1.
TREATING OPEN
SOURCE AS PRO BONO

2.
ABOUT ME
• John Jones, Vice President of
Interactive Strategies
• Developer by background, working
to drive expanded open source
engagement in the nonprofit world

3.
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.

4.
WHAT ARE WE
TALKING ABOUT?
• Why open source can be considered a
form of pro bono work
• How that fits into our larger view of open
source driving tech-for-good
• How its happening in the sector now
• How to get involved in impactful open
source work

5.
OPEN SOURCE
AS A PHILANTHROPIC ACT

6.
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

7.
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, nonprofits 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

8.
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

9.
CASE FOUNDATION’S
COMMITMENT TO
OPEN SOURCE
• We believe in the power of open
source to advance the great work of
the nonprofit sector
• Spreading the word to our peer
foundations and nonprofits
• “Walking the walk” by open sourcing
most of the technology we build in
service of our various programs
• Launching four open source
projects in 2018 – three are out, one
on the way

10.
OUR CONTRIBUTION

11.
#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
• We built a custom platform to take
in 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

12.
ANALYTICS DASHBOARD
• Team dedicated to ongoing digital
A/B testing, analytics review and
general data analysis received
ongoing requests for more real-
time 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 additional
data sources
https://github.com/casefoundation/analytics-dashboard

13.
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

14.
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

15.
NONPROFITS
AND OTHERS
EMBRACING OPEN
SOURCE FOR GOOD

16.
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

17.
CODE FOR AMERICA
• Organizes “brigades” of
volunteers across the country
to solve community and civic
problems using technology
• Brigades build and share
solutions using open source –
and we’re starting to see
solutions shared between cities
• Citizens who give their time
and talent in addition to the
material contribution of their
work product as philanthropy

18.
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

19.
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
• Built with a focus on portability
and scalability for any size
campaign
• Cuts traditional fees taken by
similar fundraising platforms

20.
BUT WHY AND HOW
CAN WE USE OPEN
SOURCE TO GIVE BACK?

21.
WHY SHOULD YOU
GIVE BACK?
• Year over year, we see a growth in
the percentage of pro bono and
CSR programs that leverage “skills-
based” volunteering – up to 50% in
2017*
• Open source is the perfect venue for
the tech industry to give back
• This is an opportunity to make
volunteering count for something,
not as just a goodwill gesture
• It’s also easily measurable
*http://cecp.co/home/resources/giving-in-numbers/

22.
WHAT HELP DO
NONPROFITS NEED?
• Many nonprofits contract with
commercial platforms that are slow
to adapt and feature poor
• Open source makes cutting-edge
technology accessible, but there is
still a barrier to entry
• At the end of the day, a GitHub
project page is a little intimidating to
a non-technical user
• Changemakers and technologists
think about problems in different
ways …

23.
CHANGEMAKERS PEOPLE OUTCOMES
TECHNOLOGISTS PRODUCT OUTCOMES

24.
HOW TO THINK ABOUT
GIVING BACK WITH
OPEN SOURCE
• Remember that your approach,
expertise, and personal experiences
are different
• Use an organization’s mission to drive
a tech strategy in terms of scope and
scale
• Be a mini-consultant and an educator
for organizations you work with
• Set them up to succeed in the long-run
with stable technologies and good
documentation

25.
WHERE TO FIND THESE
OPPORTUNITIES
HIGH LEVEL
• Think locally – how can you give back
to your community or your neighbor
• Consider you and your teams’ core
technical competencies and individual
passions
• Find opportunities to open source your
own work in an impactful way
• Look at what industry peers may be
doing– can you apply what they have
done?

26.
WHERE TO FIND THESE
OPPORTUNITIES
PRACTICAL LEVEL
• Personal and local networks
• Catchafire.org
• VolunteerMatch.org
• TaprootPlus.org
• OpenHatch.org

27.
WRAP UP

28.
• Open source is philanthropy and it accelerates
the work of nonprofits, but they need help
accessing
• Skills-based volunteering now accounts for 50%
of all volunteer work – where are the
developers?
• Giving back via open source is a way to actually
perform meaningful volunteering
• Think locally and as a mini-consultant and
educator when giving back

29.
QUESTIONS? REACH OUT!
Twitter: @johnjones4
GitHub: casefoundation & johnjones4
Email: johnj@casefoundation.org