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The Philanthropy Game

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey, Karien Bezuidenhout and Chris McGivern when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

Money is an element of the relationship between the funder and those who it funds (in our case, the Foundation and the Fellows), but we’ve moved away from being simply a funder and towards being a holistic support system.

“Money is power” is a cliché because of the truth it holds. It’s also wildly incorrect. Traditional philanthropic models use money as a proxy for knowledge or wisdom, wielding the exchange of money as pay-to-play. This is because true power comes from knowledge, but money is a more tangible metric to measure.

If money could solve all the world’s ills, it would have long since fixed poverty, health, and the other great challenges of our times. But money is a blunt tool and change doesn’t happen by simply banging things with a hammer. We need thinking, experimentation, bravery, policy, technology, and a myriad of other pieces of magic to fall into place in order for true social change to take root.

Money is a resource, not a goal. Centres of power in most funding models lack balance. Any power gained from a finite resource like money is also finite. Giving away money means giving away power.

Conversely, shared power born of infinite resources like knowledge, community, and trust is limitless. The more you share power the more you create. Collective power and its growth lie in paradox – you must give it away to expand the community and grow the knowledge and trust that fuel collective power.

Money is an effective tool, but a poor substitute for community. When power is exerted by the use of money and placed at the centre of the relationship ideas are created and experiments undertaken in order to obtain or unlock further funding. Money ultimately becomes the measure of success which leads to the purity of the idea being abstracted and the original undertaking rendered corrupt. By focusing on infinite resources and collective power we build stronger futures for everyone at the table.

The central idea of empowering social change isn’t just funding it, but broadly redistributing power. Distributing money alone doesn’t redistribute power. We want to enable people whose lived experiences best suit the challenges they are trying to solve. A member of a community uniquely understands the challenges faced by that community better than an outsider and it’s for this purpose that we bring them to the table rather than assuming we know better than they do. When thinking through ideas of social and ultimately behaviour change, we recognise the markers of progress are not easy to count or measure, but are messy, protracted and sometimes obscured. It is important to create space between the source of the money and where the money is going in order to feel progress and render money a resource and ensure it doesn’t become a corrupting influence to collective power.

The system is rigged, 2020 has shown us how much

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

Unprecedented losses in livelihoods along with previously unimaginable restrictions placed on the movement of goods and people have drastically increased food insecurity, among much other suffering, around the world. We imagined it would be a matter of weeks until things got “back to normal”. We were completely wrong. Things may never go back to the way they were, and that might not be a bad thing.

In the wake of the effects of the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement has gained traction well beyond its origins in the US. It is becoming increasingly apparent to a much broader audience that the social and economic systems that underpin the “normal” we were so keen to get back to has not been good to many of us.

These systems are rigged to make us believe that the only reason one does not succeed is because they aren’t good enough, they don’t follow the rules properly, they don’t make the most of the ample opportunities on offer. We judge ourselves and others by our ability to ascend the capitalist ladder and avoid adversity along the way. We condemn others and chastise ourselves for not meeting the standards of these systems, established over centuries, generations, by those in power to make sure they stayed in power. This thinking has infiltrated every level of society, from internal dialogues to global governance, propped up by unjust economic, healthcare, education and justice systems.

The world is at a turning point. Business as usual has been interrupted. We can either go back to the familiar, hoping that we make it, trying our best to keep up with the rules and beat out others in an environment of artificial scarcity. Or we can acknowledge what we have learned, take the time and do the work to build towards systems of abundance, which are equitable, sustainable, open and share power.

Taking time to reimagine our world is a luxury not many have. But we are far closer than we think. There are people, projects, communities, organisations that have taken the time, taken the risks, embraced the uncertainty, and started building their piece of a reimagined socio-economic system long before others even recognised the problem. These are ready to build upon.

The Shuttleworth Foundation works with individuals brave enough to reimagine the world we live in through its fellowship programme. Fellows have a vision for a better future and a clear idea of how we might get there.

The Shuttleworth Foundation: An Open Book

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey, Karien Bezuidenhout and Chris McGivern when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

As a small organisation operating at a fraction of the budget enjoyed by many other funders, we must continuously and closely scrutinise our work. Our philosophy remains the same, but new fellows, ideas and experiences contribute to our knowledge pool and influence where we go next – and how. We adapt our methods accordingly, weaving in best practices and weeding out roadblocks to our fellows’ mission progress. Just as our views on systemic shifts are centred in a conviction for evolution, not revolution, we believe positive, lasting organisational change is best achieved gradually and incrementally.

However, it is also vital to take stock of long-term progress. In 2018, we took a deep dive into the previous decade of our fellowship model, revisiting highs – and lows – and speaking to fellows about their experiences. We intended to uncover wrong turns and to explore areas where we could improve. There was plenty to chew on but, overall, we were pleasantly surprised: discussions with our growing community of past and present fellows revealed our alternative model of philanthropy holds up well.

We started this experimental model in 2007 with the belief that philanthropy could be better. Our idea was to instil openness, collaboration and community into our approach. We wanted to replace the hierarchical structures typically seen in traditional funding with a focus on co-ownership, agency and empowerment. There have been some tweaks around the edges since but, today, we believe those fundamental elements continue to offer our fellows greater agency to make progress and unlock more benefit for society.

Which brings us to our book. In one part, it tells our story as a community and offers hat tips to those who have contributed along the way. We don’t like to talk about success or failure and prefer to focus our thoughts on progress and learning. But on reflection, it is striking how much our fellows move their fields forward.

Consider our funding efforts in telecommunications, where we see a trend towards bottom-up connectivity and community-owned networks. Our fellows have played a significant role in this blossoming movement. Individual projects by Steve Song, Paul Gardner-Stephen, Peter Bloom and Luka Mustafa have built on each other to great effect to democratise access and empower communities, reduce costs, and shift thinking at policy level. Elsewhere, in a world dominated by global finance, Astra Taylor’s work with The Debt Collective community poses important questions about money and debt: her efforts so far helped eliminate over a billion dollars of student debt owed to predatory lenders.

These impressive examples of fellowship projects impact millions of people – even more extraordinary when you consider they were achieved on a relatively meagre budget of around a million dollars per fellow, over a three-year fellowship. In our view, it is clear this demonstrates that size of grant – often the central component of the funder-fundee relationship – is not a lone indicator of success. There is far more to consider, which is the second source of inspiration for our book.

We seek system change in our domain just as our fellows seek change in theirs. Several major funders have borrowed from our ideas, as we have borrowed from others – just as it should be. Yet our community’s frustrations with the traditional philanthropic world remain. Changemakers with vast potential are still overwhelmingly restricted by top-down approaches to funding, arbitrary metrics, short-termism, and more. If we want to live in a better, more equitable world, this must be addressed.

We aim to do this in our book and add some practical flesh to the philosophical bones of Open philanthropy to better explain the hows and whys of our working methods. It is not a how-to guide or instruction manual – our processes fit our intent and purpose, and we know they may not work for others. Instead, we hope it provides inspiration and shows the strength of openness as a foundation from which to build viable alternatives to unhelpful funding practices. We hope it makes you think. But mostly, that you enjoy it…

https://shuttleworthfoundation.org/book/

Fellowship forward

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey, Karien Bezuidenhout and Chris McGivern when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

Over the past 6 months we have dissected every aspect of this model, from recruitment to alumni, from Fellowship highs to Fellowship lows, to really understand the value and effect of every component. We have examined the arc of the programme over the past 10 years, Fellow by Fellow as well as cumulatively. What we learned has helped us determine how we might continue our Open Philanthropy experiment.

What have we learned?

The fellowship programme we have today will be almost unrecognisable in its implementation to the first Fellows of 2007. What they will recognise is the essence of what we set out to do, the values that underpin that and the central role Fellows play.

We went back to basics, to the Letter of Wishes we wrote when we started this programme. The ethos described centred around fellowship “because we believe that people, rather than projects, are the true change agents.” Our Fellowship is supported by funding, openness, innovation and governance. We wanted to examine the outcomes of our programme against what we set out to do, and this provided the perfect compass.

Throughout the evolution of the model these have held up, and we believe they still do as we move forward.

1.) Individuals

The long term impact of the Foundation lies in the people at the heart of it. The Fellow (and the teams they assemble during their fellowship) take full ownership of an idea, they have the direct experience of implementing it, and they internalise the learning to take into the next phase, regardless of whether the idea proved viable.

Projects and organisations come and go. Many ideas do not result in successful outcomes upon the first try. These individuals are willing to take that risk for the greater good and if we can bet on the right people, they will succeed in bringing about positive change, over time, by building on their fellowship experience. As long as we believe in them and the change they want to make, they have the strength to get up and try again, each time adding to their knowledge, turning that belief into reality.

2.) Alone together

Each individual Fellow has a part to play in their field, and on the fellowship. While they have the freedom and agency to act independently, the relationships and interactions between Fellows provide a valuable sounding board and fertile environment for new ideas to be tested and blockages to be removed.

This is as true for Alumni as for current Fellows. Individually they are pushing the boundaries of conventional wisdom and the status quo. There is no-one who has the exact knowledge or experience they need. Bringing them together creates a space in which ideas can be tested and dissected, alongside trusted and respected peers, who share a common hope for the future but come with very different perspectives.

Diversity of thinking and experience is essential. It is not by interacting with those that have a similar set of skills and frame of reference that truly revolutionary ideas grow. It is by being challenged and inspired by others who are trusted and respected because of, not despite, their differences. Sharing their wisdom and combining expertise within the group is what enables them to take their mastery to the next level.

3.) Over time

During or directly after an intervention you can at best assess the implementation of an idea. To recognise impact, you need distance and time for the knowledge to be shared and changes in behaviour to occur.

We review the impact of each fellowship 5 years after the Fellow has exited the programme. Time allows the Alumni to settle into the next phase, for others to test and build upon the outputs, and for the true influence of the Fellow and their idea to become clear. It is actually only now, after 10 years, that we can see the broader contribution the collective Fellows have made in the world.

Each individual investment should be selected thoughtfully to make a contribution to our own thinking in a field, and then given enough time to mature in the world. Patience is key.

4.) With room to fail and learn

Whilst there are some social challenges with known solutions – vaccines for example – this is not the space we are in. We specifically look for individuals with fresh perspectives, with ideas that are not yet staple dinner party conversation, who want to tackle problems with as yet unproven solutions, and who challenge conventional wisdom.

When you know something is broken, it is easy to throw a spanner in the works of the establishment, to disrupt what exists. What is much harder is building something new. This comes with the risk of failure. To create the best environment for these ideas to be tested and honest learning to emerge, we have to accept the risk involved in trying to build something new and make sure that our behaviour within the group reflects that.

Even failing at solving a problem offers a valuable opportunity to learn more about both the problem and potential solutions. If it happens in an environment that is supportive, recognises the value of failure and captures those learnings, no investment is wasted. The outcomes will influence both theorists and practitioners in the field. The real failure would be not being deliberate about the experiments we do in the world and not paying careful attention to how it plays out, during and post fellowship.

5.) Openly

Actively capturing the outputs of each fellowship and sharing those openly, enables others to engage with the idea, learn from the implementation, build upon the progress made and expand the impact of our efforts and investments well beyond our own reach. Openness is what ensures that every attempt, whether it succeeds or fails, creates foundational assets and becomes a positive contribution to change in the world. We started by looking for openly licensed products at the heart of every fellowship. Open source was key to unlocking economic potential and self-reliance.

The next frontier for openness lies well beyond intellectual property. Individuals now produce and share more data, information and resulting knowledge than ever before, yet the centres of economic control have not shifted substantially. Privacy and security has come to dominate this conversation. We still need to find the appropriate equilibrium that balances the greater good and individual rights.

6.) Engaging with technology

10 years ago we were asking how can technology be used for good, especially if access was democratised. There was a sense of promise and opportunity associated with getting technology into the hands of everyone. Today the use of information and communication technology has become near ubiquitous, yet depth of contribution and equity in participation in the knowledge economy has not.

While pockets of constructive engagement exist, increased access has served to further divide, not create a shared sense of community, ownership or purpose. The commons is being eroded and the meanings of democracy, freedom, economic justice and human rights are being fundamentally challenged. The struggle around access to data and the resulting knowledge has been turned on its head with individuals generating more and more data while struggling to retain access to it themselves.

The mere inclusion of a technological component in an idea is no longer of interest to us. Questions on freedom, control and self-determination around how technologies and their byproducts interact are now far more important.

What questions are we asking now?

Progress means new questions and challenges.

1.) Society (Public goods)

In numbers, there has been no better time in history to be alive. At the same time, there has been no time in history for us to be so starkly aware of what we lack. At every level – individual to national, regional to global, even interplanetary – it is possible to know and try to understand the impact of each of our actions on those around us, near and far. Democracy, capitalism and the implied social contracts of the 20th century are no longer sufficient to effectively support the complex and connected societies needed to steward public goods for public good.

There is no more room for a zero sum game. Disruption is already happening. Now is the time to rebuild.

2.) Systems (Money flow)

The systems enabling the flow of money are becoming increasingly complex, and increasingly obfuscated. Controlling and tracking gives as much power and authority, if not more than, owning the money in the first place. While it has become easier to be a global citizen, moving money through the global banking system has become much harder for anyone other than standard corporations. Before we could just do a bank transfer in x currency to y’s bank account. In some instances that has now become impossible, in others innovations have emerged.

How should/could/does money move and reach those most able to put it to constructive use? What organisational structures and data measures do we need to provide adequate protection while not stifling innovation? This is a system that needs unblocking.

Similar questions apply to how we create and exchange value at every level of society, how we govern, share ownership and give agency. What new social, political or economic systems might offer a more relevant alternative? How might we test these theories as close to reality as possibly, while tracking and containing unintended consequences?

We would like to experiment with new approaches, starting small, and passing our experience on to others who have the potential to collaborate and influence across borders as we know them today.

3.) Substance (Themes)

Access to telecommunications technology has come, and will keep coming, at a monumental rate. It is a challenge which has been taken up widely, with social, public, commercial and philanthropic interventions on offer. The quality and quantity of initiatives, both top down and bottom up, and the high level of innovation, is encouraging.

Technology is also one of the spokes in the wheel of the future of education. There is general agreement on the importance of universal, quality education, especially around Maths and Science. While there is no single solution for achieving that, there are many inspiring models being explored all over the world. Uniform delivery at scale is no longer the ideal. The most appropriate, contextualised approaches will thrive.

Neither of these areas specifically need our attention any longer.

We have been experimenting on the periphery of these themes for a while. On the one hand we’ve expanded our focus on technology from telecommunications to medical devices, environmental monitoring, bio-printing, cellular agriculture, small scale manufacturing and scientific research. On the other, our Fellows’s focus started with formal education and evolved to access to knowledge and self-directed learning. Their work now includes access to the resources and enabling environments you need for self-actualisation, including open government, internet freedom, digital human rights, data driven decision-making, access to medicines, fact checking and food security.

Over the next year we would like to go even further, asking what challenges the new normal has created, and which old ones needs a fresh perspective to shift thinking.

The next round of applications opens on 1 February 2019.

An Open Approach to Funding

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey, Karien Bezuidenhout and Chris McGivern when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

“What industries, sectors and domains do you fund?”

We hear this a lot. It’s a common question asked of the Shuttleworth Foundation, both by potential investors and potential fellows. Here are three possible responses:

  1. Any
  2. It doesn’t matter
  3. It’s the wrong question

Allow us to explain…

We are open to ideas

The Shuttleworth Foundation places immense importance on open practices and requests that all our potential fellows embrace and display the same values. But because we expect openness, we must also provide it in everything we do.

We tried creating lists of preferred fields in the past, but found it restrictive, as it often resulted in the most innovative, transformative ideas being unnecessarily cast aside.

Having the flexibility to choose, find inspiration and engage with open ideas from the unlikeliest and most surprising fields is now essential to our funding philosophy.

Ideas matter, not industries

Our big vision is to support bright people with brilliant ideas that make the world a better place through open practice.

Concepts are welcome from any sector – we fund ideas in a broad range of fields, from technology and music through to manufacturing and law. We seek people with new perspectives and vision to create the foundational assets others will build on in the future.

Our goal is to find solutions. We don’t have all the answers – and we don’t even know all the questions. We rely on our applicants to inspire us, inform us and persuade us with exceptional, courageous thinking that makes a difference.

In short, if you have an idea based on openness, connectedness, and innovation, we welcome it, regardless of industry or domain.

The right question

Backing a narrow range of industries limits our potential to uncover real innovation in several ways:

  • It reduces our ability to help unlock systems and create genuine change.
  • Interesting ideas from less prominent fields will always stand out more than ‘the new Facebook.’
  • We need people to be explicit about what they want to do, not try to guess what we want to hear.

So, in our minds, the real question is not who, or which industries, we fund. It’s why we fund that is most important:

  • We invest in people who work in a variety of sectors, all of whom share our vision for a better future based on open principles.
  • We fund so that people can use their resources to challenge and create change in systems, practices and the status quo.
  • We support risk takers, rule breakers, and disrupters – but most importantly, social changers.

In our experience, social change is more likely to happen when individuals can cross reference sectors, collaborate, and lay open foundations for future iterations.

It’s magic, of sorts, that is bigger than any one sector, industry, or domain – which is why we are open in funding, as well as philosophy.

Progress is more than just innovation – The Copenhagen Letter

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

It is time to take responsibility for the world we are creating. This is the call to action at the Copenhagen letter, published in September 2017, in which a group of tech practitioners start a conversation on the interface between humanity and technology.

This letter really resonates with us. It is made up of 5 simple statements that encourage us as designers, users, humans to shift perspective, perhaps regain perspective, on the role of technology in our lives. Technology should serve and advance society, not undermine or control. We have the power to direct that, including ourselves as funders.

When inviting applications for Shuttleworth Fellowships, we say we are looking for individuals with an innovative idea for social change. We express innovation as fresh thinking that adds value, and that fresh thinking is often implemented through technology. The Copenhagen letter articulates this far better. We are looking for progression, not just newness.

We have been stumped on the large number of applications we get for innovative technology, but with limited vision for a better future. Thank you to the 150 technologists, designers, philosophers, educators and artists who authored this letter, for adding clarity to our thinking and our messaging. We will be building on this framing going forward.

We have signed – you should too: The Copenhagen Letter, 2017

Thinking of applying? It could be you

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

When thinking about applying for this fellowship, one of the first questions you might ask yourself is will I get in? Do I fit their profile? Am I who they are looking for? Someone might suggest you apply for a Shuttleworth Fellowship. Even if they are a Fellow, Alum or member of staff, there is no guarantee that your application will be successful. But you have to be in it to win it.

Anyone can become a Shuttleworth Fellow. You do not have to have any specific level of education, or you could have a PhD. You do not have to have years of experience in the workplace or be an up and coming millennial. You do not have to be from any specific geography or nationality, you should just be able to communicate fluently in English. You do not have to have an organisation, but you can if you want to, and it can be for or not for profit. You do not have to be of any specific gender. You do not even have to be building software.

What you should have is a clear sense of how you can contribute to changing the world for the better. You should be able to articulate the problem, and your idea should offer a fresh approach to addressing that problem. You should be able to motivate why you are the best person to do this, and how this particular fellowship might help you do that.

This Fellowship consists of anyone from college drop-outs to doctors (academic and clinical), students to professors, enthusiastic upstarts and seasoned veterans. They come from all over and work where they can make the most difference. The profile they share is one of openness, commitment and bravery.

We invest in individuals to change the world, now and in future. If you believe that is you, we could too.

Thinking of applying? Do it

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

This is not an easy Fellowship to get, the process may be simple, but the competition is stiff. Approximately 1% of applicants are offered a fellowship.

The personal investment you have to make in contemplating this fellowship is substantial – you have to really, honestly and purposefully think through what your contribution to positive social change will be and that is tough. However, it could be the first step towards realising your big vision.

We have structured the application in a way that helps you build a narrative, from the problem statement to your specific approach, with enough free form to allow you to express yourself. We are not looking for “correct” answers, we are looking for your answers. Typing up your responses to the questions, making a video and uploading your resume is all it takes. Applications are private, which adds to it being low risk. And you will know where you stand within 4 weeks of the close date.

The video is not the enemy. We are not looking for a production quality promotional video. We want to get a sense of who you are and what you are setting out to do. That can be done successfully through a mobile phone video recording of your talking head.

Our hope is that this application process helps you organise and articulate your thoughts in a way that is useful beyond this application, enabling you to express your idea with clarity that inspires momentum and gathers support.

Although thoughtfulness is required, the actual investment of time and effort necessary to apply is tiny given the possibility of actually getting offered a fellowship. There is only a 1% chance you will get it if you apply, but a 100% chance you won’t if you don’t. The odds are in your favour, if you take the leap.

We would love to hear from you.

Thinking of applying? Be different

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

We do not have a list of topics we are interested in funding or a call for proposals around a specific theme. Of course we have a sense of what critical problems could be addressed in the world. But an important part of the openness we practice is being open to ideas.

Below are areas in which we have already made substantial investments. If we were to invest in these further, we would look for exceptional ideas that advance the field beyond what we already know, that bring a fresh perspective or approach to addressing a specific aspect, or that radically re-imagine the concept at its core.

Open education – creating open educational materials; building platforms to hold and share materials; establishing pathways for delivery and experimenting with sustainability and access models for effectively integrating open educational resources into formal education systems.

Open government – encouraging and enabling open government data; establishing the veracity of public statements; building systems and process for more effective citizen/government engagement; and supporting citizen-led campaigns addressing important governance issues, especially around digital rights.

Open science – experimenting with alternative approaches to advancing science and its impact on society by revolutionising scholarly communications and inviting citizen participation, rooted in openness.

Telecommunications – addressing access and affordability by experimenting with mesh phone networks using both traditional and mobile handsets, establishing community owned and operated mobile phone networks (including the necessary policy, regulation and sustainability work) and combating spectrum congestion by using laser-enabled data transfer.

Health care – building affordable, easily reproducible, high quality open medical devices supported by the process for designing, manufacturing, quality assuring, distributing and using these devices effectively; assessing and mitigating the negative impact patent systems have on access to medicines.

Cultural expression – exploring web-enabled mechanisms to express culture – represented by music and history – more freely, widely and openly, for the benefit of marginalised groups and society as a whole.

The Open Web – fortifying the practices that enable us to become and remain effective citizens of the web, with specific reference to reducing friction around end-user secure communications, contributor agreements, equitable access and how knowledge resources flow.

The environment – enabling citizens to take back control of monitoring their environment, using open hardware and open data, to support conservation management, resource allocation, extractive industry regulation, food production and traditional knowledge stewardship.

If you are planning on applying and see your idea described here, pay special attention to articulating how your approach is innovative, adds value, what we might learn or discover.

There are also many areas – thematic and geographic – in which we are just getting our feet wet or have not yet found the right fit in investment. We look forward to being challenged and surprised.

Open Locks: Legal commitments that lock in trust

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

Contributors to your open project invest their time and energy because they trust you with their gift to the world. So the challenge is this: How can you keep their trust? Can you seal it in for the long term?

There are many successful projects that have managed this, notably in open-source software. Linux, Firefox and Wikipedia are good examples. The practice of sharing knowledge in open-source-software communities is now common among researchers, civil society and open government projects. These social goods are built on the currency of trust.

There have also been failures and defections, where a once-open project closes itself off. For example, exciting open-textbook initiatives have reverted to the very proprietary model they were created to replace, and open-access repositories have been bought out by proprietary publishers.

No doubt those projects’ leaders never thought they’d be forced to make such concessions to their founding principles. But even the most passionate leaders will move on, acquire mortgages and new responsibilities, face personal crises and illnesses, and weaken under pressure from investors and business partners to abandon their commitments to sharing knowledge.

As your organisation grows, will it stay on mission? Might you sell out, making the knowledge proprietary and breaking their trust? When your team is under pressure from financial investors, is your good nature the last line of defense against proprietary interests? And when you leave the organisation one day, how will you know for sure that it will stick to the open principles you laid down?

As a leader, you may believe you’re committed to social change and to keeping knowledge open, but others might not. For example, patients who volunteer their medical data for research need to know for sure that it’s not going to be monopolised: they want it to be used widely to find a cure, not kept secret for one corporation’s competitive advantage. Donors crowdfunding an open-hardware project need to know that their investment isn’t going to be swallowed up by a behemoth with an outdated business model. And volunteers and staff need to know that, if their bold attempt to change the world fails, others can pick up where they left off and try again.

When projects lose their open nature, contributors become wary, and trust evaporates.

An Open Lock is a way to bake a founder’s commitment to openness into the legal structure of a social enterprise, so that it endures when circumstances change. It’s a binding legal obligation – explicit wording in foundational corporate documents – to share knowledge.

For several years we’ve been locking openness into our work at the Shuttleworth Foundation. Here we’ll explain how Open Locks work and provide sample legal language you can use, too.

How Open Locks work

An Open Lock is a binding commitment in the foundational documents of an enterprise to share knowledge under open licenses. Sometimes it includes a commitment not to close knowledge in a certain way. For example, an Open Lock could state that an enterprise will not apply for software patents.

For-profit enterprises and many non-profits are incorporated: that is, they are legal entities recognised under law, and defined by their foundational documentation. Open Locks can be written into those foundational documents when they are incorporated. Or existing companies can add them by amending their foundational documents. An organisation that is not incorporated can include an Open Lock in a constitution.

The legal effect of an Open Lock is that no one who acts for a company has the legal authority to lock knowledge down.

As with similar provisions, an Open Lock can usually be changed, but change can only happen through a special procedure. For instance, changing an Open Lock usually requires the agreement of an external guarantor, who may only hold a few shares but can veto any change to the Open Lock. The guarantor is often referred to as holding a golden share. The difficulty of changing an Open Lock means that it can’t be done quickly or easily or surreptitiously. Instead, there is time for social processes to play out, for contributors to withdraw their work, for someone to fork the project, and for those who’ve helped build it to be heard.

Open Locks as an open experiment

Using corporate documents to keep social enterprises focused on their mission, with their core values intact, is increasingly widespread. Mission Locks and Golden Shares are examples.

At the Foundation we created Open Locks to add to this toolkit because we needed them to help our Fellows build new enterprises on a foundation of openness. For instance, Content Mine is a scientific data-mining non-profit that uses an Open Lock to guarantee that its data and software will remain open. And Siyavula is a textbook publisher committed to licensing all volunteer contributions under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

While our Open Locks have already helped to protect commitments to open knowledge, we’ve only been using them for a few years. They are an experiment that will only be truly tested over the long term. There is much to learn. We are looking forward to seeing how other social enterprises do better than we have done, and extend the experiment in ways that we haven’t thought about.

Exactly how an Open Lock is implemented depends on applicable company law, what the company does, and the likely threats to its mission. As a starting place, we’ve developed example clauses that we and others can use, adapt and improve.

We use this model legal language as an Open Lock in agreements and foundational documents. You can find our latest language in our Github repository.

XX.1. Notwithstanding any other provision the company shall not

XX.1.1 communicate copyright works (other than computer programmes) or data to the public under any terms without offering the same works or data under a licence or permission that complies with the Open Definition. The Open Definition, refers to the Open Definition maintained by Open Knowledge, current at the time this provision becomes effective and any subsequent version for as long as Open Knowledge is steward of the Open Definition and is incorporated by reference (http://opendefinition.org/). Provided that the Company may communicate works or data under terms more restrictive than the Open Definition if simultaneous with the initial communication it gives a public undertaking to offer the same works or data under terms that comply with the Open Definition within thirty (30) days of the initial communication and that it subsequently complies with the public undertaking.

XX.1.2. distribute copies of a computer programme without simultaneously offering the source code of the same computer programme under a licence or permission regime that complies with the Open Source Definition. The Open Source Definition, refers to the Open Source Definition maintained by the Open Source Initiative current at the time becomes effective and any subsequent version for as long as the Open Source Initiative is steward of the Open Source Definition and is incorporated by reference (https://opensource.org/osd).

XX.1.3 apply for or obtain a patent that will affect the efficacy of an open license;

XX.1.4 apply for a patent that covers or effectively covers the operation of a computer programme;

XX.1.5 charge royalties for any use of any patent, right to inventions, registered design, semi-conductor product and mask right, design right, trade marks, copyright, neighbouring rights, database rights and any rights having equivalent or similar effect which may exist anywhere in the world, required to comply with an open standard;

XX.1.6 distribute hardware without offering an irrevocable non-exclusive royalty free license or licences that allows anyone to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import or distribute copies or derivatives of the hardware conditional only upon attribution and share-alike requirements.

“XXX. Provision/s ( XX, XXX, ) may only be changed with the prior written agreement of [insert name of golden shareholder]