Funding & Partnerships
Open civic-information infrastructure for journalists, researchers, and the public.
Mission
The Political Temperature Index measures US political tension on a 0-100 scale and publishes it as transparent, nonpartisan civic infrastructure. Our goal is durable, public-interest measurement that helps journalists, researchers, educators, and the public understand whether political tension is rising, what is driving it, and how the current moment compares to historical events.
The Problem
Political information is abundant but difficult to compare over time. There is no widely accessible, transparent, daily numerical index of national political tension. Newsrooms, researchers, and civic groups need shared infrastructure for measuring whether the current political climate is escalating, de-escalating, or steady, and what is driving it. In a polarized political climate, anecdotes and partisan commentary are not a substitute for data.
Our Approach
PTI converts multi-source political signals (news coverage, social discourse, legislative activity, court opinions, election context, economic indicators, and cross-validation sources) into a daily, explainable, trackable index. The methodology, the validation set, and the audit trail are all public.
Current Proof
The platform is live, with a transparent methodology and a documented track record. Every claim below links to its public source.
Transparent validation
1,100+ cataloged US political events, with public metrics limited to source-verified events that overlap temperature history
View track record →What Funding & Partnership Enables
Support strengthens shared civic-information infrastructure across the dimensions below. We discuss specific scope and scale in direct conversation, sized to the program.
Source coverage
Expand coverage of state legislatures, court systems, regulatory agencies, and local-government signals.
Validation depth
Grow the historical event set, fund external methodology review, and document evaluation rigorously.
Editorial governance
Strengthen the corrections workflow, independence statement, and human-review boundaries.
Public access
Improve the public API, embeddable widgets, data export, and developer documentation.
Research partnerships
Co-author working papers with academic researchers and support methodology validation studies.
Newsroom pilots
Lightweight integrations and citation workflows for newsrooms covering political tension.
Reliability
Monitoring, alerting, backups, provider redundancy, and operational sustainability.
Founder time
Sustained execution capacity to deliver the milestones above on a meaningful timeline.
12-Month Milestones
Concrete deliverables we'd expect to ship over a 12-month engagement (illustrative; we tailor to each partnership):
- Newsroom pilots citing PTI as a daily source.
- External methodology review with documented response.
- Comparison page versus established polarization metrics.
- Quarterly long-form posts explaining methodology choices and case studies.
- Expanded source coverage in state, local, and regulatory categories.
- API hardening with documentation and reliability improvements suitable for institutional partners.
Who We Partner With
Grant funders
Civic-information, democracy, public-interest technology, and journalism-infrastructure programs.
Research collaborators
Academic researchers in political science, polarization studies, media analysis, and civic data.
Newsroom partners
Newsrooms interested in citing, embedding, or integrating PTI signals into political coverage.
Strategic sponsors
Mission-aligned organizations sustaining open civic-information infrastructure.
Independence Comes First
PTI is committed to editorial and methodological independence. We do not accept funding that comes with influence over scoring, source selection, or methodology. Our governance practices (nonpartisan scope, source transparency, AI role and limits, corrections policy, and audit trail) are documented on our governance page.
We are nonpartisan and will remain so. We measure tension level, not who is right or wrong.
Get In Touch
We welcome conversations with grant funders, research collaborators, newsroom partners, and mission-aligned sponsors. Use our contact form and select "Funding / Partnership Inquiry" from the category dropdown, or email us directly.
We typically respond within 24–48 hours.