Civic Helpdesk

This is a helpdesk for grassroots activists and groups, especially beginner activists and new groups. It can serve any cause.

You can start by telling the chatbot about your situation and needs …

  • Try something like this: “I am concerned about [insert your issue here]. What should I do?”
  • If you’re part of a group that’s already underway, try something like this: “We are a group that’s working on [insert your concern]. How should we organize ourselves?”
  • Or be more specific, like: “How should we recruit more members?”
  • You can also ask it for explanations, such as: “What is community-organizing?”

The bot will ask you questions to learn more about your situation and then will offer to draft documents for you. The documents that it drafts will help you move forward.

You can ask the chatbot to modify any document that it drafts for you by typing your feedback above. For instance, you could say: “Make it shorter.”

Workspace for editing

Once the chatbot generates a document, it will also appear in the window below. There you can edit the text yourself.

Once you are satisfied, you can save it and copy it and paste it into other applications, such as an email.

FAQs

What's the point of this?


Democracy and local communities would be stronger if more groups of concerned people gelled into effective organizations that collected time and money from their own members, used their resources to build their own capacity, made collective decisions, and acted.

I am all for teaching people how to do those things, but it’s unrealistic to offer civic education of this type to millions of adults. An alternative is to help groups organize themselves effectively so that they can focus on the substance of their work.

Any effective group needs (among other things) various documents: recruitment messages, agendas, budgets, job descriptions, mission statements, and more. Having adequate documents would move many groups forward.

Who is responsible for this helpdesk?

My name is Peter Levine and there is more about me here. I am solely responsible for this page.

Why does this bot give the responses it does?


I have given ChatGPT general instructions and trained it on a selection of documents. My instructions are intended to push the AI in certain directions.

For instance, I have not nudged it to help you to seek grants, because I believe that grants tend to make groups dependent (and there is not enough grant money to go around.) But I have nudged it to help you raise funds from your own members.

What are some of the underlying principles?


Any group should have a structure. It should designate roles and responsibilities. This doesn't mean that its rules must be formal, rigid, or complicated.

Groups should primarily depend on their own members for resources and should primarily use their resources to build their own capacity. They should not be mere conduits for funding other entities.

Groups should treat time for meeting and discussion as a scarce resource and use it to address important, unavoidable topics while delegating routine decisions to individuals or small committees.

During meetings, it should be clear what is being done. Are we making a decision, giving advice to someone, brainstorming, or venting? All of those activities are appropriate, but it is important to distinguish them and stay on task.

Groups should develop general mission statements but also welcome diverse views about strategies and values.

A group should have a fairly stable core of members yet be open to newcomers.

Relational community organizers in the USA have developed a set of tools that include one-to-one meetings for recruitment, group meetings for planning, and nonviolent direct actions. Their toolkit is valuable for a wide range of groups.

In general, this bot reflects my current diagnoses and strategic thoughts. You could find some of those ideas here: "What our nation needs is a broad-based, pro-democracy civic movement."

Privacy concerns?


I believe that ChatGPT can harvest chats using their bot, so I would consider using fictitious names and locations if privacy is a concerns for you.