The right home for what AI builds is a public charity.

EffectiveSC is a public charity that builds open technology and helps organizations put AI to work on public problems. We develop software and release it openly. Here is the argument.

What we do

Use case zero: educate

Every nonprofit educates, whether it says so or not. It educates donors about why the work matters, the public about the problem, and the people it serves about what to do next. That is where we help: we work alongside organizations to put AI to work on the educating they already do.

Our charter, written in 2009, is the promotion of emerging technologies to create educational opportunities and public engagement on critical societal concerns. The tools changed; the charter did not. Artificial intelligence now sits inside it, not beside it.

How we begin

Research first, then commitment

We start with research, not commitments. Before we agree to work with an organization, we study the problem alongside them.

We take on one or two efforts at a time, and we choose problems, not clients. What makes us say yes: the problem turns on educating someone, whether donors, the public, or the people being served. The organization will work alongside us rather than hand the problem off. And what we learn together can stay public.

What we hold

Bodies of work created and kept in a public charity

We created the WISER Method: the plays, templates, and methodology for operationalizing AI, published as the WISER Method Master Playbook. It is the operational companion to AI First Principles, the twelve open-source principles for operationalizing AI without automating dysfunction, developed with review from a co-author of the Agile Manifesto. Both are held here. Licensed openly, anyone can use them, and no vendor can bend them toward a product.

Our work includes LevelUp, an open-source personalized and competency-based learning platform, built as source code rather than a subscription. It was developed with Adams County School District 50 in Colorado, inside the district's competency-based learning work funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

We also hold UX Magazine, which has published design thinking for twenty-two years and now covers the intersection of UX and AI. Its community is over 1.2 million people, and its podcast, Invisible Machines, is past one hundred episodes. It keeps its own masthead and its own editorial voice.

Holding these in a public charity keeps them public. That is the point.

What we are not

Not a vendor, not a consultancy

We do not sell licenses, and we do not keep what we learn.

If our work is useful to you, use it.