Posted by
Cory Horner on
Jul 08, 2008; 6:38am
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/capitol-words-tp1130p1136.html
A while back there was brief discussion about CivicAccess becoming an
umbrella foundation/non-profit to conglomerate the various Canadian
access-related projects. I see a real need/use for this, as i'm sure
each little project has little interest in all the paperwork involved
to achieve non-profit status, when all they want is a little
financial support; sticking a little "a CivicAccess project" logo in
the corner is a lot more appealing.
To contrast the two examples given by Jennifer, I guess I see
mySociety as a handful of people who built tools who then built a non-
profit around it, versus Sunlight as a group with a bucket of money
who then built tools. CivicAccess and VisibleGovernment seem to be
taking the similar approaches, respectively.
My question is, are CivicAccess and VisibleGovernment competing, or
should we try to, for example, make CivicAccess the umbrella/
community, and VisibleGovernment the fundraising wing? Is there is a
difference that i'm not seeing here, besides branding? (or is having
2 entities too confusing?)
Thanks,
Cory.
On 7-Jul-08, at 1:11 PM, Jennifer Bell wrote:
> I've been thinking the last while about the best approach for
> promoting the creation of online tools for government
> transparency. The Sunlight Foundation in the US and mySociety in
> the UK are showing that the government can be changed by example,
> from the outside. It just takes people to push to make it happen.
>
> What will it take to get a similar movement going here in Canada?
> As I know there are several people here with experience in similar
> groups, I'd like to get your opinions.
>
> The ingredients, as I see them, are:
>
> 1) Money.
> 2) A Community.
> 3) A Tool.