Our approach consists of three key operating principles that inform everything we do:

• macro and micro level activities
• collaboration and the consolidation of expertise
• sustainable technology promotion

Macro and Micro Level Activities

On the wider, macro level, Tactical Tech strives to recognise regional trends, organising large-scale workshops and developing thematic toolkits. The intention is to create design solutions that can be tweaked or adapted to a range of circumstances, giving Tactical Tech a broad reach across a range of organisations and geographies. These activities are concentrated in the Skill Building programme area.

At the narrower, micro level, Tactical Tech engages in hands-on work with specific NGOs, drawing expertise from its wide network and tailoring solutions to meet specific needs. These smaller, more focused projects allow us to test and improve solutions – informing the development of other projects, while allowing us to gauge real needs and challenges. These activities are concentrated in the Movement Building programme area.

Collaboration and Consolidation of Expertise

The ability to identify expertise and bring together the right combination of people has become one of Tactical Tech's strongest assets.

You can see this in our approaches to:

• Skill sharing amongst practitioners and knowledge sharing amongst advocacy organisations
• Selecting regional and issue-specific facilitators to share expertise
• Toolkits and handbooks based on principles of peer review and collective expertise
• Group expertise, such as advisory groups for Source Camps and editorial teams for toolkits
• Partnership: each project has either a topical or a regional partner.

By emphasising the importance of peer learning and knowledge sharing, we are able to find more sustainable ways of building capacity – creating a stronger, more robust non-profit community.

Sustainable Technology Promotion

Tactical Tech, as an organisation with a purely practical mission, believes first and foremost in recommending the most appropriate tool for the job at hand.

Training and advising NGOs in technology use is our business. It is vital that we only promote tools that are accessible by the people and organisations we advise. The distribution of tools needs to be legal, affordable, and appropriate. Tactical Tech believes that this responsibility involves ensuring that NGOs do not get locked into solutions that bring financial difficulties.

For these reasons, Tactical Tech mainly promotes Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and a Creative Commons approach to content licensing and issues related to intellectual property.

We strongly believe that this is the future of information technology for the non-profit community.