§ For first-time readers
Five short lessons. About fifteen minutes. By the end, you can read any initiative on GROUNDWORK well enough to tell branding apart from structure — without becoming a governance specialist.
No prior knowledge required. The questions don't grade you — they only show you what the right framing looks like.
Most organizations describe themselves with words like 'community-owned', 'democratic', 'decentralized'. These are branding choices. What an institution is, structurally, is who can override whom — and on what threshold. That's the only reliable evidence.
An app calls itself 'community-led'. Which fact tells you whether it actually is?
An institution is transparent when its documents exist publicly. It is legible when an ordinary person can realistically understand what those documents imply about power. Most institutions are transparent and unreadable at the same time.
A cooperative publishes its full 400-page bylaws online. Is it legible?
Institutions rarely die from a coup. They drift — small, individually defensible changes that, in sum, abandon the original charter. The register treats every amendment as a permanent diff so drift becomes visible while it can still be contested.
A founder-led project quietly adds founder veto after three years of operating without it. What is this?
Pledgers face almost no verification. Organizers face more. Anyone with binding authority over members faces the most. This is the opposite of most platforms, which make signup hard and governance trivial.
Why should an anonymous account be able to pledge, but not be able to hold governance authority over members?
Every initiative page surfaces a power summary at the top: governance model, vote binding, founder veto, quorum. If those four answers don't make sense together, you don't need to read the rest yet. Inconsistency at the top is the loudest signal there is.
An initiative says 'one member, one vote' but votes are listed as 'advisory'. What does that mean?
