Letter from OMF Executive Director, Tony Shawcross
For the past few months, Open Media Foundation (OMF) has been engaged in the Fast Forward Accelerator, the first startup accelerator focusing solely on nonprofit tech efforts. Our Open Media Project (OMP), a Government Transparency Software-as-a-Service was one of nine projects selected from across the country. The award included a $25,000 grant, over 200 hours of mentorship and coaching, and support in pitching our Government Transparency and Civic Engagement service to potential funders and partners across the country. We have big plans for this innovative little program.
Most people know the Open Media Foundation for our Training and Public Access TV and Radio efforts. If you live in Denver, you probably know of a few nonprofits whose websites, videos, and branding we developed. You may not know that in recent years, our focus has grown beyond helping nonprofits and underserved communities shift public awareness, to helping them shift public policy. Through the software we've developed in our Open Media Project for Government, we’re leveling the playing field and making it easier than ever to engage with state and local government.
In 2013, OMF collaborated with the Colorado State House and Senate to launch a new transparency portal at coloradochannel.net. We leveraged a decade of web and application development into a new service that more than doubled their web traffic at half the cost of their previous commercial service provider.
Building on that success, we launched a Software as a Service option. City Councils in Thornton and Littleton soon signed on. With no sales or marketing budget, over a dozen local governments in Colorado and later Oregon are now using our service. It has become clear that we have a solution with national significance.
This is where Fast Forward comes in. “We recognized the enormous opportunity OMF had tapped-into with their Open Media Project,” said Shannon Farley of Fast Forward Accelerator. “Over half of the government bodies in the US serve small towns and cities with populations and budgets too small to be served by the commercial service providers, and OMF’s innovative, low-cost solution was poised to serve a segment of the market that no one else is serving,” said Farley.
“Small, local governments are falling behind the times and are experiencing record-lows in voting and civic engagement,” said Tony Shawcross, OMF Executive Director. “It’s these local governments that most affect our day-to-day lives and where people have the greatest opportunity to make an impact,” added Shawcross. OMP for Government provides unfiltered access to local government through searchable video and related documents, easily shared on social media. This enables government to reach the people where they’re at, because in the 21st century, you shouldn’t have to make a trip to the Capitol or City hall to have an impact on local government.
“Tech nonprofits like OMF have all the challenges of a startup, combined with the funding challenges of a nonprofit,” said Kevin Barenblat, Fast Forward Accelerator Founder and President. “While our process is similar to other tech accelerators in that our participants learn from leaders and mentors over a three month period, culminating with an opportunity to present to investors at the end, our investors include foundations and donors looking primarily for social impact, as opposed to investors primarily seeking financial return. Our program focuses on product design, scaling and growth, but also covers topics unique to nonprofits, like board development and partnering with open-source communities.”
If you’re interested in seeing what’s next for OMF and the Open Media Project, you can see us present at these upcoming conferences and events:
Sept 20-21: NATOA Conference – Austin, TX
Sept 26-29: Fast Forward Demo Days – San Francisco, CA
