OUR STORY
Three group chats, one network.
Groundswell began as three separate group chats. A clean-up crew that met when someone remembered to text the group. A food rescue run held together by one person’s memory of which shop had surplus bread on which night. A handful of neighbours who wanted to mentor local kids but had no easy way to find each other.
None of those groups lacked commitment. What they lacked was infrastructure — a shared roster, a way to send one message to forty people instead of forty messages to one, a record of what happened last time so the next volunteer didn’t have to start from zero. So we stopped running four separate group chats and built one network instead.
That’s still the whole idea. Groundswell doesn’t run programs so much as it removes the admin that stops good programs from lasting past their third meeting.
WHAT WE BELIEVE
The people closest to a problem are usually closest to the solution.
Our job is to get out of their way, not direct traffic.
Technology should remove friction, not add process.
If a tool takes longer to update than the task it’s tracking, we stop using it.
Reliability beats intensity.
A volunteer who shows up every second Thursday matters more than one who shows up once, spectacularly, and then disappears.
Small and local scales fine.
We’d rather have ninety small crews that know their own street than one large program that knows none of them.
HOW WE’RE RUN
Groundswell is coordinated by a small rotating group of volunteer leads — one per program — who meet monthly to compare notes and share what’s working across crews. There’s no head office and no paid executive team; the closest thing we have to a headquarters is whoever’s turn it is to hold the spare set of van keys.
Ready to get organised?
Whatever time you’ve got — an hour a fortnight or a regular shift — there’s a place for you at Groundswell.