Action Station Venture Profile

Venture Description

ActionStation is an independent, member-led not-for-profit organisation representing over 140,000 Kiwis holding power to account, standing for a fair society, healthy environment & economic fairness. We do this by connecting New Zealanders with thousands of like-minded progressive Kiwis and providing them with opportunities to take collective action on issues that matter to them, ensuring their collective voice has more impact, holding political and corporate interests to account.

Key personnel

  • Core team:
  • Marianne Elliott
  • Laura O’Connell-Rapira
  • Ryan Mearns

  • Nina Atkinson

  • Volunteer board:

  • Megan Salole (Chair)
  • Lani Evans (Vice-Chair)
  • Phill Coxon (Treasurer)
  • Angela Meyers
  • Nick Young

Contact person: marianne@actionstation.org.nz 0211106086)

Links to website or other resources

http://www.actionstation.org.nz/

Quarterly Update

July 2016

  • We launched our distributed campaigning platform (OurActionStation) to put digital campaign tools into the hands of our members, and ran our first full member voting session on Loomio, allowing members all over New Zealand and around the world to have their say in the direction and governance of ActionStation.

May 2016

  • ‘Transitioning from ‘yes, yes, yes’ and ‘grow, grow, grow’ to strategic ‘no’s’ in order to go deeper where it really matters, and restructuring our platform and our team to better reflect our commitment to distributing power’

Founding Date & Brief History

The idea for ActionStation came out of an Enspiral-hosted Collaboration Cafe, and was initially pursued by a small group of Enspiral contributors led by Joe Cederwall.

In 2012 Enspiral Member Megan Salole took on the role of launching ActionStation and by early 2014 had build a brand, a core team of volunteer advisors and had secured a commitment to startup funding.

Enspiral member Marianne Elliott took over from Megan in April 2014, and ActionStation was officially launched in July 2014. ActionStation became an official Enspiral venture in 2015.

Legal structure

ActionStation operates as a not-for-profit LLC, the sole shareholder of which is an incorporated society (ActionStation Aotearoa Inc) made up of ActionStation members.

Business Model

Our main source of income is small contributions (either one-off for specific campaigns or recurring) from our membership base. We also have a few grants to supplement that base of member-funding as we grow but the long-term plan is to be entirely funded by members.
ActionStation is a not-for-profit so our growth model is driven by capacity to have greater impact on progressive change in New Zealand, rather than financial growth for it’s own sake.

Social Impact Strategy / Theory of Change

Our social impact goals are two fold:
To build a more connected, confident and active community of progressive New Zealanders who act together to hold power to account in support of the following social impacts;
A fair society, healthy environment, transparent and accountable decision-making including politics and ethical business conduct.

We do this by building a large-scale independent, progressive multi-issue movement that enables New Zealanders who share broadly progressive values to take powerful, coordinated action online and offline. We are building power and momentum to hold political and corporate interest to account.

Specifically we do this by bringing the substantial weight of public opinion and collective action to bear on key social issues at moments of ‘heat’ and opportunity for change, with the goal of moving the issue towards the desired social impact goals outlined above.

Venture Stewards

  • Marianne Elliott
  • Phill Coxon
  • Ben Knight/Hannah Salmon

Enspiral Foundation Contribution

  • Financial: 1% of recurring member donations
  • Non-financial: ActionStation team members are active in the Enspiral network