Hylo Wins the 2026 Pizzigati Prize
Hylo has been named the recipient of the 2026 Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest by NTEN
We have some exciting news to share: Hylo has been named the recipient of the 2026 Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest — an honor we hold with deep gratitude and a renewed sense of purpose.
What is the Pizzigati Prize?
The Pizzigati Prize, awarded annually by NTEN, celebrates open-source software developers who build tools that help nonprofits and advocacy organizations do their work more effectively. It honors the life and legacy of Antonio “Tony” Pizzigati, an early open-source advocate and MIT-trained computer scientist who championed the idea that technology works best when it is shared freely in service of the common good.
Why this recognition matters to us
At Hylo, we’ve always believed that the tools movements use to coordinate shape the movements themselves. When technology is proprietary, extractive, or optimized for engagement over relationship, it pulls communities away from their own values. When it’s open, participatory, and built with the people it serves, it can do the opposite: deepening trust, widening participation, and growing shared power.
This prize affirms something we’ve felt in the work for years: that the communities using Hylo are not just users. They are co-designers, stewards, and teachers. Every bioregional network, mutual aid group, peer learning circle, and regenerative agriculture cooperative that has built their home on Hylo has taught us what good coordination infrastructure actually needs to be.
What we’re building, and why it matters now
Hylo is a community-led, prosocial coordination platform for purpose-driven groups. We are open-source, nonprofit, and built through participatory design with communities at the forefront of regenerative agriculture, community resilience, peer learning, equity, inclusive capital, and place-based organizing.
Features like nested groups and cross-group collaboration aren’t just technical choices — they reflect a theory of change. Real social transformation happens when siloed efforts discover common ground and begin acting together. Hylo’s architecture is designed to make that possible: emergent coalitions with more power to address shared challenges.
But we’re clear-eyed about the limits of technology. Successful coordination takes more than software. It requires deep trust, strong relationships, and a great deal of human care. Hylo exists to support that human work, not replace it.
What’s next The $10,000 cash grant that accompanies this prize will go directly toward sustaining and deepening Hylo’s work. That means continuing to develop features shaped by community input, supporting the organizers and facilitators who make our member groups thrive, and expanding our capacity to serve place-based and bioregional networks across Turtle Island and beyond.
We are grateful to NTEN and to the Pizzigati Prize committee for this recognition. We’re grateful to every community that has trusted Hylo as a home for their organizing. And we’re grateful to Tony Pizzigati’s memory — a reminder that building software for the public good is itself a form of advocacy, and a gift to the future.
