No thoughts about Faithify for now, except…

So, Faithify, the Unitarian Universalist crowdfunding platform, launched at General Assembly, with some fanfare and with a raft of inaugural projects.

This is how it works in a nutshell: entities put forward fundable projects, and the general (Unitarian Universalist) public votes with its dollars. It uses technology to simplify the “elite function” of vetting projects and managing funds. If donors pledge enough to reach the project goal, the pledges get called in and the project gets funded. If not, the pledges aren’t called in and the project gets no funding.

I have a couple of structural misgivings about Faithify, but I’ll keep these to myself, at least until the the first round of projects’ deadlines pass. (I’d be happy to be proved wrong.)

So no thoughts about Faithify for now, except:

  1. if one “elite function” can be usefully distributed — ideas that have been bubbling away while I consider open government projects — what about others? Sometimes the ecosystem creates a gap that can be filled organically, such as bloggers filling in (partially) for an independent denominational press. Faithify, if successful, could challenge how programs get funded, and thus prioritized: the reverse of the current system. And if funding projects, then what? LinkedIn for settlement?
  2. Pledge, of course. I made mine to the “Miracle Among The Ruins Project Two: Missional Community Room” project of the A Third Place Community Foundation/The Welcome Table Church of Turley, Oklahoma.

By Scott Wells

Scott Wells, 46, is a Universalist Christian minister doing Universalist theology and church administration hacks in Washington, D.C.

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