Who We Are
DemocracyInAction.org believes technology can be a decisive force for social change. We exist to empower those who share our values of ecological and social justice to advance the progressive agenda.
"We're a progressive nonprofit whose core activity is providing e-advocacy tools to other progressive nonprofits for pennies on the dollar relative to the fees demanded by the private sector."
Just what that's all about confuses some folks, so what you need to know about us probably depends on where you're coming from.
We're a progressive nonprofit whose core activity is providing e-advocacy tools to other progressive nonprofits for pennies on the dollar relative to the fees demanded by the private sector. We democratize e-activism, freeing practitioners to pour resources into mission and strategy. If you're a nonprofit who might want to use these tools, that's probably what you need to know—and you can think about us as a service provider that just happens to be a 501(c)3, or as a mission-focused organization that just happens to sell "software as a service." It's up to you.
In our capacity as service provider, we offer cutting-edge communication tools enabling our member organizations to do everything from sending mass e-mail blasts to taking donations online. If you're an individual who saw our address in a url, that's probably what you need to know about us. Those emails are being sent by the other nonprofits who use our tools—we don't take part in creating or vetting their email or their web pages as they go up—so if you have a question, your best bet is to ask the organization that actually generated it. DIA itself has a strict privacy policy and never shares or markets to its user organizations' supporters.
Does all this sound a little too corporate and impersonal? Meet the DIA team.
What Our Service Does
The DemocracyInAction platform, Salsa, was designed to help advocacy organizations engage their supporters more effectively. We provide a flexible, online solution that doesn’t require any technical expertise, and which is designed to integrate easily with web publishing systems and offline databases. The tools were also designed for use both nationally and internationally.
Salsa builds the organizing capacity of nonprofits by offering an affordable, integrated, and easy-to-use service for:
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Contact relationship management (CRM) through an online supporter database;
Advocacy campaign and petition;
Targeted email and communications;
Online fundraising.
Want to see more? Sign up for a free trial.
Why We Do It
The Internet's major innovation continues to be the power that it puts into the hands of the people who have traditionally stood outside the process.
However, many organizations—especially the 82% of public charities in the U.S. with budgets under $1,000,000 per year—face serious challenges in the area of technology, challenges they have difficulty addressing because they lack resources, staff time, and expertise. They also face critical financial pressures from increased service demands and decreased funding. While many have already turned to the Internet to recruit and engage supporters and to raise funds, sophisticated engagement and communications systems are financially or technically inaccessible to many nonprofits.
DemocracyInAction exists to change the calculus for the progressive nonprofit sector. It's really as simple as that. We want to get powerful tools into the hands of good people and help them kick some ass.
How We Got Here
The organization was founded by April Pedersen and Chris Lundberg in February 2004. April and Chris come from both the nonprofit and software development sectors. Upon close examination of nonprofits' use of information and communication technology tools, which sector controls them, and how much nonprofits were paying for them, they saw a necessity to change the landscape. The question they asked themselves was this: How can we use technology as a tool to support grassroots organizing efforts and enhance the communication efforts of hundreds or thousands of organizations, rather than generate more work and fees, depleting a narrowing pool of resources?
In the five years since, we've grown into a critical progressive nexus, providing communications tools as a shareable technical resource for hundreds of other nonprofits.
Financing
DemocracyInAction is funded by a mixture of service fees from the organizations using our tools, private grants, and individual donations. You can become a DemocracyInAction donor here.
Many thanks to our foundation grantors, the Surdna Foundation and the Open Society Institute, for their support.