Tech revolution for people's power
Help us build Powerline, the platform for people’s power! It’s a communications system that can help millions of people, non-profits, and communities worldwide. Just think: tech specifically made to strengthen democracy, civic engagement, and civil society.
Why? Our world’s a mess right now. Powerline has the potential to be revolutionary. With a simple tap of a finger, it’s easy to get thousands of signatures for a petition or thousands of donations for a fundraiser in minutes, not weeks. With a host of other tools, it’s possible to lead, mobilize, organize, and engage an entire group, non-profit, movement, town, state, or even a country to be on the same page and act together. It can’t sing and dance for you, but we guarantee Powerline can help you organize a flashmob of people to sing and dance together better than anything that’s out there today.
If you're "big picture", watch the main video above. If you like specifics, check out the How it Works video. Either way, please donate what you can today!
Powerline is more effective at reaching an entire group of people without creating more noise or notifications that come along with social media. It’s a system designed to engage the many, rather than the few. People need an easy and meaningful way to interact, be informed, and truly be involved in large groups, movements, and government that constitute the lives we live. Yes, we’re nerds - but we’re nerds trying to do good.
How? Think of Powerline as a Twitter for large groups, but on steroids. It provides a much better way for all of us to organize and self-organize to reach more people and make a greater impact. It integrates a set of disparate tools into one streamlined solution useful for large groups looking to lead, mobilize, organize, and engage in meaningful ways. Some of those tools include polls, petitions, fundraisers, events, posts, groups, social tagging, comments, etc. Whether it’s to Save the Planet or Save the Garden Gnomes from the Lawnmowers, you can also create or join any other groups you want like a PTA, a student group, or a non-profit. We won’t bore you with all the #science that went into the design to address the interaction, organizing, and collaboration challenges specifically associated with large group dynamics… But it was a lot. If that's a little confusing, you're probably someone who wants specifics - learn more about what it does exactly in the How it Works video.
Will you donate what you can today?
Current solutions are not enough. It’s clearer than ever that today’s technologies aren’t designed to sustain engagement beyond the hashtag, to mobilize collective action, to hold leaders accountable, or to help us come together around our common struggles and missions.
This is a serious problem and we can see examples of how ineffective our world’s solutions are with almost every current event. The fundraisers, petitions, and hashtags all fade away faster than Usain Bolt’s competition in a 100-meter race. Let’s be real - we have self-driving cars and rockets, but we can’t talk to our leaders or act together in large groups. What’s up with that?! The world’s going to hell in a handbasket and we don’t have technology that is purposely designed to tackle these problems from the ground up? We can do better, and with Powerline, we will.
Our cause is just, our vision is clear. Our team has been working for the last couple of years to build this incredibly important and desperately-needed technology. And we have the ramen packets (and code contributions) to prove it. We’ve interviewed hundreds of people, ran simulations, received lots of feedback, generated many prototypes, and learned a ton. Our adventure gave us the opportunity to give a TEDx talk on the subject in May 2015 in Los Angeles. “To build the world we want and need, we must be involved in between elections, not just in government, but in all of our communities and organizations.” That's exactly what Powerline helps people to do.
So, why do we need your help? We’re out of funding, and, with the world coming apart at the seams, we urgently need to accelerate our progress. You may be wondering what stands in our way: Imagine the screen that needs to be built in order to create a fundraiser for your group. We don't have that screen yet and many others still need to be built because we're bringing together so many different tools into one simplified communications system. It takes time - this isn't a coffee ordering app! If we can raise $50,000, we know we can build, deliver, and improve the web app, the mobile app, the backend server, and a lot more techy stuff that excites us but probably bores you.
The more we raise, the faster we can deliver. Bottom line: with your help, we can make this a success that can be useful to every non-profit, NGO, elected official, campaign, organization, and any country on Earth.
Will you please help us and become part of the solution? We have no shame in begging, especially when Powerline could help millions of people.
There are two ways you can help us build this incredibly important and urgently-needed technology:
1) Please give what you can by making a donation - we must be people-powered!
2) Once you donate, share our campaign on Facebook and tag a friend who you think would make a donation, too.
Thank you for your interest and for supporting our work - together, we will really change the world!
-- Jesse Chen, CEO @ Powerline
Other Links
Learn more: How it Works
Check out latest code on GitHub
Our landing page (work-in-progress)
Old iOS Beta (can update with funding support!)
Old Android Beta (can update with funding support!)
Some Questions We've Received
Who are you? Check out my TEDx talk , my LinkedIn profile , my bio for the Civicus board of directors (the global civil society alliance with thousands of member organizations in over 100 countries and a seat at the United Nations), or even my podcast . Before Powerline, I was a technology strategist at a global management consulting firm. Before that, I was two-term student government president at the University of Maryland. Powerline is my life’s work. Our VP Tech, Austin, (10 years devOps at global financial media firm) and I are both in New Jersey, while Peter, Igor, and Ressia are remote. We collaborate daily via Slack, GitHub, and Trello.
What is Powerline's mission? As a social enterprise, we seek to strengthen democracy, civic engagement, and civil society using technology.
Why are we doing this? We truly believe that our technologies today are not designed for the needs of large groups of people, whether that’s a town, a non-profit, a movement, a campaign, or any other large group. The disconnect between the leadership layer of society and our communities is leading to a dramatic level of instability worldwide, but certainly more recently in the US. Powerline works to help people organize and self-organize to bridge the gap between our institutions and the people within them. We believe democracy should be something that happens in between elections, not just in government, but in all the communities and organizations in our lives. And that requires the right, purposeful technology.
Is Powerline political? No. Powerline is a non-partisan communications system for large groups. Groups do not need to have a political or social issue focus in order to benefit from Powerline’s design. The same technology useful to a movement is useful to a student government or a Parent Teacher organization.
Why do we need money and why does it take so long? Powerline is a system. It takes a lot of time and effort to create something simple and usable for citizens and group leaders and elected leaders. This isn't a coffee ordering app! It's far more complex as it brings together so many different tools that alone would take a lot of effort, let alone being combined together.
What about privacy and data? We don't have ads so we don't share your data with third parties. Any group leaders that want your data need to ask for it and you need to provide your approval before joining the group. We leverage HTTPS secure connections and are looking to fully encrypt our system in the future. We do hope to offer an open API for data analytics, which would provide aggregated data for public leadership accountability.
What about e-mail? We create a listserv for every group. By default, only the group owner can e-mail everyone in the list, but the group owner can change this setting to allowing all group members to e-mail everyone in the list.
What about censorship? Powerline does not limit the type of content that can be posted or share on the platform. In order to help control spam or abuse, we do allow users to flag content for leadership review. A group leader can see and delete content if, and only if, enough people have flagged it for review. Like many other features on Powerline, this is designed to balance power at the top and the bottom of any organization.
Is Powerline for-profit? As a social enterprise, Powerline is an L3C, the LLC-equivalent of a Benefit corporation. We are legally required to put our social mission first.
How does Powerline generate revenue? Powerline is a freemium platform. It's free to create a group of any size and access all the tools in our 'mission' tier (free tier). To access advanced data analytics or integrate with Salesforce, for example, you can upgrade to a premium Silver or Gold package for an affordable monthly fee. We also charge a small transaction fee on fundraisers.
GoFundMe does not accept PayPal. If you prefer to use PayPal, please send to info at powerli.ne - Thank you!
