. Visit Project Homepage.


To Send Large Quantities of Email: Mail for Good

It is common for organizations to use email marketing platforms to share their message and news about their work, but those services often come at a price. Enter Mail for Good, which was developed in 2017 by individuals at the nonprofit Free Code Camp, which needed a better and cheaper way to send a large volume of emails. After they built it, they published the code to make sure other organizations who shared their issues could easily find a solution. Free Code Camp can now send out 800,000 emails in four hours with Mail for Good for only the $10/month it takes to support a server instead of spending thousands of dollars per month on a subscription service. Visit Project Homepage.


For Connecting an Organization to Volunteers: Sapphire

An example of how just a few individuals can make a big impact! Sapphire, created through the Code for Change program, is a volunteer management system, allowing groups to organize their paid and unpaid volunteers, communicate new opportunities and keep track of events. High School Senior Armaan Goel created Code for Change in 2018, a school club and nonprofit, to harness talent in high schools and create digital solutions for local organizations, like Exodus Refugee Immigration in Indianapolis. The refugee organization helps individuals rebuild their lives in Indiana and saves precious time and funding by using Sapphire’s digital volunteer system. Visit Project Homepage.


A Quick Way to Create a News Overview: Weekly Roundup

The Case Foundation shares much of the software we produce for our work to the open source ecosystem. A project which we find indispensable for keeping our team abreast of the latest news in impact investing, inclusive entrepreneurship and civic engagement is our Weekly Roundup. This tool allows our communications team to quickly and easily distribute news clips to staff via email. It scrapes metadata (title, date, publication, and description) from submitted URLs, then formats the information into a newsletter that users may organize and edit before sending. The system distributes the newsletter via SendGrid, taking a process that previously took several hours a week to produce and reduces it down to mere minutes, freeing up our staff time for other work. Visit Project Homepage.


The open source ecosystem contains a wealth of software and technical expertise, and we are happy to see so many join together to unleash that potential for nonprofits and foundations. The projects highlighted here are just a sampling of what can be achieved with this kind of collaboration, and we look forward to continuing to shine the light on opportunities for open source to be used to the benefit of the social sector.

See the #FacesofFounders Open Source Platform In Action

Posted on by Case Foundation

As part of the Case Foundation’s commitment to Open Source, we continue to share the code that powers the technology side of our efforts. Last year, we shared the code for our #FacesofFounders website so that others would benefit from the investment we had made into cutting edge technology. Today, we’re excited to share a new video demonstrating the capability this open source platform provides for those who use and build upon it.

Launched in 2016, #FacesofFounders was a campaign to attract entrepreneurs, particularly female founders and entrepreneurs of color, to share their photos and stories of entrepreneurship on FacesofFounders.org. After a review by a panel of 40 judges, who completed their work using this open source platform, FastCompany featured the winners of the campaign. The site has since evolved into a Medium publication that continues the work of showcasing diverse entrepreneurs driving innovation and job growth.

Open source, a medium for freely sharing and collaborating on technology, is yet another way that organizations can give back in the form of their technology. We believe it is particularly important in the philanthropic field as it is an opportunity for social innovators to accelerate their own missions by tapping into the work of the collective community. One gift of open source code can have unlimited beneficiaries, and we believe it to be a key component of the ongoing democratization of technology.

Features

This open source platform contains several features from the #FacesofFounders campaign:

Social Media Profile Photo Filter

The photo upload feature allows visitors to upload a photo (or select a Facebook or Twitter profile photo) and place a campaign-themed filter on top of it. The filtered photo can then be turned into profile images on social media sites, and added to a shared photo wall on a homepage, which will continually display all new and past filtered photos. Administrators have the ability to remove inappropriate photos from the homepage.

Story Submission

In addition to—or instead of–uploading a photo, visitors can submit stories to the judging platform. This submission tool contains customizable forms and can be placed in a “closed” state once judging begins. All submissions entered through the form then go into a queue for a site administrator to assign to judges. Because the platform is built into WordPress, it is also possible to directly upload submissions via WordPress’s dashboard.

Story Review and Judging

The third and final component of this codebase is the judging platform. As visitors submit stories, they queue in the judging section on the backend. Once all submissions are final, assigned judges can log into the platform and request submissions to review. The judges score each submission on a numeric scale, and the platform uses those scores to begin ranking each submission. Site administrators can then log in and view the stories ranked by their aggregate scores to determine winners. The entire codebase comes packaged as a WordPress theme for easy deployment and visual customization using WordPress’s robust theme system.

How You Can Use This

While the Case Foundation used this to support the FacesofFounders campaign, we expect that it can be used in a wide variety of efforts and we can’t wait for you to take advantage of this great project! To help, we’ve created a detailed technical guide that you and your team can use to understand how to best utilize the open source code. To access that guide and more resources, visit the project’s GitHub page.

To show our commitment to the open source community and the importance we place on expanding involvement in open source from the philanthropic sector, we’ve published many of our projects online. To see more of our work, visit the Case Foundation’s GitHub page.

We look forward to seeing what you do with these tools and hope many others will join in this effort and share their open source projects.

Five Open Source Projects We Love

Posted on by Case Foundation

The open source community has no shortage of projects devoted to social change and improving lives. Pick a need, and there is likely an open source solution for it, but it is often difficult for projects that have a social good application to get the notice they deserve. This is a shame as the collaborative and transparent nature of open source is a force-multiplier for changemaking efforts and when properly supported, open source software can spark innovation, accelerate social good. Therefore, here are five open source projects that we think show the potential for open source to make a real impact in the non-profit world. 

Givesource

The creators of Givesource had a vision that there could be a cheaper and better fundraising platform for nonprofits. Through a partnership between Firespring, a Lincoln, NE-based marketing and software company, and the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management, the team built a fundraising tool to power the Lincoln Community Foundation’s Giving Day but with a broader vision of creating a platform that out-performed anything on the market at a far-reduced operating cost. The result is a platform that empowered the Lincoln Community Foundation to set a new record for giving, slashed their processing and platform fees, and attracted the attention of local media. Anyone seeking a best-in-class tool for fundraising can tap into the power of Givesource as it was designed from the outset to be open sourced. 

Learn more at Givesource.com 

Tidepool 

Seeing firsthand how little interoperability there was between diabetes devices and their data, Tidepool founder Howard Look set out to create an open source toolkit that allowed users, both individuals with diabetes and medical professionals, to better combine and analyze data from the multiple devices diabetes patients must use to manage their health. Users of Tidepool’s software can explore their data on a personalized dashboard and easily share that data with their doctor, ending the need for patients to physically go to their doctor’s office to share their data. Similarly, researchers using Tidepool’s platform can share their data in real-time with the research team.  

Learn more at Tidepool.org 

Code for America 

Code for America empowers citizen developers to help their communities using their talents. Salt Lake County was struggling with a solution to notify people for court appearances or for court-ordered treatments. The Code for America Fellowship group approached the problem by starting with extensive research and a user-centered design process which yielded evidence to disprove the commonly-held notion that most individuals simply skip or forget their court dates and other appointments. Instead, their research showed a wide range of reasons individuals missed their dates and there was a need for a better tool for communicating with their case officers at any time. Therefore, Code for America’s team built ClientComm, an open source platform that facilitates easier communication between case officers and their clients by giving the case officer’s a sophisticated management platform to track their clients and gives end-users a simple text-message-based platform that allows them to contact their case officer immediately in any situation. 

Learn more at ClientComm.org 

Mifos 

The Grameen Foundation found a key barrier to their goal of helping the 2 billion poor and unbanked worldwide was the lack of good financial services platforms. To address this problem, they created Mifos, an open source financial services suite that institutions may use to easily offer low or no cost digital banking solutions to their customers. As a totally open platform, banks may use and expand upon the features in Mifos to best serve their customers all while being part of a community of users of the tool who share and collaborate on features. Mifos’s mission now is to spread the use of this platform across the world, starting with developing regions where there is little to no access to banking. 

Learn more at Mifos.org 

Open Agriculture Initiative 

An initiative of the MIT Media Lab, the Open Agriculture Initiative’s works to create healthier, more engaging and more inventive future food systems and drive an ecosystem of open source tools to support transparency and innovation across their work. Some of the many open source projects they support include a set of tools for using technology to optimize conditions for growth. These applications include the Tree Computer for tree growth, the Personal Food Computer for tabletop-sized environments, and the Food Server which manages large-scale hydroponic installations. In addition, the Open Agriculture Initiative supports research to incorporate computer vision and machine learning into their projects to enhance their growth management tools. 

Learn more at media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture-openag/overview 

Whether it is reducing the cost of fundraising for non-profits, improving the lives of patients, making government systems more friendly for citizens or supporting teams that are focusing on the food of the future, each of these projects highlight the benefits that can come from the wide embrace of open source by the non-profit and philanthropic sectors. We tip our hats to each of these organizations who are ensuring that their work is available to all—embodying the Case Foundation’s vision that open source is a form of philanthropy. We look forward to showcasing further examples of open source work being done by individuals, nonprofits, and companies. If you have or know of a project that you believe is fearlessly trying to make change in a community or the world, let us know at opensource@casefoundatdev.wpenginepowered.com/. 

It’s Time for Philanthropy to Open the Door to Open Source

Posted on by Case Foundation

Innovation is driving technology and change faster than ever before. Yet, when I am asked about technological innovations that have the best chance to make an impact in the future of philanthropy, I often cite a collaborative approach that is closely aligned with the technology world, but can no longer be considered cutting edge: open source.

This may not be the answer that many are expecting, but open source’s collaborative and transparent nature is well suited for philanthropy and its ability to leverage the power of many to do good at minimal cost lends itself to being one of the keys to the next phase in the evolution of philanthropy.

Open source software allows anyone to read, study, modify and redistribute a software’s source code with little restriction other than that free access is maintained. It is often developed in a highly collaborative manner with many people contributing pieces of code and it is found in a wide variety of places – the overwhelming majority of consumer devices include some open source code.

For many philanthropies and non-profits, open source provides the opportunity to save money and time. There is a growing community of coders experimenting openly and sharing ideas and software covering everything from website and app development to artificial intelligence and blockchain. By embracing open source, foundations and nonprofits can tap into this space of bright technologists and innovators for free. In doing so, they will gain access to battle-tested code and ideas, allowing them to focus on their core missions.

For others, it is an opportunity to leverage the time and money they have put into building software and programs so others in the field can use them. In our network of changemakers, we see many organizations producing innovative platforms and technologies that are used to create social change. Why not further that effort by open sourcing that work so that many more can use, improve and share it? Our experience shows that by including open source from the outset of a plan, you reap the benefits of including a community in your work and have a product that can be shared with the larger community with minimal effort. And, frankly, isn’t the act of open sourcing software in line with most philanthropic missions?

Open source has other benefits as well. The collaborative nature of open source can encourage philanthropies to engage with new audiences and to connect technical and nontechnical participants. We have seen that reaching beyond your bubble and forging unlikely alliances between those working to solve the same problem can yield impressive and transformational results.

We’re already seeing philanthropies embrace open source. For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation developed an open source platform to drive the adoption of digital financial services in developing countries. Mojaloop, the platform’s name, creates a standard system for banks and other financial service providers to communicate and execute transactions at a lower cost than competitors for the nearly two billion unbanked people in developing regions.

Throughout the Case Foundation’s history, we’ve recognized the value of open source software by both using it in our work and supporting others who are a part of the community. Some of our greatest efforts such as Make It Your Own and America’s Giving Challenge succeeded because open source software enabled us to move quickly and experiment with new ideas without having to start from scratch. We were also early supporters of groups such as Code for America which produces open source software and organizes communities of citizens to also create and contribute open source solutions for their towns and cities.

And we are now building all the software we produce for specific campaigns with an eye on making them open sourced as well. For example, we have provided the open sourcing code from our #FacesofFounders campaign allowing any organization to launch a similar campaign focusing on user-generated content. And this year, we plan to release even more open source projects produced through our broader work here at the Case Foundation. We hope that–along with many others–we can help the social sector see the benefits of open source, spark innovation, accelerate social good and ultimately help change the world.

We hope you will join us.

18 Leaders in the Open Source Community to Follow on Twitter

Posted on by Case Foundation

Open source is an essential tool for the tech community, providing open and accessible platforms for accomplishing everything from building websites to artificial intelligence. Yet the drivers behind open source are often individuals, and their commitments of time, energy and inspiration are truly an act of personal philanthropy; many players in the movement do it on their own time. 

 We talked about how open source can accelerate social good last month in SSIR, and increasingly, open source is critical for nonprofits and individuals who may not have the funds to build out software from scratch or license expensive and cumbersome enterprise software. 

 At the Case Foundation, we’re committed to contributing to the open source community and recognizing others who are doing so too. These 18 people have made a personal commitment to sharing their digital work with the online community. Learn more about them and how you can follow their work on Twitter below. 

  Name                   Twitter Handle                     Bio
Alolita Sharma
@alolita
Software Engineering, Open Source, Open Standards, Language Technologies i18n/NLP/ML/AI, Women In Tech At:@AWSCloud Boards:@Unicode,@SFLCin
Andrew Means
@meansandrew
Head of the #philanthropy beyond @Uptake; Founder – @theimpactlab & Data Analysts for Social Good @da4sg ; Invested in @City_Fields
Angela Byron
@webchick
Herder of cats. @Drupal core committer. Director of Community Development for @Acquia. @OReillyMedia author. Mom. Lesbionic Ace. Nerd. Gamer. INTJ.
Ben Balter
@benbalter
Attorney, open source developer, Product Manager working on Community and Safety at @GitHub. Previously @WhiteHouse Presidential @InnovFellows.
Christopher Fabian
@hichrisfabian
UNICEF ventures lead. co-founded our innovation unit. advise on open-source overlaps of tech, design, development, start-ups, and academia. our team is awesome
Daniel Berg
@dancberg
IBM Distinguished Engineer delivering cloud native solutions focusing on microservices, containers, and DevOps practices. Opinions are my own.
David Stoline
@davidstoline
Avid reader. Occasional cyclist. Well rounded geek. Former @POTUS44 tech lead. @drupalsecurity team member
Erica Kochi
@ericakochi
co-leads (and co-founded) UNICEF Innovation, TIME100 most influential, mobiles in emerging markets, epicurean, extreme sports enthusiast
Erie Meyer
@Erie
America’s foremost technologist named after a Great Lake. Now @CodeforAmerica! Co-founder @techladymafia + @usds. Former @harvard @whitehouse @cfpb.
James Kurczodyna
@jamesmk
Director of Technology at @wearefine and creator of Fae. #webdev #ruby #js #rctid
Jeff Walpole
@JeffWalpole
CEO @phase2. Board @DrupalAssoc. Leader in #opensource. Following #omnichannel #cms, #ux, #drupal, #collaboration #leadership #opengov #ai,
Jessica Bell
@SirJesstheBrave
Developer with @WapoEngineering. Chair of @DCACM. Leadership with @DCtechmeetup, @DCFemTech. JavaScript, SASS, cat gifs, and comics. My opinions are my own
Jessica Lord
@jllord
Node.js @MongoDB, previously @GitHub, @CodeforAmerica and @BostonPlans // I saw all the Vermeers!
Joshua S Campbell
@disruptivegeo
Geographer, PhD. Founder @sandhillgeo & @MapGive, Council @AmericanGeo. Fmr @StateHIU & @GFDRR. Geospatial, Open Source, Design, Product. Views mine.
Michael D. Johnson
@CodeNonprofit
Chief Operating Officer @freeCodeCamp
Rikki Endsley
@rikkiends
A little bit country, a little bit punk rock & roll. https://Opensource.com  community manager, tech journalist, runner
Sage Sharp
@_sagesharp_
Diversity & inclusion consultant at @ottertechllc. @outreachy organizer. Explorer of the kyriarchy. Hufflepuff.
Shannon Turner
@svthmc
Founder @hearmecode: free beginner-friendly coding classes for 3000 women in DC | Full-stack developer | Portfolio at https://shannonvturner.com  | Views mine

A New Form of Digital Philanthropy: Open Sourcing #FacesofFounders

Posted on by Case Foundation

Open source software, by its simplest definition, is a work of software whose source code is available for others to read, study, modify and redistribute with little restriction other than that the free access is maintained. Earlier this week, I wrote in an op-ed in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) about how we at the Case Foundation see open source as another form of philanthropy—a digital one whose contributions influence the success of many by providing publicly accessible software. In the article, I shared how we see the potential of open source software and how it can spark innovation, accelerate social good and ultimately help change the world.

Building on the early work of Jean and Steve Case—pioneers in the democratization of information with AOL—technology has always been a crucial part of how the Case Foundation works, and our tech-centric legacy has led us to champion early ideas that are now commonplace such as online giving and digital advocacy. In the course of that work, we have often used open source technologies because of their scalability and opportunity for customization. Giving the technology we create for projects at the Foundation back to the open source community is the next logical step. As we take on new challenges and new campaigns that serve our movements, we will also begin to take the time to ask ourselves and the community if a project that we think would be good for our efforts would also be good for others’ efforts. If that is true, we will dedicate time and resources in the project to open source the components that the community needs. Our contributions will always follow the needs of our broader goals, and we will open source the work in which we and the community find of real value.

So, as a part of our commitment to this open source ideal, we are excited to release the code that powered our #FacesofFounders campaign. This open source code includes features that powered the social photo upload and filters, applicant and story submissions, and the distributed judging platform. By releasing this platform’s code into the community, we are aiming to help those looking to launch similar campaigns where applicants must submit information and have a pool of judges evaluate the submissions.

We designed this platform that powered the first phase of the #FacesofFounders campaign to attract entrepreneurs, particularly women founders and entrepreneurs of color, to share their photos and stories of entrepreneurship on FacesofFounders.org or on Twitter using #FacesofFounders. Launched at the White House’s South by South Lawn festival, in partnership with Blackstone Charitable Foundation, Google for Entrepreneurs and UBS, along with Fast Company, #FacesofFounders sought out and lifted up America’s dynamic entrepreneurs who are key to driving innovation and job growth. The winners of the crowdsourced contest, who were reviewed by our panel of 40 guest judges, were selected because they bridged innovation and a commitment to inclusiveness. We then featured the winners of the contest on FastCompany.com and our #FacesofFounders Medium publication.

The technology powering this campaign was a huge part of its success, and we’re excited to share this code with the open source community. Throughout the judging process, we received numerous comments on how easy it was to use. The platform has three unique components that are all a part of a combined codebase.

Social Media Profile Photo Filter

The first of which is the photo upload feature that allowed visitors to upload a photo (or select their Facebook or Twitter profile photo) and place a campaign-themed filter on top of it. The visitor could then make that filtered photo their profile image on their social media profiles, and the photo was added to a shared photowall on the homepage, which continually displayed all new and past filtered photos. In addition administrators had the ability to remove inappropriate photos from the homepage.

Story Submission

The second feature is the story submission system. In addition to, or instead of, uploading a photo, visitors could submit their story to the judging platform. This submission tool contains customizable forms and can be placed in a “closed” state once judging begins. All submissions entered through the form then go into a queue for a site administrator to assign to judges. Because the platform is built into WordPress, it is also possible to directly upload submissions via WordPress’s dashboard.

Story Review and Judging

The third and final component of this codebase is the judging platform. As visitors submit stories, they queue in the judging section of the backend. Once all submissions are final, assigned judges can log into the platform and request submissions to review. The judges score each submission on a numeric scale, and the platform uses those scores to begin ranking each submission. Site administrators can then log in and view the stories ranked by their aggregate scores to determine winners. The entire codebase comes packaged as a WordPress theme for easy deployment and visual customization using WordPress’s robust theme system.

This open source #FacesofFounders platform is a useful tool for organizations running any sort of applicant submission and review process, and it could be modified to accommodate a grant or scholarship application review, among other uses. If you have a pool of judges or reviewers who are geographically separated or difficult to coordinate on schedules, the platform accommodates such logistical challenges by facilitating an individualized back-end review process. We believe that this code will be integral for the prizes and challenges community.

Given the collaborative nature of the open source community, we are looking for organizations interested in using this code in their own campaigns, as well as suggestions for ways to improve the #FacesofFounders codebase. Moving forward, we plan to share more of the software powering other campaigns and efforts with the open source community.

We at the Case Foundation hope our work can help others, and we’ll do our part to help catalyze the open source movement as we share our resources, our time and our talents with the community. We are excited to share this multifunctional platform with the community, and we look forward to further contributing to this part of digital philanthropy.

You can find the #FacesofFounders platorm here.

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