Nominations Open for Nation's Top Honor in Public Interest Computing

Tides Pizzigati Prize will award $10,000 to an open source software developer whose work is helping nonprofits succeed

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 20, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Nominations have now opened for the sixth annual Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest, the nation's highest honor for software developers working with nonprofits to help advance innovative social change.

Tides is now accepting nominations for this year's $10,000 prize through October 31. The 2012 winner will be announced in April at the Nonprofit Technology Network annual conference in San Francisco.

Each year, starting in 2006, the Pizzigati Prize has accepted nominations for talented and creative individuals who develop open source software products that demonstrate impressive value to the nonprofit sector.  Tides welcomes nominations from both developers and the nonprofits who work with them.

The most recent Pizzigati Prize winner, Ken Banks, created software that speaks directly to the reality that millions of people globally have only simple mobile phones and no access whatsoever to the Internet. The software Banks has developed turns mobile phones into grassroots organizing tools for everything from mobilizing young voters to thwarting thieving commodity traders.

The 2010 Pizzigati Prize winner, Yaw Anokwa, led the development on Open Data Kit, a modular set of tools that's helping nonprofits the world over on a wide variety of battlefronts, from struggles to prevent deforestation to campaigns against human rights violations.

"Open source software developers like these fill an indispensable role," explains Tides Chief of Staff Joseph Mouzon, a Pizzigati Prize judge and the former Executive Director of Nonprofit Services for Network for Good. "The Pizzigati Prize aims to honor that contribution — and encourage programmers to engage their talents in the ongoing struggle for social change."

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
Tides is a values-based, social change platform that leverages individual and institutional leadership and investment to positively impact local and global communities. Tides pursues multiple, related strategies to promote this mission. From green nonprofit centers to programmatic consulting, donor advised funds to fiscal sponsorship, grants management to risk management and more, Tides gives members of the nonprofit and philanthropic community freedom to focus on the change it wants to see. For more information on Tides visit www.tides.org.

SOURCE Tides