Adopt An Organizer

THE PROBLEM:

To quote the famous American author, Kurt Vonnegut,

"In the battle between the forces of good and evil, greed and compassion, there is only one thing that has consistently made the difference – organizing”

And in this battle, "The science of nonviolent resistance is young and the most important discoveries are yet to be made."—Gandhi

So our mission is to pioneer a new tool to solve arguably one of two major challenges facing not only nonviolent resistance-based campaigns (which includes union organizing and strikes), but underdog seriously underfunded progressive electoral campaigns as well: recruiting enough fulltime organizers to have a realistic chance of winning.  

Putting it more bluntly,

·      If we are truly to succeed in keeping fossil fuels in the ground and force the American, major EU governments (not to mention governments in such nations as India, Nigeria, Brasil, and Mexico) to begin a WWII level of mobilization to switch out our fossil fuel infrastructure with renewables and replace most cars with H2 and electric-powered buses, trams, and trains, as well as to pass and enforce major conservation efforts;

·       If we are to stop this insane war that is not only a major contributor to climate catastrophe but to the increasing real probability of inadvertent nuclear war;

·       If we  are to end grotesque wealth inequality, unbearably high rents, and the spread of fascism;

·       If we are to significantly expand the unionization of workers

·       If we re to stem and reverse the rapid spread of fascism

WE WILL NEED A FAR MORE ROBUST SOLUTION TO GENERATE at least 5,000-10,000 more fulltime organizers in the US alone. For starters, they’ll need to be organizing neighborhoods, mayors, governors, business leaders, doctors, lawyers, unions, universities, veterans, & religious leaders and institutions to be able to force city councils, state legislatures, the US Congress, unions, and major corporations to make the changes so urgently needed now. And the same can be said for other critical nations such as India, those in Latin America, Indonesia, the countries of Eastern Europe, SE Asia, and most African Nations. 

TO DATE the only solutions to this problem are 1) for campaigns themselves to raise the funding they need to hire more organizers, which clearly has not worked for virtually all of the above-mentioned most urgently needed campaigns in the history of our species, and 2) for people wanting to be organizers for these underfunded campaigns to raise the funds for themselves from wealthy parents, friends, or crowdfunding via GoFundMe or Patreon, or if in a developing country to apply for a grant from the a multi-millionaire-funded  foundation that funds organizers only in developing nations, Ashoka.org. This solution clearly has not worked as well.

AdoptAnOrganizer solves the above problem by providing a mobile-friendly web app crowdfunding platform with more than 15 major advantages over GoFundMe and Patreon. Here are just the first eight: 

1.      AdoptAnOrganizer will not require the individual applicant to have a good-size social network, or to spend lots of their time retweeting, instagramming, etc to bring in funds. 

2.     The applicant's need for funding will not be lost amidst thousands of people asking for medical help, help with art projects, and other such requests. 

3.     We can generate significant traffic because AAO will be a highly attractive service for campaigns wanting more organizers, but not having the funds to hire them –- virtually ALL campaigns-–to link to us on their jobs tab, which could say, for example, “We currently do not have funds to hire more organizers, but if you wish to volunteer for us and be crowdfund your basic-living-xpenses, check out AdoptAnOrganizer.org.” They can also refer runner-up applicants to our site--which alone would be in the thousands. 

4.     In-kind Contributions will be allowed. THis is HUGE. Donors can provide a spare room or even a couch for a month or more. Keep in mind that housing is a potential organizer’s biggest expense! 

5.     Applicants will be able to benefit from network externalities: Someone looking to fund person x in city y for cause z, might very well come across another highly qualified would-be organizer as well if that person is also in y and dedicated to z, and conversely, bringing people to help yourself might thereby also help other would-be organizers. And for this, you get stars or whatever, giving you, indirectly more cred as a high potential organizer!!  I also suspect that a high percentage of people deciding to donate $20 or more to person A, and then discovering another equally attractive potential organizer will also, perhaps to hedge their bets, donate the same to the 2nd person, or visa versa, discovering your own post in the process of looking for another, or perhaps decide to split a $30 donation. Our software could provide a useful nudge prompt. 

6. The user-experience for donors will be much more personally gratifying, informative,  therefore far more engaging, and as it progresses, in most cases far more fulfilling for donors, which in turn can create a word-of-mouth effect to attract magnitudes more donors

7. Since applicants will be competing with each other, and since having already volunteered with a campaign as a volunteer organizer would give the applicant a competitive advantage, AAO will incentivize applicants to volunteer for campaigns, providing an immediate benefit to campaigns

8. Because learning how to organize--the most important civic action skill--is at an all-time low in America’s schools, AAO will be especially beneficial to low-income youth of color who are less likely to have such civic learning experiences in school compared to white middle class youth.

PLEASE REMEMBER: These are only the first 8 of 15 major advantages AdoptAnOrganizer has over GoFundMe and Patreon. See our proposal

AdoptAnOrganizer serves three communities:

Individuals, especially working class people of color and working class people in general who are angry and want to make a difference but are trapped in their coffee shop, fast food, or similar low paid jobs, and do not have the wherewithall--the social media financially able  following to be able to crowdfund  using existign platforms like GoFundMe or Patreon the basic living expenses they need to quit their jobs and become fulltime organizers for the causes they most believe in.

Donors who are savvy enough to know it is organizers that make the world go round in terms of social change, and would appreciate a more personal and gratifying experience supporting causes that most attract them, especially Climate Justice, Anti-war, and revitalizing democracy in America as well as reversing the spread of fascism elsewhere as well as in the US.

Campaigns themselves, virtually all of whom, but especially those most needed today using nonviolent resistance-based strategies to save the world and save democracy.

I highlight the urgent need to serve nonviolent resistance strategy-based campaigns because 1) we have seen how stale-mated our political system is especially at the federal level, and 2) history, especially American history, clearly shows that though elections are essential, they have been absolutely insufficient to achieve our greatest achievements (in the EU as well) without a robust and growing NVR movement, which is the very movement still most lacking today for saving the world from Climate Catastrophe and from inadvertent nuclear war, which is very much due to the serious lack of sufficient numbers of fulltime organizers.Erica Chenoweth's gamechanging research as well clearly proves the urgent necessity today to create a massive nonviolent resistance strategy-based movement for any realistic chance to be able to counter the immense control of the MIC over our government to be able to stop the war, and to be able to counter the immense control of our government by Big Oil to have a livable planet and stop the extinction of most life on the planet in the next 10-20yrs.

We, myself and the GetCourageNow.org team I assembled were the first and to our knowledge still the only tech activist team in th world devoted to developing tools specifically designed to enable nonviolent resistance (NVR) strategy-based campaigns to succeed. We developed the first tool, WiseCourage, that has been successfully beta tested capable of doubling and we believe soon triple resister recruitment rates for NVR campaigns. This was achieved in cooperation with LetzteGeneration.de (Last Generation), Germany's (and hence the EU's) fastest growing most disruptive keep-it-in-the ground campaign.  We were funded by two major EU foundations. Now that we want to focus on America, however, we need to find US funding sources Re how we are ensuring we are understanding the needs of the community we want to serve, I personally am a devout follower of the book, Running Lean and therefore am in the midst now of interviewing what will be at least 200 people unhappy with their coffee shop and fast food worker jobs to ensure we are understanding and tackling the right problem from their point of view and with the right solution in the most effective way.

As the team lead, I myself come from a working-class background, have spent decades as an organizer --in union, electoral (eight US Senate and POTUS campaigns), and nonviolent resistance campaigns. Here is my resume

In addition I have founded three other social good startups, two Internet-based, one of them the first tech startup, CoupleWise.com,  to provide the first science based totally software-based proven effective solution to help couples save and revitalize their committed relationships, which is just now starting to run in the black and thereby enable me to devote myself fulltime to AdoptAnOrganizer and even fund 20% of its budget. Couplewise also won the UC Berkeley BusinessPlan competition, was a runner up for the Stanford Social Venture competition, and was chosen by both Mass Challenge and Startup Chile for their incubators

We want to apply to SOLVE for all the great benefits you can offer:

1. To Receive access to funding in the form of grants and investments, including through prizes and Solve Innovation Future. 
2. To join a class of impressive peers that act as a trusted support group, offering inspiration and guidance.
3. To join a powerful network of impact-minded leaders across industries and sectors, with dedicated spaces to meet year-round and during Solve’s flagship events such as Solve at MIT.  
4. To access leadership coaching and strategic advice from experts in the Solve and MIT networks. 
5. To receive monitoring and evaluation support to build an impact measurement practice. 
6. To gain exposure in the media and at conferences.
7. To Access relevant in-kind resources such as software licenses and legal services from Solve supporters. 

ALSO TO BE able to help other activists totally devoted to saving the world and democracy to be able to work as smart as possible, GIVEN THE LITTLE TIME WE HAVE LEFT

THE PROBLEM:

To quote the famous American author, Kurt Vonnegut,

"In the battle between the forces of good and evil, greed and compassion, there is only one thing that has consistently made the difference – organizing”

And in this battle, "The science of nonviolent resistance is young and the most important discoveries are yet to be made."—Gandhi

So our mission is to pioneer a new tool to solve arguably one of two major challenges facing not only nonviolent resistance-based campaigns, but underdog seriously underfunded progressive electoral campaigns as well: recruiting enough full-time organizers to have a realistic chance of winning.  

Putting it more bluntly,

·      If we are truly to succeed in keeping fossil fuels in the ground and force the American and  EU governments (not to mention governments in India, Nigeria, Brasil, and Mexico) to begin a WWII level of mobilization to switch out their fossil fuel infrastructure with renewables and replace most cars with H2 and electric-powered buses, trams, trains, as well as to pass and enforce major conservation efforts;

• If we are to stop this insane war that is not only a major contributor to climate catastrophe but to the increasing real probability of inadvertent nuclear war;
• If we  are to end grotesque wealth inequality, unbearably high rents, and the resulting spread of fascism;
• If we are to significantly expand the unionization of workers;

WE WILL NEED A FAR MORE ROBUST SOLUTION TO GENERATE at least 5,000-10,000 more fulltime organizers in the US alone. For starters, they’ll  need to be organizing neighborhoods, mayors, governors, business leaders, doctors, lawyers, unions, universities, veterans, & religious institutions to be able to force city councils, state legislatures, the US Congress, unions, and major corporations to make the changes so urgently needed now. And the same can be said for other critical nations such as India,Latin America,  the countries of Eastern Europe, most African Nations, etc.

TO DATE the only solutions to this problem are 1) for campaigns to raise the funding they need to hire more organizers, which clearly has almost never worked for any of the above-mentioned most urgently needed campaigns in the history of our species, and 2) for people wanting to be organizers for these underfunded campaigns to raise the funds for themselves from wealthy parents, friends, or crowdfunding via GoFundMe or Patreon, or if in a developing country to apply for a grant from the multi-millionaire-funded Ashoka.org. And this solution as well has clearly never worked.

Our solution, AdoptAnOrganizer solves this problem by providing a NEW KIND of crowdfunding platform with more than 15 major advantages over GoFundMe and Patreon.

And as AAO begins to succeed, it could in turn force GoFundMe and Patreon to better meet this urgent need, and for campaigns themselves to adopt their own version which they could then promote to their members and donors. AAO could change the market as well by word getting out via Instagram and social media among unhappy workers who have found this powerful effective solution

For the next 12 months, our goal is to generate through the use of the AdoptAnOrganizer app the  7,000-10,000 fulltime organizers essential to staff the campaigns necessary for any realistic chance to save the world and democracy: to be able  1) force the American government and hopefully other key nations to have a WWII level of mobilization to switchout fossil fuels with clean renewables to pass and enforce strong conservation efforts, to stop the rapid devastation of the oceans and the rest of our environment by other causes than CO2 and Methane, and to stop the war in Ukraine and the increasing chances of military confrontation with China, either of which could all too easily lead to inadvertent nuclear; and 2)  to end grotesque wealth inequality and its evil twin the spread of fascism.

These organizers would implement the two strategies which, when combined, historically have the best chance of success--electoral and massive nonviolent resistance. It should be noted that merely electing the "right" people, especially in America,  has been essential but absolutely insufficient without the handmaiden of a strong and growing nonviolent resistance movement.

 We must end the UKraine-Russia-US war as soon as possible.  According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, this could all too easily happen next week, or next month! In fact we are closer now to nuclear war than we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In the next 12 months it is also urgent we pass legislation to prevent the horrific potential effects of uncontrolled expansion of AI and regulate social media to prevent future misuse such as that of Cambridge Analytica, to protect the 2024 elections.

For the Next Five Years, we want to help major unions and large membership Climate Justice, anti-war, anti fascism, Medicare4All, anti-wealth inequality organizations adopt their own AdoptAnOrganizer tools, and to continue to provide the thousands of organizers necessary: 

1) to continue the WWII mobilization level Green New Deal and ensure no further nuclear power confrontations happen that could lead to inadvertent nuclear war
2) to end grotesque wealth inequality
3) to have sufficient regulation of social media to eradicate most of its massive polarizing, genocide, democracy killing, and war-causing effects

4) to pass Medicare4All,  end the control of the Military Industrial Complex over both parties, and thereby cut our "Defense" budget by at least 40%, putting that savings into a GND and medicare for all

5) to OUTLAW gerry-mandering, pass the ERA and federally assured right to abortion, a livable wage, restore the fairness doctrine in mass media, and to restore the Glass-Stegal banking regulations that were passed after the great depression to prevent future WallStreet meltdowns such as that of 2008-2009, to make the District of Colombia a state, to eliminate the electoral college and to abolish most student debt.

6) to expand the Supreme Court and limit the terms of the justices

HOW WE WILL MEASURE OUR IMPACT AND
WHY WE ARE UNIQUELY QUALIFIED TO CREATE THIS NEW TOOL:

INDICES:
1) numbers of organizers/per day, week, month finding sufficient funding to start working for campaigns addressing any of the SDG goals

2) rate of growth of the above stat

3) satisfaction ratings by the campaigns re the organizers AAO is providing them

4) numbers (and sizes) of campaigns willing to promote our solution under their "jobs" tab and rate of growth in numbers of these campaigns, and CTRs generated per day, week, month

5) satisfaction ratings of applicants  and of donors and how well the satisfaction rating is increasing

6) numbers of press (earned media) articles generate and readership reached and rate of growth of these

7) twitter, instagram and tictoc followers and growth rate

8) As we start (our basic website to launch in 2 wks) , the rate of subscription growth to our newsletter, signups from potentially interested applicants, and signups from potentiall intereted donors

WHY WE ARE UNIQUELY QUALIFIED:
PLEASE ALSO KEEP IN MIND: My team and I were the first tech activist team to ever develop tech specifically designed to enable nonviolent resistance strategy-based campaigns to double and possibly triple their rates of nonviolent resister recruitment--to use tech to catalyze moral courage at scale

Our theory of change is informed by the work of Gandhi and Gene Sharpe, and such critically acclaimed works as Conquest of Violence (Bondurant), THis Is An Uprising (Marc and Paul ENgler brothers), Why Civil Resistance Works (Erics Chenoweth), How We Win (Geo Lakey), Shut It Down (Lisa Fithian)  as well as the books of renowned union organizer Jane McElevey (Raising Expectations and Raising Hell, and a Collective Bargain), Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the talks of one of our advisers such as the renowned Dolores Huerta and Wade Rathke (founder of ACORN), Rules for Revolutionaries (Bond and Exley), the training of MomentumCommunity.org, and most recently the "Designing the Revolution" podcast of Roger Hallam, cofounder of Extinction Rebellion.

In a sentence it is this: Elections are essential to major social change, but are entirely insufficient without a robust and growing nonviolent resistance movement.  In more detail:

Premise 1: Yes, winning elections is essential, more essential than ever before.  But winning elections has always been entirely insufficient to accomplish the most significant advances in human rights and the rights of nature, since the Civil War without being accompanied by robust and growing NonViolent Resistance (NVR) movements. We’re talking every advance from women getting the right to vote, to workers the right to organize, to social security and the 8 hour workday, to the Civil Rights victories of the 60s, ending above ground nuclear testing, ending the Vietnam war, and beyond. How we in fact achieved the NewDeal is an obvious and quite relevant example.

Yet despite its historically proven need, this essential strategy of robust nonviolent resistance is all but absent today, especially in the United States. The groundbreaking work of Erica Chenoweth is the most recent and perhaps clearest scientific proof of how and why NVR is more urgent and critical than ever before.  NVR is not only urgent and critical to stop our Mother from being rapidly strangled to death in a geological blink of an eye-- 10-15 years from now, to prevent a fascist coup in the US, and the rapid spread of fascism elsewhere, but also and most urgent of all to prevent the increasing likelihood of inadvertent nuclear war. 

Premise 2: For robust NVR to be feasible–for it to be large enough and long enough to win, it's a numbers game:  The challenge is how can we recruit the numbers of resisters and resister supporters and therefore the numbers of fulltime organizers to recruit the former to have a realistic chance to succeed. Existing organizing tools such as peer2peer texting, Mobilize.us, FB, twitter, etc totally fail to do this, totally fail to motivate nough people to commit to truly courageous actions, totally fail to recruit the numbers of fulltime organizers we need to succeed

Our technology is basically the same mobile-friendly web-app tech you see in GoFundMe or Patreon. Unfortunately, though open source, they have no free license. The actual architecture and programming language, front and backend, and db will be chosen by the programmers and the designer.  We will also be using video testimonials as well to tap the power of story.

I, being Jewish, am for now the leadership team. My goal is to have among our founding six person dev team at least 2 persons of color from working-class  backgrounds, ideally an African American and a Mexican American, and be gender balanced.  I am close to one of the leaders of Solidaire, a US-based foundation to provide rapid response help to Black-run campaigns, and to Dolores Huerta, co-founder with Ceasar Chavez of the United Farmworkers movement, and once I have some funding, to then get their help recruiting talent. I also am friends with a Black activist talent recruiter in DC, Jim Driscoll.

We will provide at no expense the easiest and fastest way for highly devoted people unable to be hired by their favorite campaign(s)due to the campaigns' lack of funding to crowdfund their basic living expenses, so that they can nevertheless  be able to work fulltime as organizers for their favorite campaigns,  and thereby have the courage to quit their unsatisfying job (eg working in a coffee shop or fast food joint) to start working fulltime for what they most believe in.

We will provide to donors the easiest and fastest way to find worthwhile individuals to fund so that they can become full-time organizers for the donor's favorite cause(s), and to thereby have both the most personally satisfying, connecting, and arguably gratifying philanthropic experience a donor can have, as well as arguably the most leverage per dollar spent, given the essential role of fulltime organizers for a campaign to be successful.

Finally, we will provide for campaigns, especially those unable to afford even a bare minimum of full-time organizers, the core team of fulltime organizers always necessary for a campaign to get off the ground, and then once "crossing the chasm" and beginning to grow rapidly, the urgently needed additional number of fulltime organizers required to maintain rapid growth and have a realistic chance of success.

IT SHOULD also be kept in mind that my prior team and spent the prior two years successfully developing and beta-testing the first tool ever specifically designed to enable nonviolent resistance campaigns to double and eventually triple their rate of nonviolent resister recruitment--to catalyze moral courage at scale.

NOTE: We are therefore offering a service to BOTH individuals AND to organizations (campaigns). But the following question only allows one to choose only one category.

We can become self-sustaining in the following ways:

a: tips, grants, “alumni'' funding, paid “ads " from unions and well funded NGOs who want to add more organizers but lack full funding and therefore might want the organizer to raise half or all their salaries themselves, at least until they can adequately prove themselves or more funding can be raised. Their ads would be for organizers-wanted, but could also be simply brand promotion. Other ad sources: Labor attorneys to get goodwill from unions.

b. Unions might want to also help fund a generous social media budget to help us grow fast to be able to help them recruit organizers for themselves. 

c. During major electoral campaign years, campaigns seeking organizers could and likely would advertise here as well. 

d. We could also have a free basic and then a minor $5 monthly charge that would provide 2 or 3 other features. However,I am open to other arrangements, and certainly free to start.

Having just started, we only have received a promise of $10,000 if we can find a match, from an anonymous donor.