OPEN organisations are designed to turn around mobilisation campaigns in 24 hours where bigger NGOs take weeks or months. OPEN members are digital first, non party-political and put a commitment to people power at the heart of all they do.

They specialise in rapidly building online power that translates directly to boosting offline action like timely street protests, offering beds for Ukrainian refugees or ride shares to the polls for Bedouin women in Israel.

This capability has never been more vital. The audacity and mendacity of co-ordinated right-wing players can leave traditional progressive campaigners standing in the dust.

Digitally savvy right-wing and authoritarian forces continue to make startling progress. OPEN is at the heart of a network of organisations capable of providing a direct means of response.

The Online Progressive Engagement Network (OPEN) was founded in 2013 by Ben Brandzel with the aim of globally seeding an innovative campaigning model that had attained significant wins in the USA, UK, Australia and Germany.

The founding organisations of OPEN saw huge potential to multiply progressive impacts across the world by supporting start-up organisations. National leaders would replicate the successful model, adapting it to local circumstances as they saw fit.

Ten years later, across 6 continents and in 14 countries, OPEN members continue to change the game. The core elements that allowed founder members like GetUp! in Australia and 38 Degrees to win big victories are still what drive impact: speed, nimbleness, value-driven working across multiple issues, technological innovation and strategic rigour.

Here’s how OPEN is building the world’s nimblest progressive campaign network.

OPEN can unleash campaigns with our members across multiple countries in a matter of hours, led and shaped by local leadership, like when our start-up member Le Mouvement challenged payment processor Stripe to stop providing services to right-wing outfit Génération Identitaire.

OPEN stepped in to provide the rapid facilitation, strategic assistance and comms capacity needed to escalate and win.

Following a raft of tactics including traditional media op-eds, newspaper ads in the Stripe founders home town, letter-writing, email campaigns and a petition – 10 banks and payment providers, including Stripe, closed accounts held by far right movements within the EU.

OPEN seeds and nurtures progressive leaders who want to replicate the successes of long-standing OPEN members like Australia’s GetUp and Germany’s Campact.

We provide the tech, training and a global community of colleagues. We guide them along an established path to becoming fully member-funded from small donations in their own country.

Right now, we have start-up members in Brazil, Serbia, France and The Netherlands and we are aiming to seed new organisations in Italy, Spain, Mexico and Colombia by 2024.

Read more about how we achieve impact.