In the previous section of the Govrn white paper, we outlined some of the most pressing problems we see in the U.S. Political, Government, and Civic Systems. Here we propose our solution to these problems: Outcome-Based Donations.
A quick note before we start: At Govrn, we focus on the journey to fix the problem, not the solution. Quite often, by hyperfocusing on a solution, it’s easy to forget about the problem(s) you are trying to solve. Our proposed solution is merely one idea that we believe can help solve the problem in politics and government. We won’t pretend like we aren’t big advocates of our solution, but it’s only one solution -- and solutions can and must iterate. The goal of the Govrn project is to propose new ideas so as to trigger public debate. We hope that many people comment on both the benefits and drawbacks of our proposed solution, as well as even propose some of their own solutions.
We will always care 100x more about solving a problem than we do about any solution we propose. Our journey will forever and always be to solve the problem (read here for the problem statement).
Here is our first proposed solution for addressing the many problems we as constituents feel in politics and government.
At Govrn, we’re building outcome-based donations for political campaigns. This means the politician only receives your donation if they help solve a problem you care about while still in office. On a more technical note, outcome-based donations (OBDs) are donations held in tech-enabled escrow until predefined community metrics are reached. Think of this as a mash-up of Kickstarter and OKRs (Objective Key Results) but for politics. This allows constituents and communities to donate money to politicians on the condition of achieving community improvements.
For example, say an individual in San Francisco cares about improving education. They could start an OBD to improve local high school education. If others in the community agree that this is a priority, they can also pledge money to the OBD. As the donation total grows, it creates an incentive for education experts to chime in with the appropriate metric to track -- for example a 2% increase in graduation rates in four years.
Once a full OBD proposal is agreed to by the donors, the relevant politicians, in this case the Mayor and School Board of Education, will work on implementing this goal. Next their re-election campaigns will only receive this funding if graduation rates increase by 2% in four years. This is how OBDs use collective intelligence to better prioritize politicians' agendas, build transparency and accountability, and support politicians for doing their job well.
For the full OBD lifecycle to work, there are three relevant stakeholders: Constituents, Domain Experts, and Politicians. OBDs begin with constituents identifying and crowdfunding for outcomes that they care about for their community. Once a critical mass of constituents and liquidity is reached, this attracts the attention of two other important stakeholder groups: Domain Experts and Politicians.
Constituents are the most important part of the Govrn process and include anyone who wants to donate to create positive change in their community.1 Using OBDs, constituents leverage collective intelligence to flag the most pressing issues they care about and crowdfunding collective support for them.
Domain experts are responsible for proposing the most meaningful metric(s) to measure the successful resolution of constituents’ problems. They may also have recommendations on implementation strategies based on their research. Domain experts can include anyone from researchers, practitioners, non-profits/NGOs, government officials, and even the politicians themselves.2
Politicians are responsible for delivering the outcomes and provide legal, project management, and government expertise. They understand the constraints of possible solutions and coordinate resources and expertise to achieve public goals. Ultimately, due to how our government and communities are structured, politicians are in a unique position to coordinate and create public goods and solutions. The Govrn model allows politicians to partner with constituents and domain experts to better deliver these public goods.
- A constituent submits an outcome request
- Other constituents join and crowdfund
- Experts propose metrics
- Constituents vote on metrics, goals, and politicians
- Politicians implement the goal
- Funds transfer
A constituent starts an OBD to increase renewable energy in their city. This is a way to signal to their elected representatives that this specific issue is a priority for them.
If others in the community agree that renewable energy is important, they can crowdfund for the cause as well. Issues that matter to many people will naturally receive a higher number of donors, gaining increased attention from politicians.
As the renewable energy OBD starts receiving donations from more and more people, experts will submit proposals covering two items:
i. Metric - How to measure the desired outcome? (E.g. percent increase in renewable energy production.) ii. Goal - What progress would be both meaningful and realistic in a political timeframe? (E.g. 5% increase in four years.) iii. Politicians - What politicians are in the best position to implement or create the change? (E.g. the Mayor and Chief Resilience Officer)
Next is the deliberation and voting process. Once domain experts have submitted proposals, constituents who donated to the OBD vote on the proposals to determine a “winning” or “lead” proposal. If a constituent donor didn’t vote for the winning proposal, they can withdraw their pledge before the OBD is finalized.
The Mayor and Chief Resilience Officer get to work implementing this goal with their public sector expertise. The great part is that now they also have plenty of domain experts they can reach out to for technical advice as well.
The Mayor and Chief Resilience Officer’s re-election campaigns receive the funds if and when they implement the OBD goal.3 If the metric is not reached, individual donors can send their pledge to one of the politician’s political opponents or to a nonprofit in the space. Or, they could still choose to send the money to the original politician if they thought they made a good effort or extenuating circumstances got in the way.
Currently, constituents donate directly to a politician’s political campaign, but Govrn’s OBD framework allows an individual to donate to an issue or outcome they care about instead. This allows constituents to prioritize the issues they care about most and ensures that politicians only receive the money if they are able to implement the predefined metric associated with that goal.
- Transparency. OBDs enable greater transparency in the political donation process. Political campaign donations are no longer a black box experience, where constituents donate to a political campaign without being able to specify why they are donating and without being able to track whether their donation went toward a specific result they cared about. Govrn as a platform also offers greater transparency for campaign finance as a whole, as opposed to dark money groups or corporate PACs.
- Continuous Political Involvement. In addition, the OBD framework allows constituents to have a voice throughout the political cycle, not just during an election cycle. With an OBD, constituents are able to voice and influence what their elected officials should focus on while they are currently in office.
- Define Your Wwn Politics. OBDs also allow constituents to influence the political conversation on an issue-by-issue basis rather than a politician-by-politician basis. Donating to an issue rather than a politician means that you have a say on each issue, as opposed to the current method of having to support a politician’s entire platform when you donate. It also allows you to donate to a currently elected official who may not be someone you would normally vote for, but you can now do so in confidence because you know the donation will be tied to an outcome you care about.
- Accountability. Last but not least, OBDs only go through if a predefined metric is reached. This means politicians are directly accountable for what they are able to achieve while in office. Rather than rely on the interpretation of a policy’s intentions, OBDs look at whether or not a tangible goal was actually reached.
OBDs are especially useful for researchers whose domain expertise is relevant to the public interest, but who do not want to sacrifice their ability to do research in order to fully jump into the policy world. Broadly speaking, there is little widespread infrastructure for incorporating research in government. Many researchers are extremely passionate about their work and want it to influence real-world solutions and policy, but they don’t know whom within government to reach out to.
OBDs also allow experts to get a sense of what a specific community or the public at large cares about. There is a growing movement of participatory, community-based research among researchers and practitioners. This is where problems are surfaced by community members and solutions are developed side-by-side. Govrn’s platform would allow more researchers to understand what problems communities care about. Additionally, OBDs actively involve community voices in the development of a solution.
On average, politicians spend almost half of their time fundraising for re-election, and many describe it as the most hated part of their job. With OBDs, politicians can fundraise for re-election just by doing their job: working for constituents. OBDs create constituent accountability, as the escrow gives politicians assurance that if they meet the goal, they’ll receive the required support. This gives politicians considerably more time to focus on policy, solution implementations, and connecting with constituents, likely creating positive externalities on their public approval ratings and likelihood of earning constituent votes.
If politicians are running on platforms that are already informed by their constituents’ concerns and priorities, it wouldn’t be surprising if some of the OBDs that surface are already part of their platform. And conversely, if politicians are surprised by the OBDs that surface, this means they are learning new information that will help augment or rethink their campaign platform.
Additionally, because OBDs involve the expert stakeholder group, politicians will be able to easily identify domain experts who are not only relevant to the issue at hand, but also willing and eager to contribute to implementation solutions.
Finally, OBDs offer political candidates a way to run for office outside the support of a major political party (or political party establishment, if they are a member who is challenging the status quo within their party). This is due to Govrn offering coordination tools that political parties currently provide: a fundraising structure and a means for mobilizing voters en masse.
We plan to expand on this in a future section, but want to provide brief explanations for how our solution addresses the three categories of problems we wrote about in the problem statement.
- Voting as an Insufficient Form of Feedback: While voting is only one form of feedback, it’s currently our most effective form. Unfortunately it only happens every 2-6 years. OBDs enable a continuous feedback loop to politicians so they can continue to understand what issues constituents want to see fixed.
- Problems with Campaign Finance: Currently due to the high correlation between sending higher amounts of money and winning an election, politicians are encouraged to spend 40-45% of their time fundraising for re-election. This creates an environment where politicians wear two hats: “the fundraising hat,” and “the working for constituents hat.” By enabling politicians to receive funding by actually solving constituents’ issues (a classic 2 for 1 if you will), OBDs allow politicians to spend less time on pure fundraising and more time governing.
- Limitations of Current Political Party System: Many issues require support from major political parties as a political party provides the coordination and infrastructure needed for the issue to advance through the government structure. Govrn and OBDs provide a lower cost method for politicians and constituents to coordinate around a single issue, enabling any issue to be heard if they can rally decentralized support.
Govrn’s outcome-based donation model builds upon and combines existing research and practice in collective intelligence, crowdfunding, people-powered PACs, participatory and collaborative governance, contractual democracy, social impact bonds, Token Networks, and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. We see Govrn as connecting the dots on decades of research and innovation. This will be the focus of an upcoming white paper section.
(Christine) Making a comment section here for people to add their thoughts in a bullet point style format. Or feel free to rewrite/add to the paper directly in the above sections!
1: For FEC compliance, this includes any individual who can legally donate to a U.S. political campaign. The Govrn platform will not provide the infrastructure required for corporations to make donations.
2: Vetting of domain experts is a complex issue and will be further addressed in a future section of the white paper, along with mitigating conflicts of interest.
3: Donors to the OBD will determine how to allocate the donations between the multiple politicians who contributed to the outcome.