I’m delighted to announce that today the Governance & Citizen Engagement (GCE) initiative at Omidyar Network officially becomes Luminate: an independent organisation focused on empowering people and institutions to work together to build just and fair societies – www.luminategroup.com.
Over the past ten years, Omidyar Network has enabled our work to innovate and thrive. We’ve built a team with deep expertise and have supported more than 200 organisations in 18 countries. Now, we’ve taken the experience and capabilities developed over our first decade and shaped them into a new organisation designed for the next-generation of opportunities and challenges. Our mission as Luminate is to empower people and improve lives; to ensure people have the opportunity to participate in and influence the issues affecting their societies; and to make government, corporations, media, and those in positions of power more responsive and more accountable.
We will pursue these aims in close partnership with existing and new investees. Our funding will be provided by the Chair of our new board, Pierre Omidyar, and we will remain part of The Omidyar Group. We will continue to work very closely with Omidyar Network and other philanthropic organisations to achieve greater impact together.
Our evolution to become Luminate has been driven by two critical factors. First, the need to respond robustly to the complex and connected issues we’re all seeing emerge in the current political and social environment. Second, the changing needs of our investees as they work to achieve greater impact, often in the face of fast-moving and sometimes unpredictable challenges.
In response we’re now:
Expanding our activity within our four impact areas: Civic Empowerment, Data & Digital Rights, Financial Transparency, and Independent Media.
Tailoring funding and support to each investee, to help them thrive and enhance their effectiveness.
Raising our voice to become more outspoken on the issues we care about.
Aiming to become more agile in our response to changing conditions, from how we work together as teams to the models we explore and deploy.
We’ll also be placing a greater emphasis on new approaches in Policy & Advocacy, Storytelling and Strategic Litigation, and we’ll become more operational to reflect these new priorities.
Please do feel free to share this news with your networks and social channels. At the link below, you can find social media content that you might find useful as a starting point: https://onllc.egnyte.com/fl/4qlde2NQLN
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The team here is excited by the opportunities ahead and we look forward to telling you more about Luminate. In the meantime, there’s a little more background on our launch of Luminate in this blog post. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Best wishes,
Stephen King
CEO
Luminate
Our mailing address is:
36-38 Hatton Garden
London EC1N 8EB
