Our Mission

Open North is a Canadian non-profit that creates online tools to educate and empower citizens to participate actively in Canadian democracy. We develop tools for civil society and governments to reduce the barriers to effective participation. We do this with two main strategies:

1. Improve access to government information

• make it easily available, by pulling it out of dark corners of government websites, taking it out of PDFs and making access to information requests
• make it accessible, by providing context to numbers, explaining legislative jargon and using language everyone understands
• make it relevant, by letting citizens find information specific to their community, interests and situation

2. Make participation easy, fun, and meaningful

• work with governments to design new participatory processes and to ensure citizen’s voices are heard
• increase the number of ways citizens can engage with elected officials and government information
• help citizens connect with each other and organize around issues they care about

Read more about our work with governments, media, and nonprofits.

How We're Funded

Open North is a federal nonprofit funded through contracted services, grants, sponsorships, awards, and corporate and individual donations.

2012

In addition to the contributions below, contracted services totaled another $27,360.

• Department of Natural Resources, Government of Canada $87,503.54

  To develop Open511 through its GeoConnections program

• Google Canada $10,000.00

  To support the development of MaMairie.ca through a sponsorship

• Société de développement économique Ville-Marie (CLD) $10,000.00

  Through its Social Economy program

• Caisse d’Économie Solidaire Desjardins $5,000.00

  Through the Institut du Nouveau Monde's À go on change le monde! program

• Société de développement économique Ville-Marie (CLD) $1,000.00

  Through the Québec Entrepreneurship Contest

• Corporate and individual donations $4,210.29