The Tides Foundation will be accepting nominations for this year's competition through December 15. The 2011 prize winner will be announced this March at the Nonprofit Technology Network annual conference in Washington, D.C.
Tides has hosted the Pizzigati Prize ever since its inception in 2006. Each year's competition welcomes the nominations of individuals who have developed an open source software product that has demonstrated impressive value to the nonprofit sector.
This past year's Pizzigati Prize winner, University of Washington doctoral student Yaw Anokwa, has been the lead developer on Open Data Kit, a modular set of tools that's helping nonprofits the world over collect data, via mobile phones, on everything from deforestation to human rights violations.
The winner of the 2009 Pizzigati Prize, Darius Jazayeri, blazed the programming path for OpenMRS, an open source software application that health clinics and hospitals in poor communities world-wide are now using to keep, share, and track medical record data.
"Software developers like these fill an indispensable role," explains Joseph Mouzon, a Pizzigati Prize judge and the Principal of JAM Consulting. "The Pizzigati Prize aims to honor that contribution - and encourage programmers to engage their talents in the ongoing struggle for social change success."
"We accept nominations from both developers and the nonprofits working with them," notes Nicole Puller, the Tides Philanthropic Services Associate who coordinates the annual Pizzigati Prize competition. "Developers are doing wonderfully creative work. They deserve the widest possible recognition."
The Pizzigati Prize honors the brief life of Tony Pizzigati, an early advocate of open source computing. Born in 1971, Tony spent his college years at MIT, where he worked at the world-famous MIT Media Lab. Tony died in 1995, in an auto accident on his way to work in Silicon Valley.
Full details on the Pizzigati Prize, the largest annual award in public interest computing, appear online at www.pizzigatiprize.org.
About Tides
A nonprofit founded in 1976, Tides partners with philanthropists, foundations, activists, and organizations across the country and around the globe to promote economic justice, robust democratic processes, and the opportunity to live in a healthy and sustainable environment where human rights are preserved and protected. Tides offers an array of services that amplify the efforts of forward-thinking individuals and organizations working to make the world a better place. With offices in San Francisco and New York City, Tides provides nonprofit management for 230 groups across the country; creates green nonprofit centers; and has granted more than one billion dollars to nonprofits working for positive social change. For more information, visit www.tides.org.
