Our first collective action was to establish the founding principles and initial governance procedures for the Alliance, which are summarized in our guide.

Goal

In order to begin taking actions together, we needed a shared foundation. We wanted to ensure that the premises of this foundation made sense and were acceptable to a reasonably diverse group of people, both because the premises are important enough to deserve democratic input, and because they will determine what members we will be able to attract in the future.

We will use these premises for many purposes going forward, including to explain the Alliance to new members, to justify proposed collective actions, and to provide a framework for member deliberations.

Certain premises, such as our vision, are unlikely to change; others, such as the process by which the strategic office is held accountable to members, are subject to future revision. In the meantime, the strategic office will make small edits to the produced guide for clarity, but will not make major changes to content without member consultation.

What we did

1. Invitations to early members: We had verbal conversations with a variety of friends and relatives from different walks of life to ask if they were interested in becoming early members of the Alliance. Our intention was not to build a global representative sample (which would be too much work to be practical at this stage); it was merely to find a set of people who had diverse opinions, a general interest in making the world a better place, and some willingness to give us the benefit of the doubt.
2. Initial round of feedback: Members filled out a form which contained some initial proposals. We reviewed responses to the form, having discussions with members who had questions, concerns, and feedback.
3. Final approval: We produced a document summarizing the proposals in the form, taking into account the feedback we received from members. We refined this document with members until 100% of members explicitly approved it. Our hope was that achievement of such high consensus would, in part, compensate for the lack of representativeness in our initial group of members.

What we saw and learned

1. Some members initially joined with the understanding that they could contribute in a flexible manner. However, through discussions and clearer communication, we believe there is now a shared understanding—at least in principle—of the importance of consistent and reliable participation for the success of the Alliance.
2. It is important to emphasize the low initial time commitment and general respect for members’ time.
3. It is important to emphasize upfront that actions will be straightforward to-do items, and members will not need to take initiative if they do not want to do so.
4. While this exercise was originally intended to produce a set of hard guarantees, members often also found our own beliefs and expectations helpful; for instance, members were made more comfortable by a list of example actions.