Systemic Altruism
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Justice & public goodsPreliminary editorial review

Foundation for Public Code

Foundation for Public Code supports public-product organizations with reusable standards, process guides and governance resources. The current parent is a Dutch association of chapters; its US chapter is not treated as the same legal entity or an extra profile.

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Systemic Altruism practice potential: 64–74/100
90% of weighted axes reviewed. A mechanism hypothesis, not proven effectiveness or a donation recommendation.

Who this work enables

Tools & support for charities: The Standard for Public Code, process guidebooks and governance exercises help public-interest implementers organize shared code stewardship rather than invent each procurement and maintenance process.

Humanity’s Checklist source match

Gatekeepers · Coordination — editorial, partial alignment.

Shared stewardship guidance targets vendor dependence and coordination among public institutions. This is partial editorial alignment, not proof of resident control, successful procurement reform or checklist adoption.

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

Make shared public software stewardship easier to organize

Six dimensions, with rationale

Structural depth

3 / 4

Shared procurement, stewardship and governance guidance can change how institutions maintain reusable public software instead of repeatedly commissioning isolated systems.

Institutional reach

3 / 4

Common resources can support several public administrations and civic implementers, though documented examples do not establish attributable reach.

Durability

2 / 4

Standards and organizational skills can persist, but governance, maintenance and procurement practice require continuing institutional resources.

Scalability

3 / 4

Reusable guidance and product-organization methods can travel, while laws, vendor arrangements, staff capacity and local accountability require adaptation.

Funding additionality

Unreviewed

No current marginal stewardship-support bottleneck, alternative public-sector capacity investment or causal funding counterfactual was audited.

Community agency

Unreviewed

Collaborative governance resources and chapter membership do not establish binding affected residents’ rights over association budgets, procurement decisions or supported codebases.

Evidence and selection

Organization reported; current primary mechanism sources inspected

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

A testable next question

Do public institutions using a defined stewardship and procurement guidance package maintain more independently reusable, supported codebases at lower full cost than comparable institutions, with enforceable resident accountability and no increased vendor lock-in?

Review confidence: Moderate for documented design; low for systemic attribution. The Dutch parent association’s shared public-code stewardship and capacity model. It does not score the separate North American chapter, every supported product or public authorities’ entire software portfolios.

What remains uncertain

The current site describes a chapter-based nonprofit network with a Dutch parent association, KvK 74996452 and RSIN 860102294, and a separate US 501(c)(3) chapter, EIN 92-2324481. The parent is not silently called a Dutch stichting or assigned the chapter’s US status. These are organizational disclosures, not independent regulator checks. Public-code examples and testimonials are not causal impact findings or evidence that the foundation authored every product. The Standard, Process Codes and Governance Game are enabling resources; website CC0 terms do not establish licenses for every supported software project, dependency or hosted service. No named software badge is assigned.

Sources to inspect

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