Math & Democracy

“The form 990 is prepared by the organizations external accountant in coordination with the Chief of Staff and Ops Manager. A Complete draft is provided to the Board via email at least one week prior to filing. Board members are invited to submit questions or comments, which are addressed prior to submission.”

“The organization requires all board members and key employees to review and sign the conflict of interest policy annually. Disclosures of potential conflicts are collected and reviewed by the Executive Director and the Board. If a conflict is identified, the affected individual is recused from related discussions and decisions.”

“The Executive Directors compensation (as well as compensation for all contingent and full-time staff) was reviewed and approved by independent non-compensated members of the Board of Directors. The decision was informed by the boards collective experience with compensation norms in the nonprofit and technology sectors, and was based on reasonable expectations given the job responsibilities, performance, and funding context. Approval was last documented via written consent on Friday 8 November 2024.”

“The Executive Directors compensation (as well as compensation for all contingent and full-time staff) was reviewed and approved by independent, non-compensated members of the Board of Directors. The decision was informed by the boards collective experience with compensation norms in the nonprofit and technology sectors, and was based on reasonable expectations given the job responsibilities, performance, and funding context. Approval was last documented via written consent on Friday 8 November 2024.”

“Not available.”

“Professional Services $150,561 program; $27,396 M&G; $54,675 fundraising.”

“Software Maintenance & Development: The Computational Democracy Project (CompDem) designs, engineers, and maintains Polis, an open source, real-time software system for gathering, analyzing and understanding what large groups of people think in their own words, enabled by advanced statistics and machine learning. Polis facilitates large, productive online conversations to unlock breakthrough points of consensus on deadlocked political issues. Polis is a powerful platform for collective self-representation, enabling the construction of an interactive model of the public opinion landscape.CompDem hosts the home instance of Polis, providing free use of the tool to the world. Worldwide on www.pol.is over 600,000 people have participated in deliberative conversations casting over 15.8 million votes on user-generated statements. We steward the AGPL v3 Polis codebase by maintaining stability, security, and deployability; reconciling forks from contributors (including multiple nation states); and coordinating the roadmap for feature development. In 2024 we overhauled the Polis user interface text based on field UX research, added 5 new UI language translations, and integrated Googles Perspective API, which aids human moderators by automatically flagging toxic statements.Facilitation Services: CompDem supports partners to use Polis ethically, rigorously, and creatively. CompDems pro bono work focuses on groups who are advancing democracy and pursuing self-determination. We Provide support and services to governments, First Nations, civil society organizations, social movements, geographic communities, communities based on membership and/or identity, think tanks, independent media outlets, and academic researchers who are undertaking the building of future democratic systems. In 2024 we collaborated with Google Jigsaw to run a pilot program in Bowling Green, KY, in advance of a major community engagement BG2050, that was run in Feb-March 2025. Over the course of the 33 days, 7,890 local residents shared 3,940 unique ideas for the future of Warren County and submitted over a million votes on Polis.Education, Outreach & Networking: The Computational Democracy Project teaches people to apply data science towards problems of civic engagement and collective decision-making. CompDem provides ongoing education in the form of published How-To content and custom training. CompDem maintains an extensive and growing knowledge base for those implementing Polis, as well as an open data repository and open source Jupyter notebooks for academics and data scientists participating in the development of methods.CompDem supports a network of data scientists, civil servants, and ethicists to operate as a community of practice and convenes advisory boards of professionals in relevant fields and other stakeholders. CompDem interviews facilitators around the world, and we maintain a list of narratively written case studies on https://compdemocracy.org/case-studies/CompDem undertakes outreach in the form of public speaking and writing. In 2024, Board President Colin Megill spoke at Google Jigsaw and Stanford University.”