Frequently Asked Questions

a. There is no guarantee they will use it to hire more organizers; they might very well decide to spend it on media, social media, higher salaries for their staff (who are already most likely getting very large salaries if they are already a big NGO). Furthermore, if this approach would work for them, or their finance directors would allow it, why do we never see fundraising messages saying something like, “We have 10 highly qualified people, we’d love to add to our organizing (canvassing team), but we don’t have the money; can you help?” 

b. You will miss out on the adventure and personally gratifying experience of seeing the direct effect your money will have by getting regular reports of the successes of your organizer.

c. AdoptAnOrganizer, incentivizes wannabe organizers to start volunteering, since that helps convince donors of the wannabe’s seriousness, and helps ensure that the campaign they want to help will in fact accept them. Donating directly to an organization fails to create and support this important dynamic 

d.The sorts of people who apply to be organizers for a campaign are mostly college graduates, just out of college, who can afford to be looking, not working class folk stuck in meaningless jobs, and therefore less able to relate to other working class people they are likely  to be organizing. In other words, AAO will more likely attract the working class and people of color.

e.The very fact of this new route to becoming an organizer coming into existence and starting to get some traction, could conceivably in itself catalyze a much needed cultural shift, and offer a much needed stimulus for hope, and something far more important to spread via social media than the trivia that makes up most of social media content. For example, moving success stories of real connection that get on social media, generated by more and more people volunteering to be able to prove they would be good organizers so they can crowdfund on AAO, can do lots to get people to start revering “organizing,” like they do song composing or any other art, and to check out AAO for themselves. 

f. If I am someone who is not well off enough to be a donor, but who wants to help an organizer, like with a couch (to save on rent) till he can make enough crowdfunding to rent their own room, or even to provide some meals, or some networking help, or some other skill (e.g. mechanical help to get a junker car working), or willing to offer my place for a fundraising house party for that organizer,  I can do that via AAO. THis would be impossible relating to some NGO.

1. The wannabe organizers will be taught the simple “power of weak connections” rapid method to raise small donations from their first degree contacts and even more from the contacts those first degree contacts have. We hypothesize that this should be enough to raise at least half ($1000) of their needed monthly BLE expenses.
2. A significant percentage of prior $500-1000 (approx) donors to a campaign might be quite willing to donate that amount again (or have their mate or kid donate such if they have already reached the state limit for State Senate or House races) as a match by being impressed with the zeal of the wannabe organizer and their ability to raise half of what they need, or to donate housing (a guest room)
3. Several well-known sellers of donor lists (e. g GrassRoots Analytics, Mission Wired, etc). Once we have POC, we believe campaigns might give us lists of donors who initially donated, and then stopped or who otherwise they believe might like a fresh new approach.
   
   

Getting them to donate will of course require lots of A/B/C testing to determine correct language,  most persuasive video testimonials (from organizers who were enabled by AAO, from Donors themselves,delighted with their experience, and also from CMs. Also important will be placement/location in the ad of these elements, and where –in which social media platforms–to best advertise. Also, for larger matching donors, donors talk to donors. 

Javier Palacios-Fenech, the inventor of "Crowd-promotion" (https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=cOu6lcEAAAAJ&hl=es&oi=ao), has invented a strategy for users to effectively utilize small businesses like restaurants, clubs, community centers, yoga studios, and markets to boost crowdfunding campaigns by connecting users (would be organizers) with local businesses who provide the venue for cause-related  events in ways that could also lead to a quasi-virality. He calls this process,”Crowdpromotion” and it not only incentivizes users to improve in their local businesses outreach/ organizing skills,  but also taps into the positive dynamics of prosocial referrals. As the example below explains, crowdpromotion not only brings in more funding for users, incentivizing them to start proving they are capable of doing local face2face organizing by finding business partners, but  attracts more customers and revenue for the businesses involved. This crowd-promotion strategy also opens avenues to tap into a substantial latent market that may not otherwise offer support due to financial pressures and never hearing of AdoptAnOrganizer.

Simple example: Imagine a simple event at an ice cream shop where a group of people, attracted by digital advertising and by the poster in the shop owner’s window advertising the event, gather for tasty treats to also support a cause. This event has been created by someone wanting to be an organizer for a particular cause. Through Crowdpromotion, the shop donates 10% of sales to the cause and another 10% to the organizer (or all 20% to “fund an organizer” for x cause). With the organizer's efforts, they boost sales (for example,  selling 100 ice creams) and attract new customers. 

After the event, the shop can put their logo and a short promo on the AdoptAnOrganizer platform on the relevant city location page.  And the user who got the business involved can earn rewards for such organizing outreach (crowd-promotion) success that can be noted on their profile page, thereby proving his/her potential as an organizer and therefore improving chances donors will donate to them instead of others in their city also seeking crowdfunding. This process can create a quasi-virality:  If it works once, why not twice? This example is a win-win-win way to expand the donor network for the would be organizer, support causes, build community, and thereby make a difference, with users and business owners both getting financial rewards through Crowdpromotion. 

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. During major electoral campaign years, campaigns seeking organizers could and likely would advertise here as well.
4. 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.

To our knowledge no platform is deliberately targeting people in BS jobs or who are unemployed (recent college graduates or dropouts) who have a strong interest in progressive causes. These could be targeted via FB ads and google ads, and probably via TikTok and Instagram

To our knowledge no platform is deliberately targeting people in BS jobs or who are unemployed (recent college graduates or dropouts) who have a strong interest in progressive causes. These could be targeted via FB ads and google ads, and probably via TikTok and Instagram

a) partnering with major orgs. We become a pipeline of free organizer talent to them in return for them linking to us (by getting them full time paid organizers they don't have to pay, but also people willing to volunteer part time with them to improve their appeal to donors who find them via crowdfunding, by demonstrating their devotion–willing to even volunteer without pay)
  b) adwords (which should be cheap but effective, given how few people would be searching relevant phrases “becoming an organizer,” “quitting” and “become an organizer,” or “organize a union” and “afraid of getting fired,” etc. FB ads would of course need to be tested, but might be highly effective 

  c) We will help Organizers who get funded by us and campaigns who get organizers with our help  to get press and generate social media that will mention us using such angles as “X campaign just found a new way to get the help they need.” Or “So and so just found a new way to replace their humdrum job with one that is meaningful.”

 d) We might be able to partner with state unemployment departments to distribute flyers about us at unemployment centers in return for our informing them if and when our users raise enough funding via our platform to no longer need unemployment pay

We don’t know yet. AAO will be as much a laboratory to answer such critical questions as it will be a helluva powerful solution to a helluva important challenge

We already have a solid proven reputation with the EU’s most dynamic fastest growing keep-it-in-the ground campaign, LetzteGeneration.de, and are developing a similar rep with JustStopOil. However, AAO could make the biggest difference in the US and Developing Countries, where there is much less of a safety net for people wanting to quit their humdrum job to become organizers. For the US, my intuition says NYC and Washington DC, since large upper middle class population (donor bases) in both, and both cities being the two major seats of power in the US; but one might also argue to have it in politically pivotal states like Ohio, Arizona,Nevada, Montana, Missouri,  and also where there are Moderate GOPers, like AK and ME and Utah. We welcome other suggestions.

So far in our research we have found no such platform. There are many websites that provide lists of jobs for certain kinds of people (eg 20 best jobs for introverts, or 10 jobs for people who hate working in an office), and many”how to”  articles relevant to the problem (eg. How to Escape the Rat Race (2024 Guide to Quit Your Job, which is often about day trading). But no real platform other than GoFundMe or Indiegogo or Kickstarter to enable people to crowdfund what they need to pursue their passion, much less to become campaign organizers.

Require them to recruit at least 2 others, preferably at least 3 people who will join them in an interview and be able to testify as to how genuine the applicant is in their motivation and even how they have this or that organizer ability.

That user would therefore be incentivized to start volunteering, and therefore our platform would incentivize lots more volunteering. If they are already volunteering, this will incentivize them to do their best to be able to get a great reference which will make it more likely to attract donors. They would also be incentivized to take and be certified as having taken organizer trainings, which are often offered by campaigns themselves, but also by groups like Momentum, Canvasopedia, the AFL-CIO, Rosa-Luxemburg foundation, etc.

No idea. But we will post training video DIY resources to help people develop charisma. OTOH, that will be irrelevant if they are wanting to work as a programmer, designer, data scientist, phone banker, influencer, or social media manager.

1. We will find out what they need to be willing to experiment. If they end up getting even a few more volunteers because they inserted us, they will likely be willing to give us a try. Also, they need not put in a clickable link (for fear of drawing people away from their site); they can put it as regular type font (ie not as a , requiring the user to copy paste into a new tab; so the original tab will be easy to return to and  otherwise stay in their bookmarks bar.

2. Craig Newmark might be willing to grant us a grant to cover dozens and maybe a 100  posts on Craigslist, and possibly Indeed ownership might offer us an in kind grant. There are other channels like ClimateBase, who claims to list the largest number of job openings, and we could continually be on their for about $150/mo; 

3. Once we have a few more success stories, given how big the topic of climate-quitting is trending, MSM will start writing about us and then we can go viral on instagram, twitter, even tik tok,or visa versa.

4. We can perhaps get county and state unemployment departments to distribute flyers at their office, where probably large numbers are serviced daily

5. Once we have one major NGO partnership success, others will quickly follow

Having more applicants so devoted and persuasive in their profile pitches that they were able to crowdfund their own BLE would be a great problem for any campaign to have. Having been a field organizer on numerous campaigns, you can normally tell if someone has what it takes by having a top experienced field organizer accompany them for a 2-4 hours, and then after letting them go on their own, spot checking their results.  

One programmer spent time looking and had no luck. Patreon, Kiva and GoFundme licenses are not OS or have no GPL. Ideally we would love to find one with Apache 2.0 license, or comparable, since we will be non profit, non commercial.