MEET, VOTE, ACT

Enabling participatory democracy

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In every community there are men and women who have the fire within to create change.

Mobilizing and organizing takes skill and time and money. So many who might lead do not. Those who do must spend most of their time on basic tasks rather than learning, planning and inspiring.

We have built a platform to change this. It consists of purpose-built tools that solve real problems for people who wish to organize their communities. It connects such leaders to each other, and allows the easy aggregation and analysis of the issues they tackle.

Happening Now....

Tools for a people's democracy

Simple ways to create and manage groups over low-end phones with little bandwidth

Create Groups

Easily setup a group and use a join code to simply recruit and add people via any phone.

Call Meetings

Summon people to a meeting and let members confirm attendance. Automated reminders and acknowledgements make organising a breeze.

Vote

Call and participate in votes to decide among priorities. It gives everyone with any phone a quick and anonymous say and sends the results back to them as soon as the poll closes

Create Action Items

Make things happen by assigning action items. It gives everyone a view of group decisions, facts and times associated with them.

Search and Recall

Group organizers and members have full recall ability for their groups to see: a record of prior meetings, results of old votes, and records of which actions have been completed.

Connect

Groups can be made public and can then be found by anyone who searches for them by name. A request to join is sent to the designated group organizer.

Choose how you want to use Grassroot

Dial *134*1994#

To get started, simply dial
*134*1994# from any phone
(in South Africa).

Download Grassroot for Android

All the functionality of USSD with the added convenience of an app!

Visit www.grassroot.org.za

Login or sign-up right here on our website to access all of your groups and more.

Register

Power up with additional tools on the web app

Catering for large organisations and networks of groups.

Groups

  • Manage and monitor group activity
  • Segment members using task groups and topic tags.
  • Import and export member lists

Networks

  • Aggregate views of groups connected to your network.
  • See where you need to allocate more resources or encourage more activity.

Campaigns

  • Integrate with Amandla Awethu petitions
  • Setup recruiment drives to grow your group
  • Drive information campaigns to spread your message
  • Monitor performance with the campaign dashboard

Reach your members with Broadcasts

  • Access your members via multiple channels such as sms, email and social media.
  • Send messages to groups, campaigns or create custom segments of your members.

Our vision is a nation self-organizing from the ground up

Find out about our organization, mission, project, team and partners.

Grassroot is made possible by the generosity of many

We have reached this point thanks to institutional and individual donors, to whom we are immensely grateful. Below we list the institutions that have supported us so far, as well as individuals who have contributed R10,000/$1,000 and above, some of whom have requested that we keep their gift anonymous.

Contribute

Your donation will help fund our engagement with communities, product development, and messaging and server costs.

Contributions, large or small, funding or code, ideas and feedback, examples and connections: all make a difference.

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Updates, news and feedback - find out what others are saying, have your say, and keep up to date with new features by joining our social community. We're always keen to connect with you on Facebook, Twitter and Linked In.