2024 Open Call

✺  Apply by July 19th for Trestle support in Summer/Fall 2024  ✺

Let’s make sure your tech is strong for the critical organizing work of 2024.

Trestle’s goal is to ensure that tech is never a barrier to winning organizing strategies. That means that your tools are secure, reliable, efficient, accessible, and user-friendly — and that your people are ready to make game time decisions about the tech that powers their organizing.

Since 2020, Trestle has worked with partners across the movement to improve how to buy, build, maintain, or wield technology.

Our Open Call has a dual focus this big year:

Uptime 2024

If you’re ramping up for this year’s general election, then you’re eligible for our election readiness program Uptime 2024. We want to help you get your tech in tip top shape so that your organizers can do what they do best: engage volunteers, mobilize voters and protect our democracy.

Movement Tech Strategy

If you’re pushing forward with year-round movement building efforts, we’re grateful for your hard work and here for you! We can support the tech that amplifies your grassroots organizing and the people behind organizing efforts with tech mentorship, advising, and capacity-building.

ON THIS PAGE

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Summer 2024 Open Call details

Open call closes: July 19, 2024

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This program is for…

Movement organizations or networks who use, buy and/or build their own tools for organizing — progressive, electoral, and nonpartisan social justice groups – grassroots, grasstops, and everywhere in between. 

Candidates, campaigns or committees using tech to power their election work up and down the ballot;

Technology vendors. startups, companies & orgs who build tech for use in electoral or movement work;

Foundations and funders interested in providing technology assistance to grantees or portfolio companies.

We’re especially excited to work with…

Folks who care about making their tools are user-friendly and accessible to people of all backgrounds and abilities;

Organizing efforts that center BIPOC leadership and power building with communities of color;

Groups working to protect LGBTQ+, gender and reproductive rights;

Organizers fighting for just and equitable futures with an intersectional lens, on issues such as climate justice, housing justice, criminal justice, migrant rights, and workers’ rights.

Trestle’s goal is to ensure that high-quality technology services are accessible to all corners of the progressive movement. We work in paid, sliding scale and free capacity — and we encourage you to respond even if you have budget constraints.

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Here’s how Trestle can help

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  • We’ll pair you with a crew of designers, product managers, security specialists, and engineers who’ll help you craft and execute a plan to enhance your tech.

  • We can detect and fix security vulnerabilities as early as possible through our bug bounty program, The Good Catch, conducted in collaboration with Zinc Collective and Higher Ground Labs.

  • We can fill short-term tech staffing gaps, so you can launch key features on schedule, and assist with longer-term tech hiring strategies (from job descriptions to technical interviews).

  • We’ll advise on important choices you might be facing as you build your team’s technology capacity, such as hiring and sustaining tech talent, choosing vendors, and balancing off-the-shelf and custom tools.

  • First, take a deep breath. Then, drop us a line. We’re here to help with rapid response capacity in the event of security attacks, site reliability crashes, sudden urgent changes in product strategy…and any other kind of mayhem the election season throws your way.

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Get support from Trestle

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If you’d like to work with us, please fill out our short and sweet
open call form below by July 19, 2024. 

We love meeting folks looking for extra hands and eyes on their tech, and we are always available to take on new collaborations. Answer a few questions below to begin our work together.

What to expect after you submit

We’ll review submissions  on a regular, rolling basis, using criteria and input from key organizing and movement tech partners. 

We prioritize projects based on impact, need, urgency and values. 

If your team’s needs are a match, we’ll reach out to schedule a call. 

Trestle’s services are available on a sliding scale. Grant funds enable us to work with teams in need of low-cost or free support; if we decide to work together, we’ll scope a project that works with your budget.