ABOUT TRESTLE
We are a non-profit team of technologists — engineers, designers, and product managers —who partner with leading movement groups and campaigns doing critical organizing work nationwide.
Trestle’s goal is to strengthen social movement technology so organizers can go further, faster.
Our strategy
Shore up today’s most critical tools:
minimize bad experiences & raise the bar for what’s possible.Recruit and activate a diverse new generation of technologists.
Provide free & low-cost technology expertise to all corners of the movement at a moment’s notice with a focus on BIPOC-lead organizations.
Our impact
Trestle teams have upgraded security, reliability, UX, & product strategy for 65+ critical technology programs across movement and democracy efforts.
We’ve built a diverse network of 130+ experienced technologists.
Trestle has worked with 50+ partners spanning movement orgs, campaigns & organizing tech vendors.
HOW WE WORK
Trestle helps technology organizations and groups using tech to fuel their organizing work to make strategic decisions about product development.
Our areas of expertise lie in the application of 21st century tech best practices to organizing, electoral work and movement building such as:
Organization tech strategy
Product management
Application & digital security
Human-centered design
Software engineering
Product reliability
HOW IT STARTED
During the 2020 election season, major technology outages created a crisis of confidence in political & movement tech — exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and a turn to fully digital organizing.
A group of seasoned civic technologists stepped in to ensure that millions of organizers and volunteers were able to count on the technologies fueling their work in this unprecedented time.
That project, known as Uptime2020, surfaced core dynamics that often lead to security, reliability and user experience shortcomings, and a need for on-going support to this challenging landscape. From Uptime, Trestle Collaborative emerged in response to these lessons.