Nov 13, 2023

Ready for impact? November brings you cutting-edge tech, inspiring stories, and grant news to propel your mission forward!

Greetings, Makers and Integrators,

November brings a chill to the air and clarity to the mind. It's the month where conversations linger, ideas percolate, and the plan for the next year begins to take shape. It's when we lean back in our chairs, look out the window, and imagine what might be possible when we are fresh from December holidays and ready to roll up our sleeves for the next year.

Whether you’re looking to tell a better story about your next project or explore the edges of decentralized web technology, this edition of the newsletter gives you the tools you need.

You can:

  1. Join a dialogue about AI and the Public Interest hosted by the Open Markets Institute and the AI Now Institute on Nov. 15 in Washington, D.C.
  2. Be inspired by stories of how crucial human rights data is being securely stored and protected using decentralized data storage tools.
  3. Learn about SheFi, the crypto and Web3 educational initiative for women and nonbinary folks that just launched a Grants Program for Founders!
  4. Listen to a podcast episode by the Aspen Institute featuring Marjorie Kelly on her new book, Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s Crises.
  5. Dive into GitLab for nonprofits with a special free one-year license and boost your software development team’s efficiency.

For an even deeper level of engagement, join our online community to connect with Makers creating custom solutions for civil society. As always, if there’s anything we can do to support your work, email us at MakerLabs@TechSoup.org.

Be well,

Billy Bicket, on behalf of the Public Good App House team

Maker Events

How Web3 Is Giving Power Back to Society (and Your Nonprofit Organization)

Explore what decentralization means and how Web3 technologies are making an impact on society, ownership, and sovereignty.

🗓️ Wednesday, November 15, 12 – 1 p.m. EST

🎫 Register now

Improving Your Nonprofit Impact Using Real Web3 Examples

Discover how to use decentralized Web3 technology to create an impact in civil society.

🗓️ Wednesday, November 29, 12 – 1 p.m. EST

🎫 Register now

Public Good Tech Ecosystem Events

2023 Nonprofit Software Development Summit: Aspiration is a global leader in the design and delivery of innovative gatherings for nonprofit and non-governmental audiences. Over the past 15 years, it has convened and co-organized almost 700 highly interactive events in over 50 countries across the globe. This event will take place in Preservation Park, Oakland, California.

🗓️ November 15–17

🎫 Register now

Build Peace 2023: Build Peace is a global conference and community of practice that examines emergent ethical challenges and solutions to peace building in the digital age. This year, the conference is scheduled for December 1–3 in Nairobi, Kenya. Registration for the 2023 Build Peace conference is now open.

🗓️ December 1–3

🎫 Register now

Code for America Summit: Bringing together changemakers from across the country to convene, collaborate, and learn as they break through some of government’s biggest challenges by removing barriers and finding real solutions that can make our systems work well for everyone. Location is Oakland, California. If your work touches government technology and civic innovation, you can propose a session until November 14, 2023.

🗓️ May 28–30, 2024

🎫 Register now

Funding and Grant Opportunities

💰Web3 Foundation Grants

These grants fund software development and research efforts that drive advancement and adoption of decentralized software protocols. Both technical development and community development grants are available. In the short term, they are most interested in teams building with Substrate or Polkadot, though they encourage all builders to apply!

💰SheFi Grants Program Is Live for Founders

SheFi is excited to announce the launch of the SheFi Grants Stack program, a cutting-edge initiative designed to support and fund the brilliant female and nonbinary founders within our community. Submit applications before November 15. The program is powered by the Gitcoin Grants Stack.

💰Catalyst Fund by the Green Screen Coalition

Supporting the burgeoning ecosystem of actors working on the intersection of digital rights and climate justice to build cross-territorial strategies and weave thematic threads across movements. Grants range from $10k to $40k. To apply, submit a concept note before November 15.

💰 Live Your Dream: Education and Training Awards for Women

The Live Your Dream Awards provide monetary assistance to women who provide the primary source of financial support for their families. Learn more and apply. Application deadline is November 15.

💰TxP Progress Prize

​​A new £5,000 blog prize, in partnership with Civic Future and New Statesman Spotlight, encouraging responses to the question: Britain is stuck. How can we get it moving again? Apply by January 7, 2024. Learn more and apply.

💰 2023 EmpowHer Grant

Boundless Futures Foundation's mission is to provide financial and leadership resources for aspiring female entrepreneurs building businesses to solve today’s biggest social issues so they can have a boundless impact in society. Apply by December 31.

Community Spotlight

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Introducing Ian Davis

Ian is a platform engineer with over a decade of experience building and managing distributed infrastructure. He is passionate about building technical tools and standards that help communities and individuals manage and share their data in a way that promotes privacy, consent, and autonomy, and his work focuses heavily on the ethical and social implications of new technologies. He's currently on staff at the Filecoin Foundation, where he leverages his expertise in decentralized identity and data storage solutions to advise and assist social impact projects in meeting their missions.

On October 12, Ian Davis, along with his colleague Hunter Treseder from the Filecoin Foundation and Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FF/FFDW), gave a presentation called Unlocking the Potential of Decentralized Storage.

They discussed how decentralized storage systems have the potential to “upend the flawed systems” of Big Tech by providing a vital alternative data storage infrastructure that is accessible to everyone and not dependent on any centralized entities like big corporations and third-party intermediaries.

In the presentation, Ian demystifies decentralization by providing a visual demonstration of the technical structure of decentralized storage and what makes it different from the centralized web. For example, rather than accessing content based on its location via URLs, content on the decentralized web is identified based solely on itself (and its unique cryptographic hash) via a CID (content identifier).

They also provided real-world use cases for decentralized storage technologies such as community archives. Decentralized data storage networks can help ensure a secure and resilient backup for a large open or public data set. This can be extremely useful to communities, especially marginalized communities, whose data is vulnerable to censorship on mainstream platforms (such as in the case of the Rohingya people) or those with limited resources.

Watch the presentation, and if you are interested in learning more or possibly creating a community archive, reach out to FFDW for operational as well as possible financial support.

News and Other Cool Links

💥Tactical Tech’s Curated List of Resources on the Gaza-Israel Crisis

This list of resources includes articles, opinion pieces, and reports on how dis- and misinformation have impacted the crisis and guides and tips to help you navigate the complex information landscape.

💥Building a Digital Public Good?

Consider joining the Digital Public Goods Alliance. Join or nominate open-source software, data, AI systems, and content collections relevant to the Sustainable Development Goals. Organizations are committed to working transparently and collaboratively to support digital public goods. Check out their blog to learn more.

💥Check Out the New DWeb Impact Resource Hub!

Explore the intersection of decentralized technologies and social good with blog posts, research papers, news, tutorials, and more from FFDW and beyond.

💥Developer Gig Alert!

Our friends at OpenArchive are hiring a Lead Mobile Developer to contribute code and manage their overall technical effort, including overseeing the implementation and delivery of their super cool Save app.

💥AI for Good Hackathon

Read this article in Mission Local about how a 48-hour AI hackathon for good is tackling San Francisco’s problems including homelessness, trees, crime, and city services.

💥New Offering Alert!

TechSoup has a new nonprofit offer with GitLab, an AI-powered DevSecOps (development, security, and operations) platform that allows organizations to prioritize, manage, and automate their software development tasks.

Support for Nonprofit Developers

If your project is a registered nonprofit, you’re eligible for TechSoup’s discount and donation program. These are among the 100+ products:

Thanks for reading! We hope you have a great day. If you have something that should be in our next newsletter, let us know at MakerLabs@TechSoup.org

Accelerating Makers is supported by an award from the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web.