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What is FLO?
FLO for Disaster Relief
Sarapis helps people help each other.
We support individuals and organizations that contribute free/libre/open-source solutions to common challenges.
Sarapis helps people help each other.
We support individuals and organizations that contribute free/libre/open-source solutions to common challenges.
What if hundreds of thousands of the most talented individuals in the world
could team up and create technologies
to make life easier, healthier and more fulfilling
for everyone on the planet?
That’s what contributors to free/libre/open-source projects are doing everyday.
They are the new innovators, empowered by a new set of tools,
working together to tackle the biggest challenges facing our world.
And they want your help.
We are a tight core of technology and communication specialists who leverage our network of experienced software engineers, permaculture designers, community organizers, brand strategists, and nonprofit professionals to advance the FLO movement.
Devin Balkind
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Devin was a social entrepreneur who created a challenge-based crowdfunding platform for nonprofit organizations. When he realized that a lack of collaboration and coordination between nonprofit organizations was limiting the social sector’s effectiveness much more than its lack of funding was, he abandoned his for-profit venture to investigate where radical social innovation was taking place. The more Devin learned about how free/libre/open-source software is revolutionizing the software industry, the more determined he became to apply the same process and principles to civil society to drastically increase its capacity to provide high quality services to the public for dramatically lower costs than existing solutions.
Devin has since worked with a wide range of groups including community organizations, nonprofits, small farms, social movements and software projects to design, develop, deploy and document FLO solutions. Devin holds a Bachelor of Science from Northwestern University.
Leah Feder
Co-Founder & Operations Director
Leah learned about FLO technologies when studying towards a Master’s degree in Media, Culture and Communication at NYU during the Fall of 2011. Invigorated by the cries of activists taking democracy into their own hands, she was surprised to find the real revolution taking place behind computer screens. It involved more data standards and wiki’ing than marching in the streets—and it revealed the potential to transform our economy and our world. Since then, Leah’s been organizing within the FLO movement to increase our collective capacity to take on challenges and innovate effectively.
Before landing in the world of media and technology, Leah worked in international development and food justice, including an extended period working with environmental and economic development projects in India and Indonesia. Leah’s especially passionate about FLO’s potential to transform our food system and relationship with the natural world. Leah holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.
Announcements about our Board of Directors, Advisory Council and Collaboration Network are coming soon.
We believe that free/libre/open-source solutions are the solution to the most pressing challenges facing our world.
Follow our journey as we help grow the FLO movement.
Visit our archive
When “Superstorm Sandy” hit New York City on October 30th, dozens of relief organizations, hundreds of grassroots groups and thousands of people mobilized to provide aids to those most affected. The challenge of coordinating such a relief effort was felt by everyone involved. How do you keep track of who has what resources, who is [...]
Information technology is transforming civil society, but into what? There are many people in the nonprofit world who want to see organizations define success metrics and pursue them with the same intensity that corporations pursue profits. This approach is advocated by some of the world’s largest foundations and is being hailed as a major step [...]
Placed in Say
Tagged with nonprofits
FLOward explores the ever-expanding landscape of free, libre and open source (FLO) solutions from the perspective of a nonprofit organization whose bylaws require it “use FLO solutions wherever practically possible.” The Challenge: Accounting When looking for an accounting solution for Sarapis, we checked out the popular free, libre, open source GNUCash. GNUCash is the most [...]
Placed in Operations, Say
Tagged with accounting, nonprofits, solutions
The free, libre, and open source (FLO) movement has created many of the technologies local communities need to rebuild the world from the grassroots upward. These technologies include entire operating systems with complete suites of free software (ex. Ubuntu Linux, OpenOffice, GIMP), web applications for constructing enterprise grade inter/extranets and websites (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla), cloud [...]
Placed in Communications
Tagged with Active, nonprofits, social justice
We develop FLO solutions to common challenges that anyone can access, and distribute them through networks of physical spaces.
Solutions
We identify challenges facing individuals, groups and organizations, determine how those challenges can be overcome with FLO tools and techniques, implement those tools and techniques in a way that meets the identified needs, and then produce culturally-appropriate documentation and training programs so as many people as possible can benefit for our solutions. If existing FLO tools and techniques don’t meet the identified need, we help design, develop and document a solution of our own. Since we work with a network of solutions developers, our team can tackle challenges that range from software programming to rural space utilization.
Spaces
We facilitate collaborations between space owners/managers and FLO community members who could benefit from access to their space. We perform this function locally by building relationships between space owners and FLOers, developing space utilization agreements that meet all stakeholders’ needs, and publishing information about those agreements and other solutions that make these relationships sustainable. We work on this issue globally by helping space owners/managers make information about their spaces accessible to their inhabitants, to each other and to the general public.
Services
We utilize FLO solutions in physical spaces to provide services to our community. We do this locally through programs that bring people with expertise in using FLO solutions together with the individuals and groups that could use them to do the most possible good. We do this globally by gifting our resources to FLO projects that can significantly advance the FLO movement—and since there is so little awareness about the FLO movement and projects within it, we often provide strategic communication and media relations services.
Active Projects
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FLO Solutions: The Sandy Initiative
Active
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FLO Spaces Directories
Active
