Open source software allows anyone to freely read, study, modify and redistribute a software’s source code with little restriction other than that free access is maintained. For a nonprofit, open source represents a fantastic opportunity to tap into some of the best technology out there, to engage with entirely new allies, and to reduce long-term technology costs for an organization. Join the Case Foundation’s VP of Interactive Strategies, John Jones, for a webinar where he will cover the following topics: - Discuss what open source is - How some nonprofits have been able to employ it to advance their work - How you may apply those lessons to your own organization - In addition, John will share some of the open source work the Case Foundation has been leading, which will include a demo of an open source project the Case Foundation has released.

1. What Open Source
Is and How Your
Nonprofit Can
Benefit
October 30, 2018

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3. A Global Network
Bridging Tech Solutions
and Services for Good
Where are you on the map?
Countries Served TechSoup Partner Location NetSquared Local Group

4. Acclivity
Adobe
Alpha Software
Atlas Business Solutions
Atomic Training
Amazon Web Services
Autodesk
Azavea
BetterWorld
Bitdefender
Blackbaud
Bloomerang
Box
Brocade
Bytes of Learning
Caspio
CauseVox
CDI Computer Dealers
Cisco
Citrix
CitySoft
CleverReach
ClickTime
Closerware
Comodo
Connect2Give
Dell
Dharma Merchant Services
Digital Wish
Dolby
DonorPerfect
DocuSign
Efficient Elements
FileMaker
GoDaddy
GrantStation
Guide By Cell
Headsets.com
Horizon DataSys
HR Solutions Partners
Huddle
Idealware
InFocus
Informz
InterConnection
Intuit
JourneyEd
Litmos
Little Green Light
Mailshell
Microsoft
Mobile Beacon
NetSuite
Nielsen
NonProfitEasy
O&O Software
Okta
Quickbooks Made Easy
Reading Eggs
ReadyTalk
Red Earth Software
Sage Software
Shopify
Simple Charity Registration
Skillsoft
Smart Business Savings
Society for Nonprofit Organizations
Sparrow Mobile
Symantec
Tableau
TechBridge
Tech Impact
Teespring
Telosa
Tint
Ultralingua
Western Digital
Zoner

5. Explore our Nonprofit
Tech Marketplace
For more information, please visit
www.techsoup.org/get-product-donations
"We are an all-volunteer organization with
limited professional skills. Adobe's donated
technology is helping us present our story to
the public and to lenders in the format of a
much larger organization. With Adobe, we
are able to knock off a few of the "rough
edges" so that our story is front and center
instead of our technological limitations.
Thank you, Adobe!”
- Richard de Koster
Constitution Island Association, Inc

6. Presenters
John James
VP of Interactive Strategies
Case Foundation
Sima Thakkar
Online Learning Producer
TechSoup
Assisting with chat:
Zerreen Kazi
Marketing Associate
TechSoup
Sima Thakkar
Online Learning Producer
TechSoup
Zerreen Kazi
Marketing Associate
TechSoup
John James
VP of Interactive Strategies
Case Foundation

7. WHAT
OPEN SOURCE
IS AND HOW YOUR
NONPROFIT CAN BENEFIT

8. ABOUT ME
• John Jones, Vice President of
Interactive Strategies
• Techie by background, working to
spread access to technology via
Open Source

9. ABOUT THE CASE
FOUNDATION
• Created in 1997 by digital pioneers Jean and
Steve Case, the Case Foundation invests in
people and ideas that can change the world.
• We focus on inspiring and raising up all to Be
Fearless
• We work to catalyze movements and
collaboration to bring forward ideas that have
transformative potential and can lead us to
uncover new, more impactful ways of
addressing chronic social challenges.
• Today we are driving at two major
movements—impact investing and inclusive
entrepreneurship.

10. OUR SURVEY
After this webinar is over, please take our
five-minute survey to help us better
understand the current state of nonprofit
engagement with open source
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MPHPVZR

11. OPEN SOURCE:
AT THE CENTER OF
THE INTERNET

12. EARLY DAYS
• Early software was mostly shared
openly because it was research
• Commercial software took off in the
70s, which started replacing the
model
• Early home computer software was
delivered in books of code because
disks and other media were too
expensive or cumbersome
• Academics and enthusiasts started
creating and sharing code via the
Internet and dial-up services
1960sthrough1980s

13. THE WEB
• The World Wide Web is both a
product of and a cause for success
of open source
• The Web’s open specification
spawned many new browsers and
servers
• The new Web ecosystem spawned
further sharing and collaboration via
forums, code communities, etc
• Mozilla, the successor to Netscape,
was one of the first high-profile open
source projects
1990s

14. 2000s
GROWTH
• With both the agile and innovative
spirit of open source in addition to
the freedom it brought, business
saw it is both an efficiency and
innovation center
• Open source created new business
models that provided transparency
for users and a distinct value
proposition for business
• Open source software runs in
conjunction with closed source
software everywhere

15. HOW IT’S
USED TODAY

16. PRIVATE SECTOR
• Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, etc
all collaborate on open source projects
• Motivations:
• Ecosystem creation
• Monetization of support and hosting
• Enhanced security through
transparency
• Recognition of the community’s
innovative power
• In addition, it is a strong attractor for
recruitment and retention of top talent
• Projects used by for-profits and
nonprofits; not exclusively produced for
any one group

17. GOVERNMENT
• Wide recognition at the federal level of
the inefficiencies caused by continually
and redundantly licensing proprietary
software
• USDS and 18f created to spawn and
make use of open source projects
across government
• Projects are reused within other
government entities
• Beginning to see state and local
government embrace open source in the
same way

18. INDIVIDUALS
• Individual or small groups of developers
contribute passion projects in spare time
• Ones that grow to become popular often
get absorbed by larger entities, subsist
on small-dollar donations, or spin up into
startups:
• D3 creator brought into NYT
• Drupal and WordPress grew into
startups Aquia and Automattic
• Sites like OpenCollective and
Patreon raise funds for small
projects

19. OPEN SOURCE
AS A FORCE MULTIPLIER
FOR CHANGEMAKERS

20. GIFTS OF CODE
• Open source is a form of
philanthropy
• One gift of code can have unlimited
beneficiaries
• Both organizations and individuals
can embrace this type of
philanthropy as an alternative or
supplement to financial support
• Grants funding development of
technology should stipulate creation
of open source software to extend
the reach of that financial
contribution

21. DEMOCRATIZATION
OF TECH
• Open source software lowers the
barrier to entry for technology and
therefore furthers the
democratization of technology
• It is an onramp for those without all
of the technical knowhow necessary
to create innovative products and
services
• It is often at competitive parity with
closed-source software thus
lowering the financial barrier to entry

22. ACCELERATION OF
INNOVATION
• The collaborative and transparent
nature of open source is a force-
multiplier for changemaking efforts
• By sharing and embracing open
source software, non profits can
kickstart collaboration, increase
efficiency and share successes and
encourage others to iterate off
failures
• We have seen it deployed in
multiple environments and see great
potential for open source to make a
real impact in the non-profit world

23. NONPROFIT SECTOR’S
LEADERSHIP ROLE IN
OPEN SOURCE
• Open source is a way for us (for and
nonprofits alike) to engage with
others working to tackle problems in
the same space
• Open source can create
serendipitous relationships between
producers of a technology and
those who need it
• Like the broader tech industry, there
is much work to do in terms of
inclusivity and civility in open source
that we must drive

24. NONPROFITS
EMBRACING
OPEN SOURCE

25. BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION
• Created Mojaloop, an open
source project that enables
interoperability between banks
and newer forms of financial
mechanisms sprouting up in
the developing world
• Using open source to build an
ecosystem
• Open ecosystem supports
financial inclusion while still
maintaining a competitive
market for innovation

26. CODE FOR AMERICA
• Organizes “brigades” of
volunteers across the country
to solve civic problems using
technology
• Open by default
• Working to encourage their
brigades to share and iterate
off of each others’ work
• Citizens who give their time
and talent in addition to the
material contribution of their
work product as philanthropy

27. TIDEPOOL
• Diabetes devices didn’t communicate and
relied on proprietary software for analysis of
the data
• Worked with manufacturers to open those
data standards
• Created software for working with all of these
devices for consumers
• Funded via research institutions using their
software

28. GIVESOURCE
• Open source fundraising
platform designed to power
Giving Days
• Created in partnership between
B-Corp Firespring, Lincoln
Community Foundation and the
Jeffrey S. Raikes School of
Computer Science and
• Cuts traditional fees taken by
similar fundraising platforms

29. OUR
CONTRIBUTION

30. #FACESOFFOUNDERS
• Our first foray into releasing open
source projects
• Campaign launched in late 2016
to gather stories of diverse
entrepreneurs and showcase
them using a profile-picture
generator
• Platform built to accept this user
content and provide a reviewing
platform for a distributed panel of
judges
• Users of the platform, impressed
by the functionality, inquired about
reusing it for future work
https://github.com/casefoundation/Faces-of-Founders-Platform

31. ANALYTICS DASHBOARD
• Team dedicated to ongoing digital
A/B testing, analytics review and
recommendation generation
received ongoing requests for
more realtime information
• We designed and built a
dashboard to query Google
Analytics and other data sources
to combine the information not
possible with other dashboard
platforms
• Open sourced and extensible to
support any number of other data
sources
https://github.com/casefoundation/analytics-dashboard

32. WEEKLY ROUNDUP
• Our Marketing and
Communications team would
spend hours collecting and
formatting news clips every week
for a staff email
• With this platform, they simply
paste-in a URL, and it scrapes the
title title, publication, date, and
description for them
• Users may break clips into
sections and reorder as necessary
• Sends beautiful, branded email to
staff with clipped news stories
https://github.com/casefoundation/weekly-roundup

33. REVIEW-O-MATIC
• Built in 2017 to power the review
process in our Finding Fearless
campaign
• Organizes stories submitted via a
form and assigns them for review
to a panel of judges
• Easily adaptable for any
submit/review/decide process
such as conference proposal
submissions, crowdsourcing, etc
https://github.com/casefoundation/review-o-matic

34. SOME WAYS TO
GET STARTED

35. USING OPEN SOURCE
• When taking on a new project,
consider how the problem:
A. might already be solved by an
open source solution
B. is a problem many encounter
and could be an open source
project
• Make sure your vendors are open
source friendly
• Work with a trusted team of partners
and tech vendors to help solve
these challenges

36. FINDING OPEN
SOURCE PROJECTS
• Identify open source projects that
are “active” along the following
criteria:
• Recent updates within the past
few months, not years
• A high amount of ticket/issue
activity
• Many open issues does not
necessarily mean the project is not
good
• Projects which have notable
sponsorships are often extremely
well-managed and maintained

37. CONTRIBUTING TO
OPEN SOURCE
PROJECTS
• If you find an open source solution
is a close fit but needs more work,
consider if that change is worth
sharing. (Some open source
licenses actually stipulate this.)
• Engage with the project’s team or
community to understand if it fits
their plans or is something they are
exploring – perhaps the work could
be a partnership opportunity

38. CREATING NEW OPEN
SOURCE PROJECTS
• Take a step back to see if the
problem you are solving could help
many
• Engage with peers to see if it is
something they are looking at

39. QUESTIONS

40. REACH OUT!
Twitter: @johnjones4
GitHub: casefoundation & johnjones4
Email: johnj@casefoundation.org

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