We need accessible tools for building communities that are for people’s benefit, not for the benefit of corporations.
These are the tools for various functions that I know of and would recommend to collectives looking for ways to organize communications and information.
Or look at recommendations specifically for open source tools.
Communication Platforms for Groups
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Signal — Free, encrypted messaging for individuals and groups, including voice & video calls.
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Discourse - open source forum software with distributed moderation (read this excellent post about why you might choose Discourse.
Users earn privileges over time based on their participation. This means moderation isn’t just handed to whoever asks for it. Regular community members can flag posts, and if enough trusted users flag something, it gets automatically hidden pending moderator review. Power is distributed rather than concentrated.1
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Hylo – community forum with events, shared group calendar, projects (a free alternative to Mighty Networks and Circle.so!)
Many online groups struggle with engagement. On Hylo, groups transform into vibrant, self-organized, collaborative networks.
Hylo makes it easy for group members to step into leadership, enabling the group to grow and deepen its impact.
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Storyden “provides discussion, community knowledge base and social bookmarking for anyone looking to upgrade their fan club, gaming group, clothing curation directory or whatever else you love to do with your people.”
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Mobilizon — Free Meetup alternative from Framasoft, a French not-for-profit developing free software alternatives to the platforms centralized by the web giants.
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Courselore: Communication Platform for Education—free open source education-oriented forum
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Loomio: communal decision making tool
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Vito($): Flexible, private, online hubs for groups to share posts and updates, invite people, upload videos, host livestreams and run events.
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Delta Chat: Free, open source, end-to-end encrypted private messages and groups. Apps like shared notes, todo lists, calendars and little games can be added to a conversation or group for sharing resources.
For now, the primary use case for delta chat is for private groups and families which want to have private communications independent from phone numbers, with a whatsapp/signal/telegram-style user interface, with multi-profile and multi-device support, and resilient networking support that often survives internet blockades and partial outages.
Fundraising
Zeffy - Fundraising platform to collect donations with zero fees.
Open Collective: “Open Collective is a legal and financial toolbox for grassroots groups. It’s a fundraising + legal status + money management platform for your community.” Great for budget transparency!
Email newsletter
- Buttondown.email ($): uncomplicated email newsletters
Contact Form
- Letterbird - easily add a contact form to a website or profile.
Find time to meet with a group
- Rallly.co (3 L’s!): Find the best time to meet with your group! (Doodle alternative, hopefully more user friendly/less buggy)
- Framadate - Another Doodle alternative from a French not-for-profit organization that provides many free software alternatives to the Google-dominated world.
- When2Meet: Share a group’s general availability - good precursor to a Rallly/Doodle poll for specific dates.
Organizing tasks & information
- Tweek: weekly planner and todo list app for individuals or groups.
- Trello: track projects and tasks in stages through Trello boards.
- BookStack is a simple, self-hosted, easy-to-use platform for organizing and storing information.
- Notion($): Paid for teams, but great for organizing lots of content, sharing information publically.
- CryptPad.org: Secure collaborative documents
- Framapad - simple collaborative documents, public or private
- Open Letter: for starting open letters!
Sharing Resources
My Turn: a platform for asset tracking, rental, and product subscription services. Our unique platform helps you easily tap into the emerging Collaborative and Circular Economies.
Rootable: Rootable helps community-based organizations distribute resources. It manages schedules, deliveries, donations, volunteers, and data.
Event hosting
- Humanitix ($): Event ticketing that dedicates 100% of profits from booking fees to charity.
- Mobilizon (Free Meetup alternative)
- Lu.ma ($): host events and sell tickets.
- Eventbrite ($): event management and ticketing platform.
- Dateful: simple tool for creating events across multiple timezones
Photo Sharing
- Pixelfed - an independent, federated Instagram alternative
- Immich - self-hosted photo storage with sharing and multiple user options.
Making a Website
- website templates free with attribution (requires some basic HTML knowledge to set up)
Podcasting
- Castopod - Self-host your podcasts with ease, keep control over what you create and talk to your audience without any middleman. Your podcast and your audience belong to you and you only.
Analog methods
- Zines
- Flyers in a coffee shop, grocery store, or other community bulletin board (I still read these devotedly).
- Post signs outside!
Fediverse
Awesome Fediverse: A list of software that works across the Fediverse (read this intro to decentralized media)
Challenges for meeting efficiency
we don’t currently have a good working system in group conversations (both on and offline) to signal—when we want to speak but before we have begun speaking—whether what we wish to say continues the current thread of conversation or starts a new thread, so that a facilitator or the group might prioritize a thought that continues the thread (as long as that’s helpful) before jumping over to a new thread.
Is there a way this is handled with taking stack?