Systemic Altruism
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Justice & public goodsPreliminary editorial review

Code for Science & Society

Provides fiscal sponsorship and organizational support for public-interest research and technology projects; OpenRefine is a documented sponsored example.

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Systemic Altruism practice potential: 74–84/100
90% of weighted axes reviewed. A mechanism hypothesis, not proven effectiveness or a donation recommendation.

Who this work enables

Tools & support for charities: Fiscal, financial, operational and governance support that allows public-interest technology projects to concentrate on their own work.

Open-source evidence · license checked

  • OpenRefine (sponsored example) — BSD-3-Clause license file. Organization’s role: fiscal sponsor.
    OpenRefine’s actual three-clause BSD file and current CS&S project listing inspected. CS&S provides fiscal support, not sole authorship; dependencies, input data, optional services and every other sponsored project require their own review. License-file snapshot: d126f8ae6d7bad4f5240cd1d92171f4d174e3deb.

License checked 2026-10-27. This is not a security audit, proof of current support or effectiveness, or a promise of free hosting. A sponsor or steward is not necessarily the sole developer. Unchecked profiles are not evidence of closed code. No extra score points are added.

Humanity’s Checklist source match

Gatekeepers · Coordination — editorial, partial alignment.

Shared organizational infrastructure can lower the entry costs of building public-interest tools and connect contributors with support. Whether it shifts durable power to excluded communities needs direct review.

Explicit checklist adoption: not verified. A mechanism match is not an affiliation, endorsement, evidence of effectiveness or a scoring bonus. Read the practice.

Focus classification: 2026-10-27. Based on the organization’s dated official sources below; earlier axis-review dates are unchanged.

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The proposed pathway

Fiscal and operational infrastructure for public-interest technology projects

Six dimensions, with rationale

Structural depth

3 / 4

Addresses legal, financial and operational bottlenecks that can prevent public-interest projects from becoming sustainable institutions.

Institutional reach

4 / 4

Its documented sponsorship model serves multiple research and technology communities rather than a single implementation.

Durability

2 / 4

Operational support can strengthen project continuity, but continuing finance, governance and sponsor health remain necessary.

Scalability

4 / 4

Common financial and administrative services can support additional projects, constrained by sponsor capacity, compliance and project readiness.

Funding additionality

Unreviewed

Unknown: unrestricted sponsor funding, project-restricted donations, fee coverage, onboarding capacity and alternative sponsors have different counterfactuals and were not audited.

Community agency

Unreviewed

Unknown: stated community-centered strategy and work on participatory funding do not prove audited consequential rights for affected communities across every sponsored project.

Evidence and selection

Organization reported; current primary mechanism sources inspected and named license file checked

Illustrative inclusion to examine this mechanism. Inclusion is not an external recommendation or a verified comparative ranking.

A testable next question

Does incremental sponsorship support enable otherwise blocked public-interest projects to deliver sustained, useful services at lower full cost than feasible alternative arrangements?

Review confidence: Moderate for documented design; low for systemic attribution. The US public charity, EIN 81-3791683, and its fiscal-support model. OpenRefine illustrates a current sponsored project, not a second independently counted charity or code solely authored by the sponsor.

What remains uncertain

Fiscal sponsorship is not sole software development or validation of a sponsored project’s outcomes. Sponsorship services and open software have separate terms. Do not attribute all partner benefits to CS&S or count OpenRefine again as an independent organization in this cohort.

Sources to inspect

Propose a sourced correction →

Axis review: 2026-10-27 · weighting method v0.2 (2026-10-26) · Method, conflicts and coverage