Vision

Late stage capitalism and “representative democracy” have failed us as a society. Let’s build virtual and real infrastructure to enable self governance for collectives. This new infrastructure can overcome the decay of democracy that has been caused by the way campaign finance has changed governance over the past few decades. We are connecting people, students, teachers, nonprofits and businesses without a toll booth controlled by private monopolies. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are not free, you pay with your data, that is then fed to trolls, in order to produce arguments that drive up ad revenue. Let’s network with each other to share our experiences and learn how to create our own infrastructures. Some people think they can maintain governance by giving people fish. Others offer to teach people how to fish. Let’s talk about how we can change the fishing industry! For a brief period in the 20th century, unions had political power that influenced legislation. In the 21st-century, we envision the use of new tools to empower collectives that organize around issues, not culture wars and personal attacks.

Mission

We are enabling bottom up organization by selecting best of breed online tools and integrating them for members of our network. Our members can organize into collectives that discuss and approve their own proposals. Collectives are able to establish their own internal hierarchy, delegate votes to directors and handle finances.

Financial

As collectives are formed, their respective fiscal sponsors will be identified, so that all financial transactions are transparent and accessible as open data. A Collective represents a project or group that has a mission or purpose in the world, which they raise and spend funds transparently to achieve. A Fiscal Host can act as an umbrella organization for one too many collectives by providing the legal and banking infrastructure needed.

Tools

1 Form a Group with BuddyPress

Members, Groups, …

The BuddyPress plug-in for WordPress has been called “Facebook in a box.” In this short video you will learn about the social networking functionality we are providing. This is the same tool that organized 9,000 people into 100 working groups (collectives) during Occupy Wall Street in 2011.

2 Group self governance with Loomio

Threads, proposals, polls

  1. Groups hold everything in one place for a specific set of people
  2. Discussion threads are where you go to discuss topics and make decisions
  3. Proposals and polls to help you visualize the group’s input and feelings about a given proposal, question, or topic.
  4. Outcomes share what’s going to happen next so everyone has a clear understanding and there’s a useful record.

3 Fundraising with Open Collective

Transparent reporting

Collectives can raise funds and engage in financial transactions without a need to incorporate because we enable networks that each include a fiscal sponsor to handle financial record keeping and reporting. You may be a collective seeking a fiscal sponsor or you could be a fiscal sponsor handling multiple collectives.