Our Featured Projects

AVID

The organisation

AVID is a national network of visitor groups to immigration detention. They work with locally owned initiatives to end the human suffering caused by detention.

The need

As it grew, the organisation needed a data management solution to keep track of their data. Before, AVID was using a range of tools which were difficult to collate, manage, and draw insights from.

AVID also has access to extensive data through groups in its network about the harms of immigration detention: beyond data management, AVID also wanted a tool which would enable them to better track and monitor this evidence for advocacy purposes.

The outcome

We worked with the organisation to identify the tool that would provide CRM functionality while keeping the costs and complexity low.

We chose Baserow, an open source Airtable alternative, to build a database with CRM functionality. The new system integrates with AVID’s website, Stripe, and email suite through Zapier automations.

This solution now manages information on member organisations, funding applications, subscriptions and donations, events, and systemic abuse and failures in immigration detention centres in the UK.

Bleibewerk

The organisation

The advisory services of the Bleibewerk Bonn are aimed at asylum seekers and humanitarian refugees. They provide information and assistance on asylum procedures, family reunion, unemployment benefits, social assistance, asylum seeker benefits law, and residence advice.

The need

There was a need for a case management system to keep track of the data and automate manual processes, and of an analytics tool to provide insights on their casework.

Before, Bleibewerk was using a drive to store their data in Word docs, pdfs, and Excel files, with a lot of the processes being manual. They had started tracking information on their casework in a spreadsheet, but the insights were limited.

The outcome

We built a demo of a case management system with CiviCRM and its CiviCase plugin, to demonstrate the benefits for information storage and management and the automation of casework flows for appointment dates, case progressions, and communication. Satisfied with the demo, Bleibewerk was able to hire a CiviCRM subcontractor for implementing the system.

For analytics, we chose to keep complexity at the lowest by building dashboards on Google Sheets, providing visualisations on the nationalities, sources of referrals, methods of contact, etc.

Tech For Palestine

The organisation

Tech For Palestine is a coalition of 5,000+ founders, engineers, product marketers, community builders, investors, and other tech folks working towards Palestinian freedom.

They are operating a number of projects, including building websites for political campaigning, apps for supporting the BDS movement, and analysis on media reporting.

The need

  1. A team worked on evidencing media bias in large US, UK, and EU publications when it came to reporting on the war in Gaza.

  2. Another team aimed at accurately referencing demonstrations and protest camps across the world, so as to inform the public about opportunities for civic engagement and peaceful assembly.

The outcome

  1. Using Natural Language Processing and Large Language Models, we explored analysis avenues for evidencing bias across a number of journals, identifying patterns and trends on bias through framing, choice of wording, and omissions of information. This work is ongoing.

  2. We supported with research and testing of the protest websites, improving information accuracy.

Nouveau Front Populaire/La Barricade

The organisation

The Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) is a coalition of the French Left parties, formed to prevent the far-right Rassemblement National from getting to power in the legislative elections of 2024.

La Barricade is a collective of activists involved with the NFP, providing web development, research, design, and social media services.

Our contributions to this work aims to increase civic engagement and political participation.

The need

  1. In the hours and days following the first round of the elections, the collective La Barricade needed an accurate picture of the results, the candidates, the key districts where campaigning should be prioritised, so as to increase voter turnout.

  2. A complex and ongoing piece of work involved improving La Barricade’s canvassing tool used by NFP parties, aiming to increase political participation.

  3. A team has formed around building a clone of LobbyFacts.eu to increase transparency around lobbying in the French Parliament.

The outcome

  1. We were among the first to produce the data through data scraping and make it available to the community.

  2. We are currently supporting the canvassing tool development with data science and engineering expertise. The enhanced tool will enable NFP members and activists to efficiently reach prospective voters during election campaigns and increase civic engagement within the country.

  3. We are leading project management and research efforts for a LobbyFacts clone to increase transparency around lobbying in the French Parliament, and will provide data analysis and visualisation expertise once the tool is built.

Charity Commission register

The organisation

The Charity Commission is the government department in charge of registering and regulating charities in England and Wales, to ensure that the public can support charities with confidence. They release information on all their registered charities as open data, for researchers and journalists to be able to analyse it.

The need

While the Charity Commission data is openly available, access to statistics on it are lacking.

We took the initiative of producing an exhaustive analysis of the data, with insights on data quality, charity mergers, and trustees.

The outcome

We uncovered a number of data quality issues (missing data, wrong information, lack of standardisation), produced insights on mergers (legal status of parties to a merger, their financial characteristics, especially large mergers or splits, charities frequently engaging in mergers, and the financial effects of mergers), and are working on analysing trustee patterns (characteristics of charity boards, “repeat trustees”).

With support from the NCVO, we aim to share our findings on data quality with the Charity Commission.

Other engagements

We have also provided or are providing advice and volunteering services for data analysis and management to Thames Reach, a homelessness charity, and Settle, an organisation supporting care-experienced young people.