You probably know Acter because of the activism organizing App we are building and its innovative new approach to how we think about mobile-first casual organizing in civil society communities. You may also know that we are not a regular venture-backed profit-oriented startup... But what does that mean? How do we, the Acter Team, intend to govern and build this App? And how can you join these efforts?
For the user ✊
Acter is not your regular venture-backed startup, as we strongly believe this is bad for the goals we want to achieve: eventually, we want to serve a super-long tail of small groups and communities, in particular in hard-to-reach and disadvantaged communities. This is inherently incompatible with a high-profit margin that venture capital-backed startups want as these people will not have the funds to pay for the service or development. Accepting venture capital would compromise our stated goals.
Additionally, we are strong believers in user-driven building in the open. While we are working Acter to "scratch our itch", too, we are well aware that we are (still) far more privileged in terms of access to the internet, hardware, and money, than many people we want to ultimately serve. The only way to ensure we are building an app that truly serves its user base is to spread that build process as broad and wide as possible and feasible—making surveys, hosting co-creation sessions, broadly, and listening to user feedback directly are all things we are already doing and intend to increase.
Don't trust, verify!
If you are cynical—as I might be on my bad days, too—you might exclaim that many startups have promised similar things before, but then go public or being bought out by large investors or companies. And you'd be right in mistrusting a blog post by the founders. That's why we've recently extended the website to make it more transparent that we put our money where our mouth is: explain how Acter, the Association behind the App is set up, organized, and governed to ensure these goals.
Acter is a self-owning non-profit association under Danish law. Its members consist of the (paid and non-paid) developers and contributors of the App (essentially a "worker-owned" coop) as well as organizations using Acter. Additionally, the articles know of a third non-voting membership status called "supporter": individuals who contribute financially to the association.
The tl;dr is: Acter is a coop of active contributors and using organizations & a club of supporters
That's it. No shares, no options, crypto-tokens, or anything similar. No way to 'acquire' the organization, no way for single partners to have swaying power or minority veto rights. Just these members decide on the faith and strategy of what we do and elect a board to run the day-to-day. Which also makes it highly uninteresting for any kind of venture capital. But highlights the importance of the supporters.
Become a 💪supporter today!
Next to the active contributors and larger organizations that constitute the core of the membership, the supporters—the wider community of individuals—are crucial to the success of Acter: with a donation from as little as 1Eur per month, anyone can become a supporter and join the Acter supporter community of exclusive access to the team, learn latest updates before anyone else and be invited to co-creation-sessions.
To highlight the importance even more, we are offering several additional services exclusive to Acter supporters donating 10Eur/month or more, like guaranteed access to SuperInvites, a custom short-handle for your space, and being listed in the public directory so new users can find and join it easily. You can learn about all the details in the various ko-fi membership levels. If you have any further questions about the supporter membership, check this common questions answered section, which also covers how you can gift the supporter membership to someone.