20^th of September 2017: ISD has today announced its partnership with Google.org to launch a £1m innovation fund to counter hate and extremism in the UK. This fund will help innovators and campaigners from the technology, academic, and charity sectors develop projects to tackle the challenge of extremism.

Kent Walker, Google's Senior Vice President & General Counsel announced the fund in a blog post this morning, ahead of his speech on behalf of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism at the UN General Assembly today. Walker noted that this will be largest project of its kind outside of government and will produce innovative, effective, and data-driven solutions that undermine extremist messaging and propaganda.

The fund will support the development of unique projects both on and offline, which build the resilience of at-risk audiences to hate and extremism, across the UK. This will range from tech solutions to the challenge, such as YouTube’s redirect technology, through to community youth projects promoting resilience and cohesion.

The ISD team will manage the fund, building on our heritage researching and innovating on and offline solutions to hate and extremism for over a decade. We will work with successful organisations to develop and scale their projects to achieve measurable impact on this issue.

Kent Walker Senior Vice President & General Counsel at Google said “By supporting experts like ISD, we hope to support sustainable solutions to extremism both online and offline. We don’t have all the answers, but we’re committed to playing our part. We’re looking forward to helping bring new ideas and technologies to life.”

Sasha Havlicek, ISD CEO, added “Civil society and the private sector can together play a vital role in overcoming hate and extremism so we’re delighted to be partnering with Google.org to launch this fund in the UK.  It will provide the expertise, support and investment needed to implement innovative solutions to the challenge of extremism at scale. We have seen this model used to address other major global challenges– disease, climate change, access to education – with impressive results, so we’re eager to work with a wide range of innovators on developing their ideas in the coming months.”

The fund will be accepting a first round of applications in November with grants from £2,000-£200,000 awarded to successful proposals. An independent advisory board, made up of experts and public figures including academics, policymakers, educators, representatives from creative agencies, civil society and the technology sector, will assess proposals submitted.

This UK fund is part of a global commitment from Google.org to pledge $5m to support solutions to hate and extremism around the world.