We cannot claim locally led development while planning an AI future that leaves local organisations to figure it out alone.
Partners are how The Outrigger Project will build reach, quality, innovation and sustainability. The Open Outrigger platform will only work if it is built with the region rather than for it. During our establishment phase we are engaging a small number of prospective partners across each of the areas below, deliberately and selectively.
Our partnership approach
Outrigger Crew will be the community of practice behind Open Outrigger's development and use. It is for the practitioners already experimenting with AI across NGOs, contractors and development programs, and it exists so that expertise has somewhere to gather while the field is still forming.
Over time we plan for the Outrigger Crew to offer a moderated discussion space, newsletter and webinar series, in-person events, a resource library and training on using Open Outrigger well. Importantly, regional practitioners will have standing as co-creators.
Outrigger Crew has not been launched yet. If you would like to be part of it from the start, register your interest on the contact page and choose "Outrigger Crew" as your reason for contact.
Outrigger Crew
The AI-for-development space is converging from two directions. Development actors are adopting AI, and AI companies and organisations are learning about the development sector. We are looking for partners across both domains, along with development technology peers building free and open digital public goods for the region.
AI tools work better inside organisations that hold structured context and current frameworks. That makes this complementary work, not competing work, and we would rather connect with the adjacent tools you are working on than duplicate them.
Partnerships for innovation
Open Outrigger's module quality depends on the custodians of development standards. These are the thematic experts, peak bodies and the institutions behind the guidance each module draws on.
We will engage these partners as baseline developers, validators and reviewers. Open Outrigger's baselines will align with the standards the sector already holds itself to, in Australia and in the region. Full attribution will be published in the baseline library and no module will reach beta testing without expert review.
The evidence base for AI-enabled organisational strengthening barely exists. We are committed to measuring and publishing our own results, and we are seeking research and policy partners who want to build that evidence with us.
Partnerships for standards, research and policy
Capability tools risk becoming one-way transfers that impose external frameworks on local organisations. Co-design is how we address that risk.
Open Outrigger will be co-designed and road-tested with organisations across multiple countries, shaping everything from module content to how concepts translate for speakers of English as a second language. Co-design cohorts will deliberately include organisations led by women, people with disability and Indigenous Peoples, and partners will hold visible ownership of what they helped build.
Co-design is real work and we will resource it rather than ask stretched organisations to donate their time. We will seek partners through the region's own NGO coordination bodies, national platforms and GEDSI networks, so baselines are grounded in the standards the region has already set for itself.
Partnerships for localisation
The core Open Outrigger platform and its baseline content will be free and open, permanently. Local organisations will never pay to use them.
Sustaining that free core is a design problem we take seriously. We do not seek to become grant-dependent and then abandon our community when the project finishes. Instead, we are building a social enterprise model where those with resources fund priority work that is released free to all, and revenue eventually sustains the platform, the community and the standard over the long term.
In our early establishment phase we are seeking grant funding to allow us to focus on building a quality platform. In later phases, when Open Outrigger's standards are trusted, we will step back from grant funding and use concessional finance to grow the social enterprise revenue that sustains the free public good.
Partnerships for sustainability
The fastest route to the local organisations Open Outrigger serves is through the programs and networks already working alongside them, particularly volunteer and scholarship programs, Australian NGOs with regional partner networks, alumni networks and locally led enterprise programs.
Reach partners will carry Open Outrigger into relationships they already hold, on their terms and at their pace. Nothing in this model asks a partner to vouch for something they have not seen work, which is why reach conversations will follow field validation rather than run ahead of it.
Partnerships for reach
The Outrigger Project is First Nations-owned, and that shapes how it partners. We will bring First Nations businesses into our delivery chain and work with First Nations networks in the international development sector. We will also pursue partnerships that connect First Nations Australians with Indigenous Peoples' organisations across the region.
We are grounded in First Nations ways of working, particularly ensuring relational accountability and non-extractive engagement. We take seriously our commitment to respecting data sovereignty and Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) rights and will strictly apply these standards in all aspects of our work.
First Nations engagement
