The Democracy and Governance Foundation is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit company registered under Section 42 of the Companies Act of Pakistan, with its registered office in Islamabad. Public launch in 2026.
Public institutions that decide with data. Markets that answer to consumers. Workplaces that respect workers. An environment held in trust for those not yet born.
Through research, polling, advisories and civic technology, we equip citizens, institutions and civil society to hold power — political, commercial, industrial — to account.
Methods are published. Funders are disclosed. Data is opened wherever ethics allow. We hold ourselves to the same transparency we ask of those we study.
Pakistan has no shortage of opinion. What it needs more of is evidence — produced patiently, published openly, and translated into the languages and formats that citizens, institutions and civic organisations can actually act on.
Each of our service lines and DemTech tools is designed against one of these three failures of civic infrastructure.
Decisions are made on assertion, not data. Public institutions, parliaments, regulators and even media routinely operate without primary evidence on the questions they're addressing. The Foundation produces it.
Where evidence does exist, it's locked in academic English, behind paywalls, or in formats no citizen would ever read. We translate — into Urdu, into briefs, into dashboards, into legislator-ready submissions.
Every small NGO doing rights work, RTI work, market monitoring or environmental advocacy needs the same technical tools. Few can afford to build them. DemTech Commons builds them once, shared.
Founding directors begin a 12-month consultation with civic-society partners, funders and academic collaborators across Pakistan to scope the Foundation's mandate.
The Foundation is registered under Section 42 of the Companies Act of Pakistan as a not-for-profit company. Articles of Association adopted; first board appointed.
Five focus areas defined, six service lines scoped, DemTech infrastructure built. First research staff onboarded.
Foundation goes public with its inaugural flagship report — State of Democratic Governance in Pakistan, 2026 Baseline — and the first DemTech tools opened to partner NGOs.
40 partner NGOs onboarded to DemTech. Quarterly polls in field. Annual flagship reports across all five focus areas.
A not-for-profit only earns the public trust by holding itself to standards higher than it asks of others. Our governance architecture is designed accordingly.
No funder — public, private or philanthropic — has any influence over research findings or publication timing. Our editorial independence policy is public, binding, and enforced by board.
Articles of Association, board bye-laws, code of conduct, conflict-of-interest policy, editorial independence policy, financial controls — all public, all linked.