Oct 2, 2023

A selection of news, events, and opportunities for builders and integrators of public good technology

Hey, Makers and Integrators,

Welcome to October🎃! We are thrilled with how our Accelerating Makers community learning and event series has kicked off thus far. If you have attended one of our events live or watched a playback later, joined the Accelerating Makers community, or even just engaged with this newsletter, thank you.

We appreciate your participation, questions, and engagement and are excited to continue the journey of demystifying blockchains and the decentralized web to better understand exactly how these emerging technologies can be leveraged to support our social impact work.

Maybe you’ve forwarded this newsletter to a friend or have been brave enough to ask your question in the chat during an office hour event. However you’ve engaged, we thank you for your curiosity and for opening your minds to learn about the DWeb with us.

We also want to take a moment to thank our first six expert presenters for sharing their insights and perspective with this community thus far.

If you missed a presentation, do not worry! Here are direct links to the series presentations thus far, and keep scrolling for what’s to come:

View videos and slides from all of TechSoup’s previous events.

Reach out to share your feedback and DWeb wish list of topics with us. You can email us at makerlabs@techsoup.org. And bonus points for any pointers to projects or people that you’d like to see us profile over the course of the series. Please send your ideas our way!

Until next time,

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

Maker Events

Public Good App House: Voting Apps

Join us for our next edition of Public Good App House, where we'll be focusing on the power of technology to enhance civic participation. Featured speakers include Megan Brown (Vote411), Dale McGrew (We Vote), and Debra Cleaver (VoteAmerica).

🗓️ Tuesday, October 3, 2 p.m. EDT
🎫 Register now.

How to Access Web3 Funding Sources for Makers in Civil Society

Discover how you can use DWeb to fund your next impact project.

🗓️ Wednesday, October 4, 12 p.m. EDT
🎫 Register now.

Unlocking the Potential of Decentralized Storage

Real-world tools and practical applications will help attendees explore and implement decentralized storage solutions.

🗓️ Thursday, October 12, 12 p.m. EDT
🎫 Register now

Art of the Impact Pitch: How to Craft Your Narrative for Funders and Nonprofits

Discover how storytelling and narrative can help sell your high-impact idea.

🗓️ Wednesday, October 18, 12 p.m. EDT
🎫 Register now

Public Good Tech Ecosystem Events

Good Tech Fest is a free virtual event building digital resilience in the social sector. It is a partnership between Splunk and AWS for Nonprofits offering a dozen workshops across three main tracks (Cyber Security, Data Science, Building Data Capacity) as well as an exciting plenary session. Whether you are a social impact organization, education institution, or philanthropy, learn how to best leverage data and technology to further your mission, protect your data, use AI ethically, or ensure that you aren’t increasing the vulnerability of those you work with.

🗓️ October 4
🎫 Register now.

European Blockchain Convention is the most influential blockchain event in Europe. This two-day event in Barcelona will host over 5,000 attendees and 300 speakers. Experience an unforgettable event featuring three stages, a buzzing exhibition area, startup competitions, parties, and so much more.

🗓️ October 25–26
🎫 Register now.

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.

Funding and Grant Opportunities

💰Mozilla Technology Fund (MTF): AI and Environmental Justice
This year, the Mozilla Technology Fund seeks to fund open-source projects at the intersection of environmental justice and AI that are making a positive impact in ecosystems and human communities. Applications due October 5!

💰 Stanford Digital Civil Society Lab Practitioner Fellowship
The fellowship supports civil society practitioners working to address racial, gender, class/caste, sexuality, and economic inequality in relation to technology. $25,000 stipend. Apply here. Submission deadline of October 13 at 5 p.m. Pacific.

💰Digital Defenders Funding
The Digital Defenders Partnership provides financial support to build digital security capacities. Discover which fund suits your needs. Open calls include the Incident Emergency Fund and the Bessy Ferrera Fund for LGBTQIA+ activists. Learn more and apply now.

💰 UC Hastings Law School: Startup Legal Garage
Free legal advice to give your startup a kick-start! These grants are worth up to $30,000. The program focuses on supporting women, minorities, and veteran founders. Applications are open on a rolling basis.

Community Spotlight

Shannon-Ewing-Blockchain-Humanitarian

Introducing Shannon Ewing

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After spending a decade in the field implementing humanitarian aid projects, Shannon entered the blockchain space seeking ways the technology can be employed to create resources in developing countries. Having worked with organizations such as USAID and Doctors Without Borders, she now helps the biggest projects in blockchain to build cohesion and catalyze the decentralist movement. She is dedicated to leveraging peer-to-peer, decentralized systems to awaken capital and help pull our global neighbors out of poverty.

On Wednesday, September 20, Shannon joined us as a featured speaker for our virtual event “DWeb for Good: Real-World Examples of Innovation.” In the presentation, Shannon provided us with a breadth of examples of blockchain use cases across the nonprofit sector, including in areas of fundraising, voting, humanitarian aid, digital identity, climate action, and combating human trafficking. While Shannon presented many long-standing and promising projects, she also educated viewers about the risks and limitations of this emerging technology and gave examples of projects from which the ecosystem is still recovering and learning.

Thank you, Shannon, for sharing your wisdom and expertise with us! Watch Shannon’s presentation and let us know what you think, or learn more about her work on her website.

News and Other Cool Links

💥 New Product in TechSoup Catalog (check it out, Makers! 👀) Esri's ArcGIS is mapping and analytics software that allows you to create interactive maps and explore data in various ways. Learn more and start applying here.

💥 Imagining a Better Online World: Exploring the Decentralized Web (Webinar): Our friends at Internet Archive, DWeb, Library Futures, and the Metropolitan New York Library Council put together this incredible, foundational workshop series all about decentralized technologies and how they may be able to help enhance your privacy, empower you to control your own data, and resist censorship. Watch it here!

💥 Share Your Thoughts on AI: The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and Project Evident are conducting a national survey to better understand the current use, interest in, and opportunity for artificial intelligence (AI) technology. This survey is focused on nonprofits and grantmakers and foundations.

💥 How Are You Harnessing Community Power? Community power is the belief that people should have a say over the places in which they live and the services they use. Read more from UK-based think tank and network New Local.

💥 Curated Connections: Start an introductions program to automatically curate matches between your community members. Simple-to-use tool with an easy-to-justify pricing. For all the community managers out there, check this out!

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:

That’s everything for today! 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.