Our Principles
- Free to everyone
- Open-source
- Open standards
- Not-for-profit
- Non-partisan
- Copyleft
What We Do
Every day, our lives abound in political feelings and opinions. Not just on Election Day.
The Participatory Politics Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with a mission to increase civic engagement. PPF develops websites that create new opportunities for engagement with government. Voting is important, but we have a chance to go further and create a political process that is meritocratic, creative, and participatory.
We believe that the internet opens an unprecedented opportunity to extend and amplify political voices and actions. For our political system of representative democracy to work effectively, it is essential that we have the ability to see what’s happening in government and communicate our ideas to people in power.
PPF builds builds free and open-source web tools to help build public knowledge about politics and facilitate activism, with a focus on usable design and clear presentation. OpenCongress.org is our flagship project in this direction, with OpenGovernment coming next, and more on the way.
We hold these principles because we believe they form the best possible foundation in providing a valuable and trustworthy public resource — more than just ideals, they are formally incorporated into our organizational structure.
Our Work
Over the past three years, OpenCongress has grown to become the most-visited government transparency website in the United States, with approximately one million visits per month and a user community of more than 150,000 members.
Our sibling non-profit is the Participatory Culture Foundation, working to build a fairer, more open, and more democratic media space. PCF makes the internet TV player Miro, one of the most popular open-source software applications in the world.
Our Goals
Our work to help build public knowledge about Congress is guided by the 8 Principles of Open Government Data: public data should be open to the public, full stop. We demand that the U.S. government comply immediately and in full with all 8 Principles. Nothing short of this standard is sufficient or acceptable in a true democracy.
In addition, to fix our currently broken and systemically corrupt system of captured government, PPF stands with the Change Congress community in advocating for full public financing of elections and a new constitutional convention for comprehensive electoral reform.
Tiffiniy Cheng
PPF President & Co-Founder
Tiffiniy Cheng is from Worcester, MA and has a BS in engineering and urban planning from the Cooper Union. She has worked in non-profit, urban planning, and public policy-oriented organizations. Tiffiniy also co-founded PPF’s sibling non-profit organization, the Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF).
Contact: tyc at pculture.org
Nicholas Reville
PPF Treasurer & Co-Founder
Nicholas Reville is from Worcester, MA and has a B.A. in Public Policy from Brown University. He worked in a variety of political activism positions for several years before co-founding PCF. He is an Ashoka Fellow and a Co-Founder of PCF, where he currently serves as Executive Director.
Contact: npr at pculture.org
Holmes Wilson
PPF Secretary & Co-Founder
Holmes Wilson is from Worcester, MA. He founded the Worcester Computer Co-op, an organization that uses free software and recycled computers to start computer labs in his city. He has a B.A. in Italian literature and speaks Italian. Holmes is also a Co-Founder of PCF.
Contact: hw at pculture.org
David Moore
Executive Director
David is the Executive Director of PPF and has served as Program Manager of OpenCongress since its public launch in Feburary 2007. He graduated from Brown University with degrees in English and Philosophy. Previously, he worked as the first Outreach Coordinator for the Participatory Culture Foundation and helped to launch the open-source Miro video player. David spends a decent amount of time following the Milwaukee Brewers. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Contact: drm[at]opencongress.org
Andy Ross
Lead Programmer
Andy Ross is the Lead Programmer of OpenCongress and has coded on it since development started in 2006. Andy maintains the core data streams that form OpenCongress and builds the site’s open-source Ruby on Rails code. A dedicated fan of the Boston Red Sox, he lives in Los Angeles, CA.
Contact: aross[at]opencongress.org
Carl Tashian
Director of Technology
Carl joined PPF in November 2009 as Director of Technology, and is currently leading development on the open-source projects OpenGovernment.org & GovKit — bringing many of the features of OpenCongress to state legislative data. He also makes sure all of the blinking lights back in the server room keep blinking. He lives in the Mission district of San Francisco.
Contact: carl[at]opencongress
Donny Shaw
Blogger/Researcher
Donny Shaw is a researcher and blogger at OpenCongress. Since 2007, he has been digging through legislative texts, monitoring roll call votes, tracking bills and adding editorial context to congressional info in order to make it intelligible for non-DC-insiders. He lives in Western Massachusetts, and when he’s not researching Congress he’s taking care of apple trees and picking berries.
Contact: donny[at]opencongress.org
Conor Kenny
Wiki Editor
Conor is the Editor of the OpenCongress Wiki. Previously, Conor was the managing editor of Congresspedia (which is now the OC Wiki) and Election Protection Wiki on Sourcewatch. Along with running RaceTracker and other community projects on the OC Wiki, Conor develops our semantic MediaWiki code. He lives in Austin, where he is in his second year of a Masters degree program at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.
Contact: conor[at]opencongress
OC Research Assistants – Summer 2010
Moshe Bildner
OC Research Assistant
Moshe Bildner is a rising Junior at Johns Hopkins University. He is currently studying International and Near Eastern Studies. Areas of interest include immigration and economic policy. He has researched and blogged about campaign finance reform, unemployment insurance, as well as a variety of other topics. In addition to volunteering on OpenCongress, Moshe is training to become an EMT, and in his free time enjoys cooking food almost as much as he enjoys eating it.
Jason Rhee
OC Research Assistant
Jason Rhee is a rising senior at NYU. He is studying economics and public policy. Some of the issue areas he’s researched and blogged about on OC include: unemployment benefits, midterm elections, and taxes. In addition to volunteering on OpenCongress, Jason enjoys longs walks on the beach, puppy dogs, and reading romance novels while taking bubble baths.
Hilary Worden
OC Research Assistant
Hilary Worden will be a second-year student at the University of Washington in the fall, where she is studying Computer Science and Political Science. Some of the issues she’s researched and blogged about on OC include cybersecurity, the federal reserve, and earmark transparency.