## About this Draft This strategy is the product of OpenCivics' first full participatory quarterly cycle. It draws from stewardship planning sessions, a live strategy session on March 26 attended by Benjamin Life, Patricia Parkinson, Artem Zhiganov, James (Exeunt3), and Rather Mercurial, a week-long open response period across consortium channels, and formal review by the Delegate Council. Their perspectives, priorities, and proposals have been woven into the strategy's substance — shaping the framing, enriching the objectives, and adding new dimensions that reflect the collective intelligence of the consortium. We are grateful to each participant for showing up with candor, vision, and practical imagination. This is what participatory strategy looks like. ## Context OpenCivics is entering into its Q2 2026 (April–June) quarterly cycle. The annual theme emerging is "Become the Coordination Failure Response Swarm"  This quarter marks the full first period of activation post transitioning into [OpenCivics Phase 02](https://broadcast.opencivics.co/p/the-opencivics-movement-comes-alive).  The timing matters. Across the broader landscape — not just in technology but in journalism, philanthropy, and civic organizing — organizations are entering a composting phase. Longstanding institutions are going into hibernation. Ethereum itself is repositioning, de-emphasizing its own brand and speaking up for a wider range of technologies responding to the centralization of Silicon Valley. Simultaneously, dWEB, Folk Tech, and Relational Tech projects are beginning to organize around tools and methods for local resilience that don’t rely on traditional institutions. Local neighborhood organizers are starting to work alongside bioregionalists to anchor place-based alternatives to government aid and the non-profit industrial complex.  This creates an emergence window. OpenCivics was built for exactly this kind of moment: cascading civilizational crises that require not a centralized response but a distributed and coordinated one. Our role is to be the connective tissue that makes that coordination possible. Over the course of the year, completing the Phase 02 transition requires us to: - Re-engage our community — Reconnect with members, welcome new ones, and activate the relationships that make a network more than a mailing list. - Start our new rhythms — Host assemblies, councils, and gatherings that create consistent opportunities to connect and collaborate. - Resource our efforts — Sufficiently fund the infrastructure, populate the knowledge commons, and build the capacity to sustain this work. We don't need more structure. We need more aliveness. Our intentionality is set — years of developing models, practices, and infrastructure for open civic innovation have established that. Now, 2026 is about enlivening what we've built — making it real in people's lived experiences, making the practice observable, and making the coordination failures we were created to address actually addressable.  OpenCivics exists to be the interstitial connective tissue of the open civic innovation movement — infrastructure that makes visible, legible, and actionable the relationships of solidarity that already exist but lack meaningful ways to be affirmed. We've built a design methodology and network membranes. Now we make it pulse with participation. Further dialogue with OpenCivics Consortium Members revealed the deeper layers of how that solidarity might be expressed. Members most value what OpenCivics can do between organizations, not just within itself. The patterns we can amplify that other groups have already figured out. The functions that provide for the unmet needs of the space between all of us. Shared grants, shared volunteer capacity, shared onboarding, shared knowledge, shared tools. This mutualization — the active sharing of resources, capacity, and intelligence across the network — is not just implicit in our convening language. It is a core function of what we are building. This quarter, we hold both: internal accountability (following through on what we said we would do) and external value (becoming more genuinely useful to the space between organizations). We prove follow-through with action, and we prove relevance by being the interstitial infrastructure that others actually lean on. --- ## Operating Principles for the Quarter - Under-promise, over-deliver. This is our first pulse of the new planning cycle. People aren't sure about our follow-through. Prove it with action. - Aliveness over structure — Don't add more systems. Bring life to what exists. Let structure be an expression of the deep intentionality already established, not a goal in itself. - Start where you are, build what you need, share what you learn. Consider how this may also be a micro-practice embedded in everything we do - Conservative on new commitments — No new alliances or initiatives until existing ones are grounded. - External-facing pivot — Shift communications from "inside our thing" to "what's happening in the field. - Mutualize by default — When building or launching anything this quarter, ask: could this also serve the space between organizations? If a tool, rhythm, or resource can be shared across the network without significant additional effort, look for ways to mutualize it. ## Quarterly Objectives & Strategies ### Objective 1: Enliven the Consortium Strengthen and activate existing structures so they function with life, not just form. #### 1.1 Revitalize Network Assemblies Metrics and Milestones: - Hosted 6 sessions with 3 reminders automatically posted per gathering - 80% of sessions booked more than a week in advance; 50% one month out - Published and shared 6 civic innovator sessions - More than 10 people per session (ideal: 20-40) - Summary of assemblies shared with the consortium (and possibly the broader network) - Calendar published one month in advance Tactics: - Share updates in advance; use assembly time for discussion, not download - Promote Civic Innovator Sessions — experts in the field presenting to our community.  - Increase attendance through better promotion and more participatory format - Ensure voices beyond co-founders are heard (delegates, advisors, network members) - Feature perspectives at the frontier of civic infrastructure — including coordination technologies, diverse intelligence (how collective cognitive assemblages and non-human systems can inform civic design), and cognitive security (protecting communities from algorithmic predation). These themes differentiate OpenCivics' positioning and attract research-oriented collaborators and funders. #### 1.2 Activate Delegates & Advisors Milestones and Metrics: - 50% quorum met across delegate meetings - Regular 1-on-1 advisor check-ins (two per month) - Strong attendance of quarterly meetings Tactics: - Monthly delegate meetings to revisit and adjust the quarterly plan - Bring advisors into the health indicators conversation — what does organizational vitality look like? - Conduct sentiment checks with delegates and advisors (qualitative feedback loops) - Record delegate onboarding video (Notion system walkthrough) - Explore how delegates and advisors activation can extend beyond governance into embodied practice — what would it look like for delegates to co-facilitate community projects, not just review strategy documents? The spirit of enlivening civic participation includes making governance roles feel connected to tangible, lived outcomes. #### 1.3 Ship Queued Materials Milestones and Metrics: - Foundations series published - 3 missing website pages published - Backlog of case studies published (minimum 6) - Establish monthly membership review cadence with delegates - Onboarding pathway documented and accessible to new contributors Tactics: - Publish case studies, videos, and web materials sitting in the queue - Establish a manageable, alive social media presence — embody the organization we want to become - Process member application backlog - Build a clear onboarding pathway for new members and volunteers. #### 1.4 Establish Health Indicators Metrics and Milestones: - 3-5 health indicators defined, proposed, and adopted by delegates - Advisor input gathered at council meeting - Indicators reviewed in Q2 retrospective with clear recommendation for Q3 Tactics: - Define qualitative and quantitative indicators of organizational health (not vanity metrics) - Brainstorm, propose, gather feedback, adopt (for now) - Criteria: each indicator must reflect genuine health and efficacy, not just "numbers go up" - Adopt after delegate review; refine with advisor input - Discuss and wrap on May 28 council #### 1.5 Convene Trans-Bioregional Coordination Metrics and Milestones: - At least one trans-bioregional convening facilitated or co-facilitated by end of Q2 - OpenCivics' convening role articulated by at least one peer organization or partner - Active participation in at least one existing trans-bioregional effort - Landscape map of adjacent communities and alliances produced (informal, living document) Tactics: - OpenCivics Consortium as the natural convener of trans-bioregional meetings - Support the emerging alliance identified in the PRA — service provision within bioregions and coordination across bioregions - Show up to existing trans-bioregional efforts, add value, make it easy for others to lean in - Position this as a case study and proof point for the coordination failure thesis - Where organizations are going into hibernation, explore whether OpenCivics can serve as a knowledge preservation and transfer hub — capturing oral histories, documentation, and institutional memory before it is lost. Funding exists for this kind of work, and it positions OpenCivics uniquely at the intersection of archival practice and movement building. #### 1.6 Strengthen Network Nation & Regen Commons Alliances Metrics and Milestones: - Each active alliance has either a self-sustaining operating rhythm or a clear compost/continue decision by end of Q2 - No new alliance commitments initiated this quarter - Status of each alliance documented and shared with delegates Tactics: - Spin up Network Nation to the point of self-sustaining momentum - Resolve Regen Commons direction — composting or moving ahead; don't start new alliances until existing ones land - Evaluate whether Localism Fund to alliance conversion makes sense (Monty's Localism Labs, Timothy Breeze's interest) - Conservative posture: land and ground what's in the air before taking on new spaces #### 1.7 Contributor Onboarding Sequence Metrics and Milestones: - 2-3 new Contributors onboarded - Contributor onboarding curriculum developed and shared - Contributor onboarding pathway established and active - Contribution cadences and practices underway Tactics: - Determine key contributor functions and record short instructional videos - Identify and approach active knowledge commoners in the consortium - Determine upfront ai strategy and guidelines - Connect Opal into appropriate channels for support - Activate feeds in appropriate channels for visibility - Synchronize this effort with digest functions, to ground the value being offered --- ### Objective 2: Establish Reliable Rhythms Connection doesn't happen by accident. It requires consistent, reliable spaces where people can show up, find each other, and build trust over time. This objective establishes the internal and external rhythms that make OpenCivics a living practice — not just infrastructure, but pulse. #### 2.1 Establish Core Gathering Rhythms Metrics and Milestones: - Bi-weekly Network Assemblies running consistently (6 sessions this quarter) - Monthly Delegate Council meetings running with 50%+ quorum - Quarterly Strategy Review completed (this cycle) - Annual Summit planning initiated for July in-person activation Tactics: - Bi-weekly Network Assemblies — open to all network members, designed for connection, peer learning, and finding collaborators - Monthly Delegate Council and governance sessions for deeper network coordination - Quarterly strategy reviews as transparent check-ins on where we are headed - Begin scoping the Annual Summit as a gathering to share critical work across the field - Commit to consistency — the magic happens when people keep showing up #### 2.2 Launch External-Facing Broadcasts Metrics and Milestones: - 3 monthly report pulses published (April, May, June) - At least 1 field note per month (real-world coordination failure case study) - Collective intelligence sourcing mechanism established (not just co-founder curation) - Format and channel established by early April - At least 3 case studies published highlighting open civic innovation in practice Tactics: - Regular external-facing synthesis: what people are doing, where the gaps are, who to pay attention to - Determine the channel — Substack, bot-generated digest, or hybrid - Draw from collective intelligence (community-shared links, network conversations) — not just co-founder curation. Name how and where we draw from. - Include field notes: real-world coordination failure case studies (like Patricia's disaster response piece). One field note a month target. - Make the practice of open civic innovation observable and the coordination landscape legible - Leverage existing agentic infrastructure to support the pulse. - Further deploy and develop the support capacity to leverage the Opal bot’s current infrastructural functionality — entity extraction, knowledge commons ingest. - Train knowledge commons Contributors to moderate content fed into the knowledge commons - Further develop the external-facing pulse via weekly digests or quarterly reports. - This quarter, pilot the librarian bot with a small group of reviewers and iterate based on what works. - Develop a methodology to allow for member-generated content to be distributed via OpenCivics broadcast channels --- ### Objective 3: Build Fundraising Readiness Create the conditions by which funding can come to us — strategy, story, social proof. Beyond resourcing OpenCivics itself, members also emphasized a shared desire to mutualize fundraising capacity building by providing shared intelligence, peer support, and coordinated grant writing office hours. Even as we’re building OpenCivics' own fundraising capacity, we can create shared infrastructure that helps everyone in the network resource their work. #### 3.1 Develop Funding Strategy & Assets Metrics and Milestones: - Funding strategy document drafted with clearly articulated funding asks oriented towards stabilizing stewardship and providing value to Consortium members  - Fundraising deck v1 complete - Deck grounded in at least one case study or tangible demonstration of impact Tactics: - Create a clear funding strategy document - Translate strategy into a fundraising deck - Ground the deck in case studies and tangible demonstrations of impact - Core narrative: funding OpenCivics = funding the interstitial connective tissue of the civic innovation movement - Establish a shared grants index — a living resource where network members can find, share, and coordinate on funding opportunities - Leverage AI knowledge commons bot to help surface relevant opportunities automatically - Establish open grant writing office hours for peer support #### 3.2 Activate Fund Support Metrics and Milestones: - At least 2 advisors actively engaged in fundraising strategy refinement - Support team (Monty, Evan, others) has clear follow-through assignments - Funding strategy reviewed at May Advisor Council Tactics: - Engage advisors who know fundraising better than us — refine strategy, make connections - Nurture the support team (Monty, Evan, others) for follow-through on opportunities - Frame it as mutual benefit, not ask-for-help #### 3.3 Activate Fiscal Sponsorship Metrics and Milestones: - Verify Buckminster Fuller Institute fiscal sponsorship payouts fully functional end to end - Targeted fundraising underway once strategy and deck are ready - At least one mechanism for value flow to contributors piloted Tactics: - Complete Buckminster Fuller Institute fiscal sponsorship activation (already in-progress) - Begin targeted fundraising once strategy and deck are ready #### 3.4 Conduct Member Census Metrics and Milestones: - Census designed and launched - Census results synthesized into a publication-quality artifact - Participation rate tracked as an engagement signal Tactics: - Constitutional mandate to conduct census this quarter - Use as both a data-gathering and engagement tool - Could become a quarterly practice — lightweight, not bureaucratic - Approach the census not merely as an administrative exercise but as a meaningful feedback loop that becomes an ongoing shared practice/ritual. --- ## Labs Context This strategy focuses on the OpenCivics Consortium — how we hold ourselves accountable to following through on the governance, rhythms, and fundraising infrastructure that has been a long time coming. OpenCivics Labs activities are not detailed here as explicit objectives. That said, Labs is where much of the current aliveness lives. It takes a significant amount of steward time and contains a long list of active projects and experiments. The work happening in Labs — particularly around tooling, prototyping, and applied civic technology — directly feeds consortium objectives. Case studies emerge from Labs projects. The agentic infrastructure described in this strategy was built in Labs. Several of the economic models and mutualization patterns discussed in the strategy session are being tested in Labs contexts. The Delegate Council may wish to discuss how Labs activities map to consortium objectives as part of the Q2 review cycle. --- ## Quarterly Cycle Sessions The Quarterly Cycle Protocol specifies four sessions. Here is how they sequence for Q2: ### Session 1: Quarterly Planning Session (March 24–26) - Who: Stewardship Council (Patricia and Benjamin) - Purpose: Data collection, progress analysis, challenge identification - Output: Draft quarterly plan and assessment materials Prep: 1. Synthesize March 24 transcript into a structured brief 2. Gather existing commitments — review what is constitutionally mandated (census), what is in flight (Network Nation, Regen Commons, PRA case study) 3. Draft candidate health indicators 4. Note question for Advisor Council (May 28): "What are meaningful health indicators for an organization whose value is interstitial coordination?" ### Session 2: Quarterly Strategy Session (March 27 – April 2) - Who: All consortium members - Purpose: Community review, feedback, strategic assessment - Output: Community-informed priorities Format: Hybrid - Brief live walkthrough to present the draft and take initial feedback - Week-long async feedback period via consortium channels Feedback prompt for members: 1. Does this reflect what matters to you about OpenCivics right now? 2. What is missing that you would want to see this quarter? 3. Where do you want to contribute (paid or unpaid)? 4. What would "aliveness" look like to you in this community? One-week open response period: March 27 - April 3 ### Session 3: Delegate Council for Adoption (April 2) - Who: Delegate Council and Stewards - Purpose: Review member feedback, formally adopt the Q2 plan - Output: Adopted quarterly plan with any amendments Steps: 1. Stewards synthesize member feedback on the proposal 2. Develop revised plan incorporating community input 3. Delegates discuss, amend if needed, and formally adopt 4. Note any adaptation decisions for the record ### Session 4: Quarterly Publishing Session (Week of April 6–10) - Who: Stewardship Council and Delegates - Purpose: Finalize reports, communications, adapted priorities - Output: Published quarterly reports - Longform Strategy Report — Wiki - Shortform Strategy Update — Substack Steps: 1. Incorporate feedback from Strategy Session and Delegate Council into the final plan 2. Finalize the Q2 quarterly plan document 3. Publish across channels ### Session 5: Quarterly Advisor Council (May 28) - Who: Advisor Council and Stewards - Purpose: External perspective, strategic counsel, mid-quarter check-in - Output: Advisory recommendations By May 28, there will be approximately 2 months of execution data to share. Agenda: 1. Present Q2 plan progress — what is alive, what is stalled 2. Share health indicator data collected so far 3. Key question: What are meaningful health indicators for an organization focused on interstitial coordination? 4. Stress-test: are objectives still the right focus for the remaining month? 5. Funding readiness review — connections, opportunities, strategy feedback 6. Review mutualization experiments — grants index, onboarding pathways, contributor economics. Are they generating value? Should they scale? 7. Capture advisory recommendations as formal output Prep for May 28: - Compile progress against Q2 objectives - Gather health indicator data from April-May - Prepare funding strategy materials for advisor review - Summarize Labs activity brief for advisor context ## Publishing Plan ### Timeline | Date | Action | Who | Channel | | -------------- | -------------------------------------------------- | -------------------- | ------------------- | | Mar 24–26 | Planning Session → draft plan | Stewards | Internal | | Mar 26 | Circulate draft to consortium members | Stewards | Consortium channels | | Mar 26 – Apr 2 | Open response period (1 week) | Consortium members | Consortium channels | | Apr 3–4 | Synthesize member feedback into revised plan | Stewards | Internal | | Week of Apr 7 | Delegate Council — review feedback, formally adopt | Stewards + Delegates | Delegate session | | Apr 7–14 | Publishing Session — finalize comms + publish | Stewards | Internal | | Apr 14+ | Publish Q2 plan as first quarterly pulse | Stewards | Broadcast + Wiki | | May 28 | Advisor Council — mid-quarter check-in | Stewards + Advisors | Advisor call | ### What Gets Published 1. Internal quarterly plan (Wiki) - Objectives, strategies, indicators, rhythm, adaptation decisions - Council reports and assessment summary (protocol-required outputs) 1. External quarterly plan (Substack + social) - Frame around the theme of aliveness and mutualization - 2-3 objectives in accessible language - "How to get involved" section (paid and unpaid opportunities, including the bounty/contribution board and grant writing circles) - Position OpenCivics' role: interstitial coordination, amplifying the field, mutualization between organizations - Lead with voices beyond just Patricia and Benjamin — feature member perspectives, contributor frameworks, and stories from across the network ### Publishing Principles - Shift from inward-facing to outward-facing communications - Tell stories of the practice, not just organizational updates - Amplify and elevate examples of open civic innovation (members or not) - Embody the practice in how the plan itself is communicated - Under-promise, over-deliver — this is the first formal cycle - Lead with what is alive in the field, not just what is alive in OpenCivics organizing activities