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How can one tool revolutionize democracy worldwide?

September 11, 2020
Protestor holding sign that demands justice for Breonna Taylor
Photo by LOGAN WEAVER on Unsplash
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Are you inspired by all of the social justice movements happening around the world right now? Whether it's the rapid destruction of our climate and habitats, election theft, racist over-policing, housing evictions, or a myriad of other struggles that so many devote their lives to fighting, the fires are burning strong. Under all of this, are you deeply concerned that those with a clenched grip on power, propped up by a firm alliance of military and corporate elites, can set back all of these movements for justice by their sheer physical force? Can all of these popular movements be infiltrated, jailed, or killed out of existence?

We know the stakes are higher than ever before in history. But what gives us faith is what history has repeatedly shown: The only strategy with the best track record of success to rapidly prevent or otherwise overthrow a fascist regime has been the power of organized nonviolent mass movements. For this reason, we created an organizing tool called GetCourageNow, whose mission is to take nonviolent civil resistance organizing to the next leap forward since Gandhi and King. GCN is, to our knowledge, the only human-centered, open-source, and highly secure software on the planet specifically designed to embolden, recruit and commit massive numbers of volunteers for nonviolent civil resistance - to scale moral courage.

This long-overdue technology is needed now more than ever, to not only safeguard the US election this November and ensure a peaceful transition of power, but also radically improve the chances of success for the climate, social, and economic justice movements in America and around the world. Over these next few months, we will need the smartest organizing tools we can create —well beyond what we have now.

For the past four years, our devoted volunteer-run team at GCN has been doing the R&D, user interviews, testing, and coding to develop the first tool ever that we think can recruit and commit exponentially larger numbers of volunteers than ever before for a variety of tactics.

These tactics include strategically targeted strikes, ongoing vigils, nonviolent direct actions, and more with a 70-80% chance of success. It is all based on the simple hypothesis that if you seamlessly combine five already proven recruitment motivators that increase recruitment metrics for courageous actions into one mobile-friendly place, you will get a cumulative and possibly synergistic effect. So how does this work?

  1. Our one-pager, reflecting almost four years of R&D and including a FAQ
  2. Our PPT and two-part demo (on slide 5). Note, the demo was initially done to appeal to the climate justice movement, hence shutting down the fossil fuel industries. Updated video demo coming soon.
  3. Reviews from more than 20 top organizers in the US, including United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta and ACORN founder Wade Rathke.

Want to get involved?

  1. Donate! Over the past 18 months, we've raised the $50k (from two EU foundations and seven major US donors) to almost finish the coding for our beta test. Now we are ready and eager to conduct the one-two months-long beta test if we can raise the $43k-53k necessary for that. With the zeitgeist in America rapidly changing to our favor, the timing for rapid testing and then deploying our tool is now. We've just been offered $16k in matching grants if we can raise the rest.
  2. Volunteer or Intern with us! We are a small, volunteer-based team worldwide, with a lot of work to do in donor research and personalized mailing, beta campaign searching, partner development, telephone follow up, and tech recruitment and testing. We offer a generous commission for any fundraising and possible salary.
  3. Are you a programmer? We are actively hiring software developers experienced in Golang and Flutter to make our software the most secure in the world.

If you are passionate about justice and liberation but feel too small to make a difference with all the movements out there, this is a place to start. We can't wait to launch this technology to help campaigns succeed like they never have before! The timing could not be better. Join us!

GetCourageNow.orgA 501 (c)3 nonprofit organization

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Can tech help female entrepreneurs break the bias?

Women founders continue to come up against common challenges and biases
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Written by Kelly Devine, Division President UK & Ireland, Mastercard

Starting a business may have historically been perceived as a man’s game, but this couldn’t be further from reality. Research shows women are actually more likely than men to actively choose to start their own business – often motivated by the desire to be their own boss or to have a better work-life balance and spend more time with their family.

The recently published Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurship 2021 found that in the category of 'Aspiration Driven Entrepreneurship’ – capturing those who actively choose to start their own business – women in the UK surpass men: 60% vs 56%. And Mastercard research from February 2022 found 10% of female business owners started their business in the past two years compared to 6% of men – meaning women were 67% more likely to have started a business during the pandemic.

Yet, there are common challenges that women founders continue to come up against - not least the gender imbalance in the household and long-held biases which are still prevalent.

In the UK, women are almost three times more likely to be balancing care and home commitments than men, and this was exacerbated during the pandemic as the additional barriers of school closures and lockdowns meant that the care time of dependents rose significantly on a day-to-day level for women. In addition, women were less likely to have access to a home office, greatly impacting the work they were able to accomplish when working from home was the only option.

It's also widely known that female business owners are still more likely to struggle to access funding for their business ideas. According to Dealroom, all-women founding teams received just 1.4% of the €23.7bn invested into UK start-ups in 2021, while all-male leadership teams have taken almost 90% of the available capital.

Without financial support, and when juggling significant time pressures both at home and at work, how can women grow their companies and #BreaktheBias (as this year’s International Women’s Day termed it)? What tools or support can save them time and money, and give them the headspace they need to focus on building their business?

With female owned businesses collectively estimating revenue growth of £120 billion over the next five years, solving this problem is bigger than supporting women – it’s about supporting the national economy.

Using tech to level the playing field

There are clearly societal issues at play that need to be resolved. But when we look at the rise in technology businesses during the pandemic, we can plainly see an alternative source of support critical for business growth: digital tools.

A third of female business owners say new technologies will be crucial to the success of their business in the future and one in five say it is the most important thing for business growth.

With new technology comes new ways to pay, create, and work. And yet there are barriers that prevent business owners accessing this technology. Women are significantly more likely to say they want to use more digital tools but don’t know what is best for their business and also more concerned about the security of digital tools.

When technology is adopted by businesses – whether using online accounting solutions or messenger services for communicating with staff – it saves them time, allows them to maintain and grow their customer base, and ultimately increases cost savings and profit.

By drastically improving the training and support that is available to women-owned business to access and utilise technology we will allow these businesses to grow and succeed. And we know there is demand for it.

Research done by the IFC and Dalberg shows that female entrepreneurs are more likely to invest time and money in business development. This includes product development, customer base expansion, and digital tools and training and there are plenty of services available offering this type of support – many of them for free.

One such programme is Strive UK – an initiative of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth – which aims to reach 650,000 micro and small business owners across the UK and empower them with the tools they need to thrive in the digital economy through free guidance, helpful tools and one-to-one mentoring.

Working together with small business experts – Enterprise Nation, Be the Business and Digital Boost – we hope to ensure hundreds of thousands of UK female business owners have the tools they need to succeed and reach their ambitious goals. Because this ambition remains strong in the UK, with female business owners largely optimistic about the future despite the multitude of challenges they are facing. Four in ten say they will grow their business in the next five years – compared to only a third of male business owners – and they’re also 35% less likely than men to say they plan to downsize or close the business.

But if we do not empower female entrepreneurs to access the tools and technology they need to grow, there is a risk this optimism could be misplaced. Support programmes that provide business owners with guidance and mentorship can help ensure this isn’t the case, allowing female entrepreneurs to not only survive but thrive in the months and years ahead.