About us

People-Controlled Technology for Social Change

Progressive Technology Project (PTP) is organizing resistance to oppressive corporate technologies through political education, movement building, and creating people-controlled technology that serves the needs of community organizations. We are the home for collaboratively shaping the role of technology in the social justice movement. Learn more

We Provide People-Controlled Technology

We Are Building a Movement to Resist Oppressive Corporate Technology

We Train Social Justice Groups How to Strategically Use Technology

We Provide Political Education on the Relationship Between Technology and Social Change

Testimonials

We have worked with hundreds of movement organizations over our 20 year history.

  • I learned things in this [Grassroots Fundraising & Technology] training that will greatly increase my organization’s ability to have successful fundraising campaigns.

    Misha Cornelius

    Black Organizing Project

  • PTP helps our organization combine communications and technology to go further.

    Christina Parker

    Grassroots Leadership

  • PowerBase is a gift for organizations large and small that want technology that is designed by and for organizers.

    Robin Schneider

    Texas Campaign for the Enivironment

  • Thanks to PTP’s REVERB team Iowa CCI has not just one, but TWO new websites that are simple, affordable and – get this – useful.

    Hugh Espey

    Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement

From our blog

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How nonprofits can off-ramp from Big Tech

on February 10, 2025

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jane_M._Byrne_Interchange_4-1-22.jpg, license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en This blog was originally posted on NTEN. Many of us invested countless hours, months, and years learning how to use Twitter and Facebook to build followers, promote our organizations, and engage and mobilize new folks with our projects and campaigns. The Progressive Technology Project even held organizing and strategic communication trainings to help nonprofit organizations avoid getting left behind during the Web 2.0 mania.

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Venture Capital and Organizing Databases

on June 3, 2024

A couple of articles have come to our attention recently about the politics, power and money behind the technologies where our movement houses our data. The first is from Klein and Roth Consulting’s recent newsletter entitled Do You Know Who Owns Your CRM (and Why it Matters)? by Haley Bash of Donor Organizer Hub and the second is entitled Living with VANxiety: The Present and Future of Progressive Movement Tech by journalist Micah L.

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Is it important to control our communication tools today? What about tomorrow?

on August 9, 2023

Many of us have seen the recent headlines about Zoom using audio and video content from calls to train its Artificial Intelligence (AI) models. Some aspects of this story are familiar, but there are a two angles that are worth considering more carefully. The first is access. Can zoom access our conversations? Despite Zoom’s best marketing effort in 2020 claiming they are rolling out end-to-end encryption, the truth is that virtually none of our zoom meetings are end-to-end encrypted.

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Can we build alternatives to corporate technology?

on May 1, 2023

May First Movement Technology has released a report: “Politics and practices of an autonomous technology: voices from the May First membership.” Based on extensive interviews, the report explores why and how social justice movement organizers and activists are building a sustainable and powerful alternative to corporate technology. According to Alice Aguilar, executive director of Progressive Technology Project and one of the authors of the report: It’s not possible to have a truly collective approach to technology without cultivating a radically inclusive space that is representative of our movements.

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