Build a better digital future.
Fund ambitious tech
innovation for public good.
IDEMS CommonTech is frontier technology that helps communities create and capture social and economic benefit through locally adapted and owned digital applications, with the support of human-centered AI they can trust.
In early prototype, CommonTech is already supporting multiple social programs to adaptively scale impact to millions of people in dozens of countries. We’ve invested in developing this enabling innovation for applied impact, and we’ve filed the first of a series of defensive patents to protect it.
Now we need dedicated funding to take it further. We’re raising £1.5M in mission-aligned capital over 18 months to protect, show and prove the foundations for public-good technology at scale.
I’m an individual or representative of a foundation or family office interested in funding IDEMS through grant making, donation, or venture philanthropy.
I’m an individual interested in IDEMS Social Enterprise Impact Bonds (SEIBs). IDEMS can’t legally share information with me unless I request it.
Problem
Software has a data problem. That data problem creates a software reuse problem.
Most software buries the knowledge and decisions that make it work inside code. The result is black-box software and systems that only skilled experts can meaningfully adapt or change, and siloed digital applications that can’t share what they know with each other. Adapting a proven digital impact program for a new context, or developing meaningful local innovation, most often means starting over or copying and rewriting existing code, and that takes skills and resources most communities don’t have.
For low-resource communities, and billions of people around the world, the barriers to adapting or building high-quality, locally owned digital applications for local impact are prohibitive.
Instead, top-down, one-size-fits-all digital “solutions” get built for them: solutions that don’t work in or meet the needs of a local context, fail to harness local knowledge and expertise, and introduce at best new dependencies and at worst new harms.
Innovation
IDEMS is reinventing how digital technology works so underserved communities can adapt, own and continuously improve high-quality digital applications to deliver social and economic value in their local contexts.
Each local application is built from expert-maintained foundations and stays connected to these, so local innovation feeds back to strengthen the system for everyone.
IDEMS CommonTech middleware is the go-between: it turns expert-maintained programs – and the myriad variables that make them work – into a library of structured, reusable data, so any number of custom local applications can be adapted from it, each with its own architecture, functionality and content. Built on deep mathematical principles and made useful by advances in AI, the middleware lets non-technical stakeholders adapt and own their applications without losing the connection to state-of-the-field innovation.
CommonTech is made possible by three complementary layers:
- IDEMS Impact Brain: expert resources and software, structured as reusable data in a deterministic core
- IDEMS AI Hands: narrow, bounded AI agents that help communities make sense of the Brain’s structured data to adapt and own localized applications
- IDEMS Impact Weaver: the hub from which local organizations adapt and own their versions
IDEMS has filed the first patent application in a planned series of related defensive patents designed to protect CommonTech innovation for public good; funding will support this work.
AN ALTERNATIVE
DIGITAL FUTURE
CommonTech underpins a different model of technology, built for community ownership, local social impact, and retained economic benefit.
Existing technology scales by replicating the same top-down solution everywhere, whether or not it fits the local context. That isn’t fit for purpose when it comes to social impact, where context is everything. CommonTech scales differently: proven programs and technologies adapt to each new context, instead of being copied into it.
No longer passive “beneficiaries” of expert-developed digital solutions, community organizations own and control their applications for their own context. By design, they also own and control valuable and vulnerable community-level data.
CommonTech also advances an alternative AI future, one defined by narrow and expert AI agents, working only on bounded, trusted data to support better human decision making and outputs. This early funding steps us toward a transition away from existing large language models, data centers, and cloud-based data to small, expert models working with community-held data on community-owned servers.
ALREADY
CREATING IMPACT
CommonTech is already delivering measurably improved impact on early prototype foundations by enabling adaptive scaling of expert-developed programs in parenting, climate-resilient farming, and education in collaboration with local stakeholders.
The University of Oxford’s Global Parenting Initiative and NGO Parenting for Lifelong Health are now scaling digital parenting programs to reduce child abuse on IDEMS innovation. At work in 20+ countries, the open, adaptive parenting program is decreasing physical and sexual abuse and improving caregiver well-being. A program that previously cost $106 per family is now $6 per family. Costs continue to decrease with scale.
The same CommonTech foundations are also supporting:
- The adaptive scaling of Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA). The program brings together rescued local historic climate data, agroecological best practices, and community-level and individual farmer data to help smallholder farmers develop localized and personalized climate-resilient decision making and practice. PICSA now reaches an estimated 1M farmers in 30 countries around the world.
- Open, Adaptive Digital Textbooks for STEM Education. Now in pilot for secondary school mathematics in Kenya, for data science & statistics globally, and for university-level mathematics in US universities, the innovation enables educators to develop custom teaching, learning and assessment for their courses, classrooms and individual students.
Why Now
Increasingly a small handful of companies are designing and deciding everyone’s digital future based on narrow financial interests and metrics of success. AI is accelerating this, further concentrating the control, ownership and value of technology at the expense of low-resource and left-behind communities worldwide.
The alternative has to be as ambitious as the problem: scalable technology that is inclusive and accountable, and that enables communities to create social benefit and retain economic value at the grassroots level.
Ironically, the same AI that’s currently being used to further consolidate the power of big tech can play a key role in transitioning to this entirely new paradigm of community-owned, human-centered technology.
CommonTech is early proof that it can work. It’s already supporting programs in dozens of countries, and we’ve filed the first of a series of defensive patents to protect an alternative way forward for technology.
The window for making the alternative a real choice is now, while AI systems are still being built. Funding lets us file further patents, build out our full IP strategy, and prove the foundations at scale, and it’s how we build a path to sustaining this work and innovation in alignment with our mission and principles.
AN INNOVATIVE
NONPROFIT
IDEMS is a UK Community Interest Company limited by guarantee, a nonprofit structure with no shares and no shareholders. Our legal asset lock means any revenue we generate – from IP licensing, original products and services – must be reinvested in our mission: public-good innovation for underserved communities around the world.
This structure lets us trade, earn and grow more freely than a registered charity typically can. We can hold, license, and commercialize intellectual property, generate revenue like any business, and draw on a full range of capital, from grants and philanthropy to patient, low-interest debt. We just can’t issue shares or pay profits out to shareholders as dividends.
This kind of structure exists because UK charity law wasn’t built for organizations like IDEMS. It was designed for an earlier era of direct giving to “beneficiaries,” and its restrictions on trading, commercializing IP, and paying competitive talent make it poorly suited to developing and sustaining ambitious technology innovation at the pace and scale needed to credibly compete with big tech companies and venture-backed startups.
This combination, full commercial capability paired with a permanent mission lock, is what lets IDEMS build frontier innovation, a genuinely competitive public-good alternative, and long-term sustainability without ever compromising our mission.
For those who can only give to a traditional nonprofit, we’ve set up IDEMS USA, which has 501(c)(3) status in the US through our fiscal sponsor Raft Foundation.
IDEMS is a member of Social Enterprise UK, and the winner of the 2024 UK Social Enterprise International Impact Award.
WHAT £1.5M FUNDS
CommonTech Protection: IDEMS is filing a series of further patents and building a full defensive IP strategy to ensure that innovation is retained for public benefit and social impact.
CommonTech Demonstrator: IDEMS is launching a public CommonTech demonstrator that funders, partners and communities can see and test.
CommonTech Pilot: IDEMS is launching alpha and beta pilots of our Open, Adaptive Statistics & Data Science Textbooks, bringing together the full suite of CommonTech middleware innovation in a single product.
Alongside this, we’ll make key hires in product, tech and operations, and build a funded 3-5 year plan toward long-term, mission-safe sustainability.
HOW WE’RE
RAISING IT
We’re seeking £1.1M from traditional nonprofit funders: foundations, family offices, venture philanthropists, and institutional funders.
We’ve also introduced an avenue that allows us to fundraise from a wider community of supporters. IDEMS Social Enterprise Impact Bonds (SEIBs) are low-interest, long-term debt, designed for individuals who can’t afford to give money away yet want to contribute to building an alternative digital future.
We are raising up to £400K of our total £1.5M goal from a community of individuals who invest anywhere from £2,000 to £50,000 in IDEMS SEIBs.
Current IDEMS funders include the McKnight Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation’s 11th Hour Project, UNDP, the WMO, and GIZ.
I’m an individual or representative of a foundation or family office interested in
funding IDEMS through grant making, donation, or venture philanthropy.
I’m an individual interested in IDEMS Social Enterprise Impact Bonds (SEIBs).
IDEMS can’t legally share information with me unless I request it.