OUR HISTORY:

(a 4 minute read)

2013 - 2015

Our small collective began developing experimental methods for community organizations – with the hope being that our methods could help magnify the impact of grassroots and nonprofits in our area. In part, we pursued this work because we had this growing, uneasy sense that a failure to organize our community would result in some outside force organizing it on our behalf. 

2016 - 2019

This concern took on a subtle form in 2016, shortly after we presented our first ‘big idea’ to a gathering of nonprofit leaders in Salt Lake City. We called our idea Catalyst Kingdom – and it was our vision for an RPG style Volunteer / Nonprofit Game system complete with characters, missions, points, etc. However, it was later that summer that Pokemon Go launched for the public – a phone-based game which (humorously) held a few ideas in common with our concept. But much more importantly, Pokemon Go was a well financed, beautifully produced product intended for gamers all over the planet – and so it activated youth to an extent that was impossible for ‘quaint’ community groups like ours to replicate. And, crucially, its success revealed how willing most of us were to let our actions be dictated by non-local, corporate entities.

Regardless of how well intentioned the Pokemon Go creators might have been – or how well intentioned the creators of any global scale technology / commerce / government service might be – they are fundamentally not accountable to the communities in which they have such a profound impact. We saw this phenomenon as a warning for the ‘top down’ systems to come.

We then gave our project a more urgent brand, GO UNITE (fall 2016); held public presentations (August - December 2016); and workshops (March - August 2017); gave a private demonstration (September 2017), and produced a short series of podcasts (November 2018 - June 2019). All of these efforts to describe our rudimentary, but effective organizational methods. 

2020 - PRESENT

And then came the great COVID 19 disaster. More than any virus, the pandemic was an outbreak of fear. It demoralized each of us and robbed our communities of whatever self-sufficiency they had left. And the extent to which we all came to rely upon the pre-set solutions of Big Government and Business was jarring, undignified, and perhaps a final warning. Above all, it was clear that a deep community spirit had been broken. And so we put our experiments aside; reformed Go Unite as a nonprofit (August 2021); and committed to programming specifically for the benefit of the general public – our monthly Trash Pick Up Days (March 2022) and Trash Trivia! Campaign (January 2023).

Our shift from organizational methods to volunteer Calls to Action should be underscored. A major lesson of our history is that social institutions can reinforce our individual energy but they can also steal this energy from us. Therefore, to build strong organizations in our community, we first must invest in the building of an active, energized citizenry. This is what Go Unite aims to do: to help generate energy and focus around good, actionable projects with the ultimate goal of making our community strong, independent, and resilient against the influence of non-invested outside entities.