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Our Mission

3p5.org aims to accelerate social movements for good. Based on Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth and co-lead of the Horizons project Maria J. Stephan's groundbreaking research on civil resistance, which concluded that a social movement achieved success after mobilizing just 3.5% of the (region's) population, 3p5.org will serve as a centralized hub to connect nonprofit organizations with people around the globe.

Nonprofits should focus on doing good, not gathering people to do good.

Erica Chenoweth is a political scientist and professor at Harvard University & is known for their work researching nonviolent civil resistance movements. They have written numerous research articles and appeared on Hidden Brain to speak about how the magic number for change seems to be 3.5%, which is how the idea for this platform was born.

Maria J. Stephan is a political scientist and author, as well as the co-lead of the Horizons Project. She and Erica Chenoweth partnered to research the question of whether nonviolent civil resistance movements were more or less effective than their violent counterparts.'

Research: Why Civil Resistance Works; Hidden Brain episode: How to Change the World

The Platform

Account Creation

When volunteers create accounts, they will be directed to a survey that provides information on what causes they fight for. This will help formulate personalized recommendations in their feeds of nonprofits they should volunteer at. For example, someone who selects "environmentalism" will likely be recommended TNC.

Recommended Events Based On Interest

A user's "event" feeds will be tailored towards the types of events they are interested in and able to attend. We don't want to clog someone's feed with virtual events if they prefer going out and protesting, and vice versa. This feature ensures users see relevant events in their feeds and keep coming back to the platform.

Event Listings for Nonprofits

Currently, there is no centralized platform for nonprofits to list their events. This is likely why you keep receiving emails from your favorite nonprofits about events in other countries.

It is quite shocking that we are not leveraging technology more efficiently to reach the 3.5% target, and a centralized platform to mobilize activists with the least friction possible is sure to encourage action and expedite the growth of movements exponentially.

Presidential Service Award (PSA)

Youth are the future. To encourage young people to develop a habit of volunteering early on, 3p5.org aims to become a certifying organization for the Presidential Service Award.

Once someone signs up for an event and ID-verifies themselves, the organization in charge of hosting that event will be able to verify their attendance, adding a certain number of hours to a dashboard in their account. Once a certain number is reached, they will be able to request review for the PSA with just a click of a button.

To organize volunteers and get registrants for in-person events, a nonprofit would have to post in their socials, send emails that risk turning off people in other regions, and even then likely not reach many people who would love to participate. Not everyone uses social media, not everyone checks the promotion tab, and sadly, taking the time to fill out necessary forms may serve as a barrier to some. Plus, the effort nonprofits put into promoting events takes time and money away from the cause itself.

We must aim to make volunteering and similar events as frictionless as possible, which is why 3p5.org will offer one-click registration, e-signing of required documents, intuitive search options, reminder notifications, calendar options, and more.

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