I have to start by saying that I applaud those who want to help others. The world needs more of y’all.

But, at the same time, I don’t think that “«mylanguage» For Good” is a useful vehicle for that.

First, there’s the concept of a charitable organization organized around a tool. It sounds a bit like Habitat For Humanity only allowing people who use hammers to build houses, or Médecins Sans Frontières only working with neurosurgeons. When giving is tied to conditions, it both limits its scope and it leads to waste.

Second, I feel that the idea as a whole is inefficient. As you all have been discussing, there’d need to be a core of full time people. You talk about these being techies, but you’d also need someone to do outreach, and access to both a lawyer and an accountant. Suddenly you’re spending more time administering than coding. (I’ve seen this happen with a couple of charities I’ve been involved with.)

Third, where’s the benefit to you? You already spend your days working with Elixir developers. If you decide to give up some of your time for charitable purposes, and my hat is off to those who do, wouldn’t you want to work alongside different kinds of people? You’d bring a new perspective to them, and them to you.

If you want to volunteer your time, you are a hero. But you don’t need to form a brand new silo in which to do it. Reach out to others who already have organizations, and offer your skills. I suspect most charities could benefit from some help. Offer them programming, or UI design, or devops, if you want. Or offer them whatever else you have to give. Make a difference. But do it for them, and on their terms, not yours.

(Sorry)

Dave

Hey folks, sorry to be late to the party here. Since 2014, I’ve been running a small organization (OpenFn.org) that serves NGOs and low-to-middle-income country governments. We provide them with a workflow automation platform built on Elixir (modern Phoenix LiveView, actually!) and our main application is now fully open source. We’re an accredited “digital public good”, a verified “global good for health”, and have used Elixir to provide critical services to some of the world’s most vulnerable people in 40+ countries around the world.

Check out the repo: GitHub - OpenFn/lightning: Lightning ⚡️ is latest version of the OpenFn platform, a DPG and DPI building block that governments use to manage complex service/workflow automation and data integration projects. · GitHub

I’m not on Discourse, but I’m wondering what’s the best way to engage with this Elixir For Good community? Another slight wrinkle is that we’re in the process of incorporating as a “public benefit corporation”; we’re not a 501(c)3 non-profit. Instead, we have a sustainable but “greed-proof” business model and seek to grow our social impact by delivering our software to more (and more impactful) governments and NGOs at a low cost. Currently, we couldn’t provide donation certificates for individuals hoping to get tax deductions, but we have considered opening up a non-profit that could hold our Elixir IP, receive donations, and provide volunteer contributors with the ability to apply for tax deductions as they work.

If anyone has opinions about how this might work, if you all have made progress on the Elixir for Good concept since 2021, or if you’re keen on getting involved, please let me know how to engage!

P.S., I feel silly for not thinking of looking here before. We’ve been using Elixir “for good” for so long now—as well as driving forward the general “tech for good” and digital public goods space—and I’m absolutely thrilled to see that there’s interest from this forum in the broader mission. @PJUllrich , thanks so much for pointing me to this thread.

I think that this could be a wonderful project!

Rather than having this be run by the Elixir core team or the EEF I think it would be great for a new team of people to spearhead this one. That way they will have enough time to make this as impactful as possible, while the core team can focus on the language.