By Val Elefante
On November 15, Jodi Callender gave a presentation as part of the Accelerating Makers community event series titled How Web3 Is Giving Power Back to Society (and Your Nonprofit Organization). In the presentation, Jodi articulated a vision for the decentralized web that creates meaningful systemic social change by giving power to individuals and local communities to self-determine and build their own governance systems from the bottom up.
She argued that these emergent, bottom-up systems are more natural, complex, and resilient. She quoted an essay by Austin Wade Smith, which says, “Before markets and states were the two dominant systems through which resources were coordinated, many social configurations between humans, organisms, and minerals existed. Shared grazing lands, water ways, fisheries, irrigation networks, forests, springs were commons.”
Throughout the rest of Jodi’s presentation, she continued to make the case that alternatives to the currently dominant centralized and commercialized markets-based internet and global society already exist and are being pioneered by Web3. She built a bridge between the capacity of decentralized technology and the improved vision for society, yet also illuminated some of the obstacles still in the way and challenges that lie ahead for those working on building a better world. Namely, an organization can utilize decentralized technologies without adopting decentralized decision-making — what she calls “decentralization theater.”
Before her current role, Jodi contributed to Gitcoin, a Web3 grant-giving platform that enables communities to collectively fundraise for community-led projects using a system called quadratic funding. (For more on Gitcoin, be sure to check out the session featuring Gitcoin’s head of impact Azeem Khan.) Using Gitcoin as an example, Jodi spoke to how decentralized technologies can be the base layer upon which more flexible, bottom-up, and participatory decision-making or governance structure can sit, such as participatory grantmaking or reward systems.
Jodi comes from a background in real estate, specifically working as senior advisor in the NYC Mayor's Office focused on public housing. Now, she serves as Senior Director of Strategy and Operations at The Emerge Group, an organization using land stewardship and ownership as a tool to shift power and enhance the voice of the most marginalized communities. There, she is working on building out community-led ownership models, including land trusts and perpetual purpose trusts.
For organizations that resonate with these themes, Jodi reminded them that they can incorporate decentralized philosophies and models into projects without utilizing decentralized or Web3 technologies. She recommended that nonprofits conduct lots of community-based research and sourcing proposals from the folks they serve in order to deepen trust and goodwill.
Jodi’s presentation was rich with philosophical as well as practical insights. Watch the recording and keep your eye out for Jodi’s work as she continues to pave the path for Web3 in the future.