CollAction.org is looking for a new team or organization to scale it up! (and is going for a nap in the meantime)
Let us explain — we’ll try to keep it short :)
Some History (feel free to skip!)
The journey of CollAction has been thrilling! About 5 years ago we had this vague idea about how to solve so-called “collective action problems”*. We saw that traditional solutions to collective action problems (like regulation and privatization) weren’t always applicable, desirable, or working as they should. At the same time, we saw all kinds of platforms that used the power of the collective, whether it was related to buying (e.g. Groupon), funding (e.g. crowdfunding), advocacy (e.g Avaaz). Never before were so many people (3 billion at the time) connected with each other, through the internet. We figured: this should allow us to act collectively on an unprecedented scale.
That’s when we came up with crowdacting: “Coordinated, conditional, collective action to achieve a positive social and/or ecological goal”. Simply put, with crowdacting we ask: “Would you take action for good if you knew that a hundred/a thousand/a million/a billion others would do so too?”
Next step was to build a crowdacting platform. Small sidenote: we consciously chose to separate the name crowdacting from the platform that we were going to build (CollAction.org) — in line with our belief that our mission is larger than our organisation. We encourage other people to also start crowdacting platforms. Practically this means e.g. that we build open source and have a static site that explains the crowdacting concept (crowdacting.org).
First we built a crappy prototype of collaction.org. We tested the waters with some first small crowdactions that we started ourselves, like switching to a fair bank and a meat free month (with targets of 50 and 100 people). Shortly thereafter, two people that we didn’t know started the first project that we didn’t organise ourselves, which was exciting, because that was in line with the desired end goal from the beginning: in order to be able to scale, we couldn’t organise all campaigns ourselves, it would need to be done by the crowd.
Fast forward: over the years that followed a professional platform was built by our amazing voluntary dev team, more than a hundred crowdacting projects were started, 3 offline festivals were organized, and over 30.000 people committed to crowdactions. All thanks to the amazing work of dozens of committed and talented volunteers. We couldn’t be more grateful for all their work.
Where we are now
In 2018 we had organized quite a few small crowdactions and we felt it was time for a larger, more professional crowdacting campaign. We came up with the Slow Fashion Summer (which was later dubbed the Slow Fashion Season): 2500+ people committed to not buy any new clothes for 3 months, in order to pump the brakes on fast fashion. This turned out to be the start of something beautiful. We repeated the campaign in 2019 in which almost 15,000 people participated. That’s when we knew we were really onto something. The community around the Slow Fashion campaigns grew, local groups were set up, and more volunteers joined what was now turning into a proper movement — the Slow Fashion Movement.
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Ever since the start of CollAction, we have struggled with fundraising. Perhaps it’s hard to find funding for such a new type of platform, perhaps we’re just not very good at it…Either way, the result is that we’ve always been rather low on financial resources and strongly reliant on volunteers and free time of the coordinating team.
Although we wholeheartedly believe in the potential impact of both collaction.org and the Slow Fashion Movement, it became clear that we didn’t have the time or resources to give both projects the attention they deserve and need in order to truly reach scale.
So we made the difficult decision to put collaction.org on hold for now. And look for a new team or organization that could take it to the next level.
Interested in growing collaction.org?
We believe the concept of crowdacting and collaction.org is sufficiently proven. We have also built a solid platform/website. We believe its potential is huge — it just needs to get the attention it deserves. This means: an active, committed, and talented team that starts crowdactions, finds crowdaction starters, builds the community, and further develops the platform. And all the other stuff that comes with scaling up a startup :).
We’re ready to hand over the reins to the right team or organisation that is passionate about making an impact with crowdacting. However, we have poured our blood, sweat, and tears into the project, so we want the new team to be serious about this and aligned with our values.
We don’t ask for any money in return — we’re in this for the impact. But we would like to see a thought through plan on how you expect to grow the impact of collaction.org. Of course, we’re more than happy to help you come up with that plan.
Long story short: if you’re interested in taking a proven concept to the next level and lead collaction.org, please reach out to hello@collaction.org.
Together we make waves!
*Collective action problems are situations where it is in the interest of the group to work together, but in which coordination is a challenge. Because of this, every individual has an incentive to act in their own interest. This video explains it clearly.
