Supporting Communities

We are dedicated to contributing knowledge and support to the communities that our work intersects with, and offer ongoing support to two specific communities: the Responsible Data community and the Orgsec community.

Practising responsible data means prioritising and responding to the ethical, legal, social and privacy-related challenges that come from working with data for advocacy and social change.

Since 2013, we’ve been stewards of the Responsible Data community, a group of more than 1000 individuals from diverse backgrounds who convene online and offline to discuss and develop best practices for using data in advocacy and social justice work.

Being part of this space enables us to learn from the challenges that others are facing, and to draw upon a wealth of expertise in figuring out how best to address those challenges.

Adopting strong organisational security practices and supporting our peers and partners to do the same, is a critical part of our overarching mission.

In 2016, we began supporting a group of organisational security practitioners through a convening to capture their collective experiences, resources and approaches.

This led to the development of the Organisational Security wiki: a resource created by and for security practitioners from diverse backgrounds to share useful resources and document innovative approaches to long-term security work.

In 2019-20, we partnered with Internews to identify opportunities and tools for organisational security practitioners at large and the orgsec community specifically. This led to further community engagement support, an update to the Organisational Security wiki and the development of a series of tools, which includes an orgsec impact evaluation framework.

Our orsec work has also included facilitating community gatherings, and we continue to host a community mailing list.