Dear SFUL members:

As some of you know, when I'm not playing Ultimate around San Francisco, I work with an amazing non-profit watchdog called Global Integrity ( www.globalintegrity.org ). Well, our little start up just got nominated for an international award from Ashoka. The winners are decided by popular vote, so we need to mobilize people who believe in what we do: fighting for open government, real accountability and citizen engagement to fight government corruption worldwide. If this is your bag, you can skip to the voting instructions and link below.

A bit more about us: Global Integrity, based in San Francisco and Washington D.C., is an independent, international group that works to show that corruption scandals -- from Washington to Sudan -- are not random events, but are the product of broken systems. Working in over 50 countries, we employ roughly 300 local journalists and researchers working to improve those systems through transparency, accountability and citizen engagement.

Global Integrity has been selected as a finalist from 81 entrys in a Changemakers competition of innovative anti-corruption initiatives. Changemakers is an initiative of Ashoka, the global association of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. We're thrilled to have been selected as a finalist, and we need your support to win this award. Global Integrity is one of 9 finalists; three will be declared winners by popular voting. Online voting for the three competition winners ends on June 20, 2007.

We are asking friends and colleagues to take a few minutes out of their busy days to vote for Global Integrity online – and to encourage others to do so. Being declared one of the three winners would bring the Global Integrity approach, which empowers local truth-tellers worldwide, to a new audience. But we need your vote to make that happen; detailed instructions for registration and voting are below.

Judges selected Global Integrity out of 81 participating innovations from 29 countries. The winners will be determined by the popular support for these initiatives, as judged by our ability to activate voters. Your assistance in this, by voting and spreading this message to your local networks, is essential. Winners will be announced on June 21, and each will receive $5,000. Apart from the cash prize, the competition is a great way to increase Global Integrity's visibility and connect us with more and more anti-corruption experts around the world – everyone who registers to vote will read about our work and its impact.

Many thanks in advance for taking the time to support our work!

Cheers,

Jonathan Werve
Director of Operations,
Global Integrity
www.globalintegrity.org

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Instructions for Voting for Global Integrity in the Changemakers Competition

1) If you are Changemakers member already, skip to step 4.

2) If not, go to the Changemakers registration page and create a user account. The site asks for some information but only your name and email are required. Changemakers absolutely will not spam you.
( http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/user/register ).

3) Changemakers will send you a one-time email with a temporary password; follow the instructions and links in the email to create a permanent password for your account.

4) Once you have registered or logged in, go to the voting page
( http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/competition/endcorruption#vote )

5) You must vote for exactly three entries. Check the "Global Integrity" box (!) and any two others you feel are strong proposals, then click "Submit."

You're done. Send these instructions to everyone you can think of that would be interested in supporting Global Integrity in this competition: colleagues, friends, and family. Thank you for your support!