The BizVizz app has been released and is available for free for iOS and Android. WATCH a 90 second demo here. Check it out!
What is BizVizz? BizVizz is technology that makes corporate accountability easy and available to all. An iPhone mobile app and website with an open api, BizVizz gives you instant access to 280 of America’s largest corporations’ tax records, government subsidies and campaign contributions. Enter a company’s name or snap a picture of their BizVizz demo logo and presto: corporate information is yours. Drill down to learn more. Instantly share your discoveries with your networks. Join a corporate accountability campaign or take action in a click. It’s that simple.
Why? We were inspired by a storyline in our award-winning PBS/Independent Lens documentary “As Goes Janesville” that features a company getting 20% of the city’s budget in incentives without a public hearing or any significant public vetting of the deal. Many audiences felt that was wrong. We wanted to give them a way to turn their reaction into action. That’s why we teamed up with the 2012 Sundance film “We’re Not Broke”, about offshoring of US corporate profits, and ITVS, the AFL-CIO, Working Films, Sunlight Foundation, Good Jobs First, Citizens for Tax Justice, Tax Justice Network, US-PIRG and Faculty Creative to create “bizVizz.
Get Engaged BizVizz is more than a handy “Wikipedia” of corporate accountability. It’s an engagement tool. You get notifications when there’s a corporate accountability campaign to learn about, petition to discover, important message to share, relevant legislation before Congress, pertinent news or a new report from our partners to read. Plus, it’s fun. Walking down the shopping aisle or street scanning brands is an eye-opening experience.
Primary User Groups Many people will want to use BizVizz at a time when we are struggling to survive a fourth year of economic hardship while corporations make record profits. Some specific users we will target with the help of our partners are:
Consumers: BizVizz helps shoppers who care about the values of the companies they patronize and wish to make responsible buying decisions.
Concerned Citizens and Activists: BizVizz is the perfect way for people involved in the tax justice, campaign finance reform, and corporate accountability movements to enhance and share their work.
Journalists: BizVizz is a great tool for reporters on the business, corporate accountability and campaign finance beat.
Major Future Features Android platform, expansion of database to 1000+ companies, explore by location, “bookmarklet” for web browswers
Sustainability We plan to cultivate our relationships with our partners and discover one that will take on the maintenance and growth of “BizVizz” long term.
Our Partners
We are the umbrella federation for U.S. unions, with 57 unions representing more than 12 million working men and women. We work to ensure that all people who work receive the rewards of their work—decent paychecks and benefits, safe jobs, respect and fair treatment. We work to make the voices of working people heard in the White House, on Capitol Hill, in state capitals across the country and in corporate boardrooms. We provide an independent voice for working families and ways for working people to be actively engaged in politics and legislation. We also hold corporations accountable for their treatment of employees and ensure the voice of working people is heard in the financial system. We also work with federations of unions in other countries toward global social and economic fairness.
Citizens for Tax Justice, founded in 1979, is a 501 (c)(4) public interest research and advocacy organization focusing on federal, state and local tax policies and their impact upon our nation. CTJ’s mission is to give ordinary people a greater voice in the development of tax laws. Against the armies of special interest lobbyists for corporations and the wealthy, CTJ fights for:
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Fair taxes for middle and low-income families
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Requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share
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Closing corporate tax loopholes
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Adequately funding important government services
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Reducing the federal debt
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Taxation that minimizes distortion of economic markets
The tax data in BizVizz comes from CTJ’s report Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers.
CPB promotes the growth and development of public media in communities throughout America. Since 1968, CPB has been the steward of the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting and the largest single source of funding for public radio, television, and related online and mobile services. For approximately $1.35 per American per year, CPB provides essential operational support for the nearly 1,300 locally-owned and -operated public television and radio stations, which reach virtually every household in the country.CPB also makes available some of the most entertaining, informative, educational, and culturally-relevant programming—including Sesame Street, PBS NewsHour, Frontline, Great Performances, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Marketplace—through the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), NPR, American Public Media, and Public Radio International (PRI).
Faculty Creative
Headquartered in Philadelphia, we are an award-winning digital creative agency of story tellers, strategists, designers, rock star nerds, thinkers, tinkerers, toy makers and two loving pups. We craft immersive stories, addictive products, and simple utilities that turn your users into addicts.
Good Jobs First
Good Jobs First is a national policy resource center for grassroots groups and public officials, promoting corporate and government accountability in economic development and smart growth for working families. We provide timely, accurate information on best practices in state and local job subsidies, and on the many ties between smart growth and good jobs. Good Jobs First works with a very broad spectrum of organizations, providing research, training, communications and consulting assistance. The subsidy data in BizVizz comes from their Subsidy Tracker website.
ITVS
The Independent Television Service (ITVS) funds, presents, and promotes award-winning documentaries and dramas on public television and cable, innovative new media projects on the Web, and the Emmy Award-winning weekly series Independent Lens Monday nights at 10:00 PM on PBS. ITVS receives core funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people. The GPP is made possible through the support of Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, and Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art.
The Independent Television Service (ITVS) brings independently-produced, high-quality public broadcast and new media programs to local, national and international audiences. The independent producers who create ITVS programs take creative risks, tackle complex issues and express points of view seldom explored in the mass media. ITVS programs enrich the cultural landscape with the voices and visions of underrepresented communities, and reflect the interests and concerns of a diverse society.
Sunlight Foundation
The Sunlight Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that uses the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency, and provides new tools and resources for media and citizens, alike. We are committed to improving access to government information by making it available online, indeed redefining “public” information as meaning “online,” and by creating new tools and websites to enable individuals and communities to better access that information and put it to use.
We want to catalyze greater government transparency by engaging individual citizens and communities — technologists, policy wonks, open government advocates and ordinary citizens –- demanding policies that will enable all of us to hold government accountable. Sunlight develops and encourages new government policies to make it more open and transparent, facilitates searchable, sortable and machine readable databases, builds tools and websites to enable easy access to information, fosters distributed research projects as a community building tool, engages in advocacy for 21st century laws to require that government make data available in real time and trains thousands of journalists and citizens in using data and the web to watchdog Washington.
Major elements of our work include the Sunlight Labs, Sunlight Reporting Group, Sunlight Live and the Open House Project. The campaign finance data in BizVizz comes from Sunlight’s Influence Explorer API.
Tax Justice Network – USA
Tax Justice Network USA promotes tax justice and tax cooperation, including policies to address tax avoidance, tax evasion and the lack of financial transparency in our government, corporations and financial institutions. It operates on a not-for-profit and non-partisan basis by bringing together organizations, social movements and individuals working towards these goals.
US-PIRG
U.S. PIRG is a consumer group that stands up to powerful interests whenever they threaten our health and safety, our financial security, or our right to fully participate in our democratic society. For decades, we’ve stood up for consumers, countering the influence of big banks, insurers, chemical manufacturers and other powerful special interests.
We’re Not Broke
WE’RE NOT BROKE is the story of how U.S. corporations have been able to hide over a trillion dollars from Uncle Sam, and how seven fed-up Americans from across the country, take their frustration to the streets . . . and vow to make the corporations pay their fair share.
Working Films
Working Films brings persuasive and provocative documentary films to long-term community organizing and activism. We are one of the nation’s leading independent media organization focused on the art of engagement. We know that stories lead to action. Our film campaigns are changing toxic marketplaces, influencing equitable public policies, making communities more inclusive, and inspiring principled individual actions. Working films is headquartered in Wilmington, NC with satellite offices in New York and London.
