Is This the End of the Sunlight Foundation?

You’d think the Sunlight Foundation would be raring for a fight. Since its inception, in January 2006, the nonprofit has advocated for a new, digitally savvy vision of open government. It has pushed for campaign-finance reform and defended the Freedom of Information Act. It’s made services like Politiwoops, which collects and preserves tweets after politicians delete them from their official accounts; and it’s become a flagship for the civic-tech movement, which aims to build online tools for the public good.

So developers and designers with a public-minded bent were surprised to discover that, in this of all years, the nonprofit seemingly has no idea what to do with itself.

In what Politico aptly called an “unusual blog post,” the Sunlight Foundation announced on Monday that it had failed to find a new executive director and a justifying vision for the organization. As such, Sunlight may shut down or merge with another organization by the end of the year.