Sortition Foundation is a not-for-profit social enterprise. We believe in a world where people from all walks of life make informed decisions about how we live together.
We believe that diverse groups of people, equipped with the time, information and support, make trusted decisions that include minority voices while reflecting majority interests and advancing social justice. And we believe this is best achieved through permanent and powerful citizens' assemblies, with people selected by sortition (a process of selection by democratic lottery, a bit like jury selection).
We are leaders in the provision and promotion of democratic lotteries and our mission is to support a global movement for permanent and powerful citizens’ assemblies.
Our democratic lottery services
Sortition is a fair, effective, legitimate and transparent way to select representative groups of people for citizens' assemblies and other deliberative processes and through our teams in the UK, Europe and Australia we provide sortition services of the highest quality for organisations running these processes around the world.
Since 2017 we have supported hundreds of deliberative events in partnership with local, regional and national governments, the European Commission, research and polling organisations, NGOs and universities globally. We are recognised internationally as experts and leaders in democratic lotteries for deliberative democracy.
Our campaigning
Through our sortition work we know how powerful these deliberative processes are at giving real democratic power to ordinary people which is why we campaign for permanent and powerful citizens' assemblies at every level of decision-making.
Our current campaigns are for a permanent and powerful Greater Manchester Citizens' Assembly and to replace the House of Lords with a House of Citizens.
Sortition Lab
Sortition Lab is the research and development space within Sortition Foundation dedicated to creating and supporting tools and applications that advance our mission to upgrade democracy.
The first Sortition Lab project in development is a new Open Democratic Lottery Platform (OpenDLP) that started in January 2025. OpenDLP is an open-source digital platform making democratic lotteries more inclusive and accessible by streamlining the democratic lottery process for selecting people for citizens' assemblies.