Help pages

Contact us

If your question isn't answered here, or you just wanted to let us know something about the site, contact us.

Credit where credit’s due #

Alaveteli, the software that powers Demo Alaveteli, is a project of mySociety, a UK organisation. mySociety builds websites that empower citizens to hold authorities to account. And this is one of those sites.

Development #
Hearty cheers to Alaveteli’s many contributors.

How to help #
Become a volunteer #

If you have a passion for transparency, a great deal of patience, and a bit of spare time, consider becoming one of Demo Alaveteli's volunteer admin team. Work includes user support, helping to resolve legal issues, and shaping the site’s direction, and is primarily managed via email.

In the first instance, get in touch.

mySociety, Alaveteli's parent organisation, is a charity. WhatDoTheyKnow, our most-visited Alaveteli site, costs thousands of pounds each year, for overheads such as servers, maintenance and development.

Your contributions, however small, really help. Donate here.

Sort things out #

Admin can be fun! Help people find successful requests, and monitor performance of authorities, by playing the categorisation game.

Or be a dear, and find out FOI email addresses of authorities that we're missing.

Spread the word #

We don’t have a massive marketing budget, so word of mouth really helps.

  • Write a blog post about Demo Alaveteli, or an interesting request that you've found.
  • Post about the site, and what you can do with it, on a forum that you frequent.
  • Tell friends about it.
  • Let your local newspaper or community magazine know how useful we are.
  • Give a talk.
  • Ask us for leaflets to leave in your local library or coffee shop.
Improve our code #

Seen something that could work better? If you're a programmer, get the source code for our parent project, Alaveteli and send us a pull request. Demo Alaveteli is coded in Ruby on Rails.