Rootlet is a non-profit, grass-roots organization run by volunteers, devoted to charitable giving and participatory budgeting. Membership is open to all, and all members collectively decide the allocation of the charitable funds.
The best way to contact us is through email at info@rootlet.org. Rootlet is maintained by volunteers, so please excuse any delay in reply.
Credits
Photos: Rena Goodfriend (who when not working as a healer in her day job, is meandering about in great wonder and amazement seeing the beauty and mystery that lies on her path).
Software: the software is JavaScript and PHP, using WordPress as the CMS and jsPsych and Plot.ly for the voting and subsequent generation of plots. Dedicated technologies are also available for this purpose from Helios Voting, Lime Survey, and PBStanford.org.
Related Software
Participatory Budgeting: Technology is currently bringing increased levels of democracy to numerous corporations and governments. For more information about Participatory Budgeting, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_budgeting or https://ParticipatoryBudgeting.org. For a nice (albeit commercial) example of allowing governments to elicit voter budget participation, see https://abalancingact.com.
P2P: Peer to Peer networking can support secure voting as well as network security and may someday offer a corporate-free version of facebook. The following projects are doing some exciting work in this area:
- minds – open-source social networking
- ownCloud – open-source file sharing
- Freenet – free speech on the internet
- Hyperledger – a well-backed blockchain implementation
- Plos – Open science. Since politics is often very resistant to change, perhaps democracy can make faster inroads in scientific communiities?