Systemic Altruism
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Justice & public goodsPreliminary editorial review

Decidim Free Software Association

The association maintains Decidim and supports its contributor community. Civil-society organizations and public institutions can use the framework to run proposals, assemblies and participatory processes with traceable follow-up.

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Systemic Altruism practice potential: 71–81/100
90% of weighted axes reviewed. A mechanism hypothesis, not proven effectiveness or a donation recommendation.

Who this work enables

Tools & support for charities: A reusable participation framework lets nonprofits and civic associations organize assemblies, proposals and transparent follow-up without building their own platform.

Open-source evidence · license checked

  • Decidim framework — GNU AGPL v3 license file. Organization’s role: maintainer.
    The nonprofit association maintains Decidim with a contributor community. This AGPL v3 snapshot covers the named development repository’s code license, not all modules, content/database licenses, participant information, hosted services or trademark permissions. License-file snapshot: dbbe3558157f5861bff35dcb37b328b679b0ccfd.

License checked 2026-10-28. 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

Coordination · Gatekeepers — editorial, partial alignment.

Shared deliberation workflows and an inspectable, modifiable platform partially address coordination and access to civic infrastructure. Features are not proof that decision-making power has shifted.

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: 2026-10-28. Based on the organization’s dated official sources below; earlier axis-review dates are unchanged.

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The proposed pathway

Steward reusable infrastructure for participatory decisions

Six dimensions, with rationale

Structural depth

3 / 4

Reusable proposal, assembly and follow-up workflows can alter how institutions structure decisions, but a participation website cannot by itself confer binding decision rights.

Institutional reach

3 / 4

The framework is designed for varied civic institutions and associations; documented functionality does not establish representative participation or current adoption totals.

Durability

3 / 4

Open code, a maintainer association and reusable process records can persist beyond one project, subject to funding, upgrades and institutions honouring their commitments.

Scalability

4 / 4

A modular framework can be installed and adapted by multiple organizations; facilitation, hosting, accessibility, moderation and governance design are not costless.

Funding additionality

Unreviewed

Unknown: project activity and stated funding needs do not establish a current marginal funding gap, delivery capacity or what additional unrestricted donations would change.

Community agency

Unreviewed

Unknown: participatory design and community-oriented governance do not by themselves establish affected people’s binding authority over budgets, priorities, deployment or withdrawal.

Evidence and selection

Primary-source mechanism and identity documentation; no independent impact validation in this review

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

A testable next question

For an association using Decidim, do previously excluded members gain a documented route to proposals that receive consequential, traceable decisions, compared with its prior process—not merely more accounts or comments?

Review confidence: Low–medium for the documented mechanism; low for causal effectiveness and donation comparisons. The Decidim Free Software Association’s current code/community stewardship, not Barcelona City Council as a charity, individual municipal deployments or the separate CONSUL DEMOCRACY Foundation.

What remains uncertain

The legal notice identifies Associació de Software Lliure Decidim, ID G67401174; it remains dated February 2022 and is not described as a fresh regulator audit. Its current about page identifies a nonprofit association responsible for code and community. The separately included CONSUL DEMOCRACY Foundation has a different legal identity and current codebase: historical Madrid/Barcelona origins are not grounds to count them as one present organization, nor to count every fork as a charity. AGPL v3 software permissions are separate from website/content, database, personal-data and trademark terms. Open-source governance and participation features do not prove inclusion, community budget control, government responsiveness or outcomes.

Sources to inspect

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Axis review: 2026-10-28 · weighting method v0.2 (2026-10-26) · Method, conflicts and coverage