The Social Systems Foundation
The entity in charge of all things Social Systems Related
A brief history
Social Systems Laboratory was founded in 2018 in Cape Town, South Africa. The remit of the lab was to create a liquid democracy platform to assist civic entities and political parties to deepen their democratic engagement. The after some exploration, the lab began to develop a platform called Crowdpol, that provided basic voting, delegating and deliberation on an geographically based interface. The idea was to allow users to zoom in to engage in local debates and decision making, or to zoom out and interact with global issues.
In tandem with this, the Swedish NGO Syntropi began to user test the software locally, adding content and creating public events. After some discussion, the joint decision was taken that the product, Crowdpol, would be placed in the hands of a company set up by the NGO (Syntropi AB svb), while the lab would focus on design and prototyping.
At around this time, Covid-19 derailed all possibility of progress, partly due to the limitations that national policies created, partly due to funding temporarily drying up.
As the world slowly retuned back to the new normal, production began again, but with the insights gleaned from the Covid-19 lockdowns and the needs of civic organisations, the project pivoted into a more broad platform, seeking not merely to provide democratic tools but also to become a place to organise volunteers in the civic sector. At this point, it was also decided that a new entity was needed that was legally and structurally better equipped to take on the task of managing the ecosystem. And so The Social Systems Foundation was born.


The Social Systems Foundation
in After a fairly long and meticulous process, the Social Systems Foundation was created in Stockholm, Sweden in March 2023, with an initial donation of approximately 15 000 Euro from its founder Tim Olsson.
The statutes of the foundation state that its purpose is to support the emergence and development of initiatives, networks and communities that foster systemic transformations toward thriving societies and civilisations. The Foundation is also politically and religiously independent.
The founding board members were Timothy Olsson, Violeta Bulc, Alexander Laszlo and Robert Sevenius. In October 2023, Mathapelo Mzizi joined the board.
The foundation is currently working on raising funds to continue research and development of a number of projects, creating partnerships in order to test and further improve the resulting products and bringing said products to market. The operational side of the foundation's remit is managed by Syntropi AB svb, which has been placed under the Foundation.
The statutes of the foundation can be viewed here.

The Board

Tim Olsson
Chair

Alexander Laszlo
Board member

Violeta Bulc
Board member

Robert Sevenius
Treasurer
...and our newest board member who will be joining us officially in November


Mathapelo Mzizi
Board Member
Would you like to get in touch with the board? Drop us a line!
We are always keen to explore new ideas and potential opportunities to create together.