Open Source in the Social Sector: Findings from a Year-Long Study

GitHub Social Impact’s Open Source for Good program has released the results of its research into how open source software (OSS) is adopted, produced, and funded across the social sector. The report, Open Source in the Social Sector, draws on two expert convenings, a literature review, a survey of over 350 respondents, and 55 in-depth qualitative interviews with organizations working in public health, international development, disaster risk management, and humanitarian response.

The research categorizes social sector participants into three distinct roles.

Producers, Consumers, and Funders

Producers actively contribute to OSS projects. This includes writing code, but also extends to maintaining projects by triaging bugs, responding to comments, managing project boards, and onboarding new contributors. Other production activities involve defining governance structures, aligning projects to requirements, contributing to UI/visual design, and creating or maintaining documentation.

Consumers are organizations or individuals that use at least one OSS project without contributing code back to the original project or open sourcing any work built on top of it.

Funders provide external monetary support for technology initiatives, whether directed at an organization, an individual, or a specific project.

How OSS Strengthens Programmatic Work

The study identified several concrete ways OSS supports the social sector’s operations and mission-driven work. Examples include using OSS to introduce Agile and Human-Centered Design practices within organizations, building custom mobile deployments for public health programs, and structuring funding streams so that infrastructure and end-user application code are financed separately.

The report also offers recommendations for improving how OSS is adopted, with actionable findings aimed at four audiences:

  • Technology implementers working within social sector organizations
  • Funders of social sector technology
  • Developers and technology companies seeking to engage with the social sector
  • Open source platform providers and advocates

The findings are already informing ongoing Open Source for Good projects, including the MERL Center, and the research is intended to serve as a foundation for future work in both the open source and social sector communities. The paper was authored by Gina Assaf and Mala Kumar, with contributions from Admas Kanyagia and John Jones of the Case Foundation.