The communication of people in more than 60 countries around the world are regularly censored, surveilled, and blocked. These restrictions and failures to protect fundamental human rights denies people access to democracy and positive social change. This daily suppression of freedom of expression and information limits citizens’ ability to take full advantage of the powerful communications platform that the Internet has become.
To combat this, OTF supports technology-centric efforts that empower world citizens to have access to modern communication channels that are free of restrictions, and allow them to communicate without fear of repressive censorship or surveillance.
OTF utilizes available funds to support projects that develop open and accessible technologies to circumvent censorship and surveillance, and thus promote human rights and open societies.
OTF supports programs focused on increasing:
The people who support OTF are passionately committed to protecting freedoms of speech, expression, and press including the open exchange of ideas and information across all frontiers on all mediums. We focus on helping cultivate an open Internet and Internet freedom. Our values and principles have their underpinnings in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
We believe …
… everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
… in the doctrine of open philanthropy and governance, and thus share openly with the public and other stakeholders, in a non-competitive fashion, all possible aspects of our work, including what we have learned.
… the greatest ideas are iterative innovations built without fear by embracing our failures and successes, that innovation happens best within healthy ecosystems, and those ecosystems are sustained by efforts that share, use, and build openly and collaboratively.
… to actively create long-standing positive change, we must develop effective technology, shift social norms, laws, and market forces.
… the actual impact of any effort or technology OTF engages is measured by evaluating the experience of those who are at the receiving end of the engagement.
… in prioritizing sustainable and holistic strategies over resolving issues efficiently. To do so, we empower existing networks addressing challenges, and focus on strategies that work in situations where scarce resources or intersecting systems of oppression may exist.
…. cultivating community is at the core of what we do, and we work hard to build a diverse network of people and organizations who can work to address the most pressing challenges collectively.
… our power originates from the depth of our communities base in the field, OTF’s relevance to those communities, and the individual efforts within OTF.
… we are strongest when following a field of diverse communities empowered to tell us what is important, not the other way around. This is because we emphasize a community’s power, not its powerlessness.
Our Team, Advisory Council, and Fellows are a 40+ person community who speak 10+ languages, are from all over the world, and know a lot about Internet Freedom. We strive to create a diverse community that can provide Internet freedom projects with the expertise and guidance they need to succeed.
OTF can support any Internet freedom project (or individual work) that falls within our mission and gets us excited – regardless of size, location, or organizational type. This allows us to empower a new pool of technology and development talent often left unsupported. Reinforcing this cornerstone is our passion because it allow us to give voice to the voiceless and diversity in the Internet freedom community, which we believe is crucial to sustainability.
OTF acts as an incubator for forward-thinking ideas and innovation as a means to embrace diverse thought necessary for experimentation and progress. This nimble approach, along with its embrace of open philanthropy as a model, makes OTF unique among technology-centric funding programs. This includes using alternative methodologies, new technologies, and collaborative ways of working to ensure every initiative receives the best exposure and resources needed to succeed.
To complement this, OTF prioritizes innovation and transparency in its organizational structure and decision-making processes which translates to a strong feedback loop between OTF, applicants, and other stakeholders in the field. The result is an efficient new project discovery process with the ability to leverage expertise from a diversity of viewpoints and perspectives. Check out our funding model to understand how this works.
The United States Congress recognized Radio Free Asia (RFA) and the Broadcasting Board of Governors as an appropriate engine to empower world citizenry to support the Internet as a safe and secure platform for free speech. To do so, the Open Technology Fund (OTF) was created in 2012 as a program of Radio Free Asia and is sustained by annual grants from the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which originate from yearly U.S. Congressional appropriations for State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs.
The BBG selected RFA as the entity within which to create OTF due to its responsive and agile profile and nonprofit nature, among other factors. OTF works closely with other publicly funded Internet freedom programs to fulfill the US Congressional mandate to sustain and increase global Internet freedom with public funds.
OTF reports to RFA’s President who in turn reports to the BBG’s Board of Governors. The BBG Board is a bi-partisan board made up of nine members, eight of whom are appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and ultimately serve as RFA’s board of directors. By law, no more than four members shall be from the same political party. The ninth member ex officio is the U.S. Secretary of State, who serves as Chairman of the BBG board.
Today, this same U.S. Congressional appropriation to the BBG and grant to RFA continues to be the bedrock of all OTF’s work.
In 2014, the U.S. Congress modified the Internet Freedom appropriation language to include:
That funds made available pursuant to this section shall be matched, to the maximum extent practicable, by sources other than the United States Government, including from the private sector.
In response, OTF increased the sharing and exporting of our program’s best practices, procedures, systems, and determinations to facilitate easier matching of public funds with other sources of funding. For many public and private donors, OTF is a learning platform, a front-line vehicle they can look inside of for supporting technology-centric Internet Freedom and Human Rights efforts. Other donors have decided that OTF’s model is the right one for them and have chosen to partner more closely, share our mission, values & principles, and make use of the same application system. With OTF as an open and available resource, the risk for established donors to engage into a new area of support is reduced, increasing their entry, and increasing the available pool of funds to match public funds against. Most importantly, the field of Internet Freedom defenders gains access to greater resources.
