Hi. We’re Good Commons.
We want to help you build strong communities with the knowledge, spaces, and tools they need to participate, connect, and belong.
Are you also looking for better spaces for communication, civic participation, and information-sharing? Together, we can shape the systems that make communities more open, connected, safe, and fair — from journalism to civic life to digital spaces.
We would love to hear from you.
How to help
What can I do with Good Commons?
We’re only just getting started, and we need your expertise!
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Articulate principles
Help the community define shared principles that guide how we design and apply public interest infrastructure.
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Build global networks
Help connect people across journalism, civic tech, research, and community organising.
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Create resources
Help create, enable, and share practical tools, guides, and resources for real-world use.
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Convene communities
Help convene workshops, forums, and events that enable people to learn, collaborate, and act.
About us
What helps a society take care of its people?
Our mission
Good Commons helps you build strong communities with the knowledge, spaces, and tools they need to participate, connect, and belong.
Behind open societies lie quiet, essential systems — from public knowledge to civic spaces to digital tools. Together, these form what some call public interest infrastructure — the shared building blocks that support trust, access, participation, and equity.
Good Commons exists to help you strengthen this civic fabric. We work with journalists, researchers, civic technologists, and community builders to:
articulate shared principles
create practical resources
build global networks
convene communities of action
So that more people, in more places, can take part — and belong.
Read a case study
About us
Good Commons is a collective run by IMS, Jamii Forums, and Splice.
We work across several countries and communities around the world.
We’re bound by a need to help communities build public interest infrastructure that enables access to the knowledge, spaces, and tools that support participation, connection, and belonging.
Who is Good Commons for?
Are you building resources, spaces, solutions, or civic tech anywhere in the world? Good Commons is for you.
Tell us who you are.
Read the report
Public interest infrastructure
This IMS report from March 2023 examines why digital infrastructures are crucial to the work and survival of independent media, particularly in Majority World countries, and why the current infrastructures are a serious threat to press freedom, access to information and democracy.
It also presents inspiration, examples and recommendations to what a broad range of factors can do to create alternative public interest infrastructure and explains why media is a crucial actor to include in these processes.
First, a timeline introduces the key shifts in media and information distribution throughout time.
The first chapter, Digital infrastructure that serves the public interest, outlines basic elements of what public interest infrastructure is and why the scale of our current problems in the digital space forces us to focus more on locally anchored alternatives. It is based on a range of interviews and public events over the past year and a half with leading journalists and tech experts, including IMS partners, from around the world.
Moving closer to the local context, Online risks and social resilience in Myanmar analyses the advantages and dangers of current digital infrastructures in Myanmar, particularly regarding social media and messaging tools. The analysis looks into how digital platforms have increased trust levels and direct communication, but also concludes that the price of these developments has been very high, and that the services posed a threat to the public’s safety after the military coup on 1 February 2021.
Building on leading academic research, Who controls the internet in Myanmar presents a mapping and analysis of the ownership and control of Myanmar’s digital infrastructure, from cell towers and undersea cables to apps, and its consequences for local media and the public. The researchers conclude that the military is in a prime position to turn the country into a digital dictatorship.
The last chapter, How to get there: reimagine, build and scale in the public interest, analyses and proposes what steps independent media, the media development community, global and local communities, governments and donors can take towards creating digital infrastructures that better serve the public interest locally and globally, while introducing solutions that excites us – like local, slow-moving social media platforms and a tool to measure the public interest value of an organisation’s current and future tech procurements.
Finally, the report rounds off with a list of recommendations to catalyse the ambitious work towards the vision of public interest infrastructure. These reflect that we need to join, form and support coalitions with diverse skills and a shared vision at local, regional and global levels.
Join the community
Interested in helping us build better communities? We’re just getting started.
When you sign up, you will receive occasional emails from us when we have events, case studies, and inspiration to share.
We will also be in touch to ask for your ideas. We can’t wait to hear from you!
FAQs
Why is this called ‘Good Commons’?
Here’s how we thought about the name of this movement:
The word commons refers to resources and systems shared by everyone — the foundations of civic life. Adding good signals intent and tone: this is about making those commons stronger, more open, more supportive of all people.
We thought the name was universal, cross-cultural, human — easy to understand across languages and regions.
We felt that it reframes the rather clunky term public interest infrastructure into more accessible, everyday language — bringing warmth, care, and civic purpose to what can otherwise be a technocratic term.
It supports our core theory of change: helping people build strong communities by strengthening the shared systems that support public life.
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Not yet. We may build in grants and funding at a later stage.
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Public interest infrastructure is the systems, services, and resources that support an open, fair, and inclusive society. This can include public knowledge, digital tools, civic spaces, and community services — the building blocks that help people take part in civic life.
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Strong civic systems make societies more open, fair, and resilient. When these systems are weak or missing, trust breaks down, participation drops, and people are excluded. Good Commons helps people build the systems that hold us together — for the benefit of all.
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Thank you for asking!
You can explore our resources, join our workshops and forums, contribute to the growing network of ideas and practice, or partner with us on new projects.
We’re building these out slowly, and we will ask for your help. We welcome collaboration, ideas, and support.