Mission: New Power for Progressive Politics

Democracy Labs is a hub for ongoing technology and creative innovation in service of a healthy democracy at the national, state, and local levels.

We focus on long term, sustainable and affordable solutions. An approach that is longer than an election cycle, and isn’t purely dependent on volunteers, can enable more qualified candidates to run for office and for more issue groups to bring about positive social change with little funds.

Democracy Labs is a project of the Tides Advocacy Fund.

We start by identifying the key needs that could have the biggest impact on the most races. We hold workshops that bring together groups of experienced political professionals, technologists, creatives and activists. Small multi-disciplinary teams focus on the needs identified and evaluate possible solutions.

DemLabs does not develop software nor create media content. We look for existing solutions that might already exist in the commercial sector or are available from new political-tech startups. This lowers the costs and the long time cycles needed to develop new software. We test these solutions with partners on both advocacy campaigns and races for elected office. They’re evaluated on this criteria:

Impact How much difference could this solution make to a campaign given all the other tasks and expenses that a candidate or group has to deal with?

Cost-effectiveness  How much impact can do they make for the cost incurred? How does it compare with other approaches?

Scalability  Can the solution be ramped up to support hundreds of races and campaigns?

Complexity How easy is to understand and deploy? Could a team without much technical expertise use it?

Lead Time How long will it take to roll out and implement?

We Convene:

Connections

Experts to help. Events to learn from.

Insights

What's working. Best Practices.

Opportunities

Projects that need your skills.

Solutions

Documented and tested resources.

Read more about the team behind DemLabs, and browse an overview of our recent work, at our MuckRack page.

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