Sept 2022: Open source, opposite of spam and our model

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Open source, opposite of spam and our model

We are all in on open source

Our transparency commitment doesn’t stop at finances and carbon footprint. We just published our source code and made it open source under the MIT license. Not a techie? This means that any developer on Earth can improve our software or use any of the 51,745 lines of code that run Social Income.

That’s not all

How best to kickstart our shift into the open source universe? The Swiss government just awarded us USD 25,000 for taking bold steps with technology in humanitarian work. Got techie friends? Tell them to fork, clone, branch and commit. They’ll know what to do.

The opposite of spam

Emails are boring. But every now and then you get a special one that you read a few times and carefully draft an answer to. It happened when we received an email from Mikołaj Demkow, a very gifted Android developer. He reached out to us asking if he can volunteer in his free time, simply because he “loves the idea of Social Income.” His wealth of experience has already allowed for a great leap forward. Thanks Mikołaj for joining the team.

Doing good on company time

While the solidarity of individuals defines Social Income, it’s the partnerships that help us grow and make the tools to reach more recipients. A few examples:

• The designers and coders working for Milk Interactive make beautiful mobile apps (and great rooftop burgers), as evidenced by their bursting-at-the-seams awards shelf. Lesser known is that they make time as a team to support the non-profit initiatives they love. Case in point: our mobile app is designed by them!
• We have big plans for Social Income. Whether we get there depends primarily on the scalability of our digital infrastructure. That is where the cloud expertise of Synax comes in (and their vision from the 21th floor). They donate their coding skills and help us build resilient apps with the capacity to accomodate millions of users. I told you we have big plans.
• Did you know that every Credit Suisse employee can volunteer four days a year for Social Income on company time? Yes everyone – except their brand ambassador, who needs to find a new job first.
• Have you ever asked yourself why does capitalism survive even its biggest crises? Or how much a person is worth? The aha festival, taking place 11-12 November in Bern (and as podcast), brings scientists on stage to each respond to a single question. The festival donates 1% of its speaker fees to us.
• It’s not all about money. The Swiss type foundry Lineto donated a free license for the font Unica77. You'll start noticing it soon.

Always be critical

This Guardian article is packed with information and examples of pitfalls for organizations like ours. Criticism from locals include the impression that “they spend all their money on overhead and salaries and we are left with pennies,” and failure to consult with people on the ground.

Our model: Recurring contributions are paid out directly to those in need and not used for the overhead. We collaborate with local partners that know best about specific circumstances, but we never pay other organizations in order to reduce the risk of corruption.

The world’s to do list

We are past half-time on the way to reach the global goals of the United Nation. A brief look back with focus on Sierra Leone: In 2003, 73% of its population lived in extreme poverty. Today it is roughly 43% – a huge improvement, but still a terribly high number. We continue to chip away at the ultimate goal of eradicating extreme poverty.

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