Glossary

The vocabulary we use.

GROUNDWORK uses a small set of governance terms across every initiative page. These are the public definitions.

Legitimacy ladder: Five visible stages an initiative climbs as it discloses identity, governance, and accountability.; Initiatives don't become 'legitimate' through marketing. They climb a visible ladder: Unverified → Identity verified → Governance disclosed → Governance reviewed → Eligible. Each stage requires concrete artefacts that are public on the register.
Governance theater: When an initiative performs democratic structure on its surface but concentrates real authority elsewhere.; Founder-controlled entities that describe themselves as 'community-driven' are the classic case. GROUNDWORK refuses free-text self-description for power structure and forces structured disclosure: who appoints whom, who can override whom, who has veto.
Institutional drift: The slow, unannounced movement of an institution away from its founding charter.; Drift happens through small, individually defensible changes. GROUNDWORK treats drift as visible by logging every amendment to an initiative's charter as a permanent diff on the public record.
Capture: When a small group accumulates disproportionate control of an institution intended to serve a wider membership.; Capture is the failure mode that turns cooperatives into oligarchies. GROUNDWORK's anti-capture safeguards include delay windows on governance changes, separation of stakeholder classes in voting, and a public appeals channel.
Sybil resistance: Preventing a single actor from masquerading as many distinct members.; Pledges and votes are only meaningful if each person counts once. Identity escalation requirements grow with the weight of the role: pseudonym to pledge, lightweight verification to organize, strong verification to hold governance authority.
Institutional scaffolding: Inline structure and explanation that helps organisers build legible institutions, not just descriptions.; Most platforms ask for free-text 'about us'. GROUNDWORK's creation flow scaffolds the actual institution: structural fields with inline explanations, mandatory governance disclosure prompts, and worked examples.
Founder-controlled: Decision authority concentrated in one or a few founding individuals, with no equal-vote membership.; Not inherently wrong — many young initiatives start this way — but it must be visible. A 'founder-controlled' badge signals that members do not hold equal voting rights yet.
Equal vote: One member, one vote on substantive governance decisions.; The strongest formal anti-capture mechanism. Equal-vote initiatives expose the membership roll, the quorum rule, and the amendment rule on the public record.
Pledge: A public, non-custodial signal of commitment from a named member to an initiative.; Pledges are not payments. GROUNDWORK never custodies money. A pledge is a signed declaration that you intend to participate if the initiative reaches its preconditions — visible on the register, retractable by the pledger.
Co-ownership: Membership in the cooperative that operates the GROUNDWORK platform itself.; Distinct from pledging to any single initiative. Co-owners pay an equal annual due, hold one vote in the platform's governance, and share in any operating surplus.
Identity verification: What the platform knows about a person — applied to accounts, not to initiatives.; A profile climbs an identity ladder from L0 (pseudonymous) to L4 (public officer with disclosed legal identity). Identity verification matters because authority on the platform scales with it: pledging is open at L0, organizing requires L2, holding binding governance roles requires L3.
Organizational verification: What the register knows about an initiative as an institution — separate from the identities of its organizers.; An initiative climbs its own ladder: legal existence, governance disclosure, governance review, eligibility. A high-identity organizer does not automatically grant a high org level; the institution must produce its own structural evidence.
Participation tier: A member's chosen level of engagement: casual, moderate, or active.; takes governance fatigue seriously. Members declare a tier so the platform can right-size notifications, voting prompts, and review duties. Casual members are not penalised; active members opt into more work.