Online Participation within the organization Friends of the Earth (NGO)

The Düsseldorf Institute for Internet and Democracy (DIID) designed, implemented and evaluated an online participation process for the non-governmental organization Friends of the Earth in North-Rhine-Westfalia („Bund für Umwelt- und Naturschutz Landesverband NRW e.V.“). The NGO is active in the field of environmental protection and natural reserve.

The aim of the participation process was to gather and discuss ideas concerning innovative ways to participate in the organization. The project was implemented on an online platform using Adhocracy as software. Adhocracy allows the users to participate in three ways, reflecting different levels of engagement: rating, commenting and editing proposals. The online discussion started in June 2017 and was pre-structured along three topics including initial proposals. After the online discussion, the proposals that were put forward were presented to the NGO for a broader discussion.

After this process the participants in the online discussion were invited to do an online survey with the aim of evaluating the participation process.