By Nick Scott and Daniel Huegli, Unions 21 | 7 min
The tech for unions ecosystem organisations
To produce the blogs we reached out to organisations that are passionate about supporting unions build their strength using technology (including AI). The following seven organisations have spoken to us about their insights and the work with unions.
Change Agent
Change Agent builds AI for unions, nonprofits, and mission-driven organisations. It positions itself as the alternative to "Big AI”, with generative AI that serves social-sector missions accountable to stakeholders.
Vision: Building AI of, by and for the social sector, cultural competence and bias mitigation in the model's language, privacy over profit, low energy footprint and pro-worker positioning, being a partner as well as a platform, and independence via its own model and infrastructure with no Big Tech or VC dependencies.
Services: A private AI platform for nonprofits, unions, and campaigns (a sector-tuned large language model on the company's own infrastructure); implementation and team setup, AI Bootcamp training, co-built custom workflows, ongoing consulting, fine-tuned custom models and personas, multi-org administration.
Clients: State Voices, SEIU, Working Families, Community Change, MomsRising and Color of Change.
Digital/Organizing
Digital/Organizing is a full-service digital agency for progressive causes, building the campaign infrastructure and running the communications, fundraising and mobilisation work on top of it.
Vision: To help movements, organisations, and campaigns that work for a free, just, ecological, and solidary society through close, transparent, and honest collaboration that leaves the client organisation durably stronger rather than dependent on an external service provider.
Headquarters: Zurich, Switzerland.
Services: Communication strategy, content and storytelling, campaign planning and management, research and opinion polling, media relations, social media, digital advertising, visual communication, copywriting, video production, and training. Digital fundraising and donor journeys, direct mail, major donor fundraising, lead generation, organising and community building, email and messenger marketing, and training. Digital infrastructure and automation, websites, action pages, interactive platforms, artificial intelligence, marketing automation, CRM, and data analysis and visualisation.
Clients: Trade unions, trade union confederations, NGOs, political parties, referendum and election campaigns.
Contact: kontakt@digitalorganizing.ch
Join Together
Join Together is a worker-led co-operative building digital tools for trade unions.
Vision: To make it easier for people to join a union and stay a member. Increasing trade union membership in the UK and around the world. Better online joining means unions recruit more members, get bigger and win.
Headquarters: UK.
Services: The flagship product is a conversion-optimised online joining platform for unions that integrates with existing membership CRMs and a campaigns feature to tailor joining journeys by workplace, organiser or moment; a lightweight self-service web tool for members to refresh their own details without login-based member portals.
Clients: National Education Union, Communication Workers Union, Fórsa in Ireland, the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, ASLEF and the Royal College of Midwives.
Contact: hello@jointogether.online
Tectonica
Tectonica is a creative and digital agency working exclusively with progressive movements, campaigns, and non-profits.
Vision: A movement-building agency with a stated mission of driving a seismic shift in how politics is done in support of social, economic, and environmental justice.
Headquarters: Spain.
Services: Community capacity building through their trainings and organising methodology; strategic discovery, including CRM/tech-stack assessments; movement infrastructure, covering solutions design, website design and development, CRM implementation and integrations; and people-based campaigning, including campaign planning and strategy, rapid response, microsites, list building, digital ads and fundraising.
Clients: UNI Global Union, FNV's Voor16
Contact: https://www.tectonica.co/hire_us
Poteris
Poteris is a collective of technology and digital specialists on a mission to empower and elevate the capabilities of charities, campaigners, and changemakers so they can bring about positive change.
Vision: To give small nonprofit teams the digital and technology capacity they deserve, and build solutions that meet people where and when they need them. Working in the open, delivering impact, equitable empowerment, effective fit-for-purpose solutions, and fair and inclusive access to technology.
Headquarters: London, UK.
Services: Ongoing retained support service for nonprofit teams including customer-facing software, CRM selection and optimisation, database structures, workspace tools, hosting and website development, and cybersecurity, as well as its own growing set of tools.
Clients: PCS, HCSA, TUC, and a number of charities and campaign organisations
Contact: https://poteris.co.uk/contact/
Rootcause
Rootcause positions itself as technologists and first-class communicators combining AI, data, and deep communications experience to give mission-driven clients an edge in highly contested narrative environments.
Vision: To work at the intersection of technology, media and policy, using AI to monitor, filter, analyse and shape public discourse, and to frame better-informed communicators as the route to better decisions, better outcomes and collective power to protect the values and people its clients care about.
Headquarters: UK.
Services: a subscription strategic intelligence briefing with a content activation layer, a weekday newsletter drafted by the Drumbeat giving critical analysis of Reform UK, Consultancy covers narrative and framing analysis, training and facilitation workshops on AI and information environments, and bespoke response to communications, policy and advocacy challenges
Clients: TUC, the Oak Foundation, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Foundation.
Contact: https://rootcause.global/contact
Uniofy
Uniofy is a company building comprehensive digital organising software for the union movement.
Vision: To enable the freedom to organise and operate within your own organisation anywhere in the world. A breeding ground for trade unions to promote democracy, a functioning civil society, respect for human dignity, and the realisation of human rights.
Headquarters: Finland.
Services: a mobile-first digital interface intended to replace what it calls the jungle of multiple systems with one package covering a union's members, shop stewards and staff. For a single monthly service fee, customers get the platform, browser and mobile app access, support services, maintenance and continuous product development,
Clients: Nordic and other European trade unions across different sectors, as well as a global federation.
Contact: Aslak.Haarahiltunen@uniofy.com and Antti.Maki@uniofy.com
The questions
The seven organisations each replied to our set of questions on these topics:
Your work
Tell us who you are and what your organisation does with unions and progressive organisations. What drew you to working with the movement?
What hostile actors do well
The far right, hostile parties and governments, and harder-line employers tend to move fast and use every platform – astroturfing, ad operations, slicing and dicing audiences. From where you sit, what are they doing well with technology that unions should learn from?
The opportunity for unions
What role could technology realistically play in helping unions stand up to hostile actors? Where's the biggest opportunity you see going unused?
Where it's easy, where it's hard
Working with unions, where do you get good results quickly – and where does it get hard? Be candid: what tends to get in the way?
What unions misunderstand
What do unions most often get wrong about technology, or about what adopting it really takes – in terms of culture, structure, and how people work day to day?
Being better partners
What could unions do to be better partners – to brief you better, prepare better, build staff skills, involve the right people – so the technology actually lands and lasts?
Preparing for the future
Looking ahead, what should unions be doing now to get ready – on AI in particular, but also more broadly? Are there things that should be prioritised (training, hiring, horizon-scanning or otherwise) Where are unions furthest behind, and what would being genuinely ready actually look like?
What Unions 21 could do
What could Unions 21 usefully do here: connecting unions to providers like you, connecting unions to each other, or supporting the cultural and structural change that adoption really needs?
Anything else
Anything we haven't asked that you'd want unions to hear?
