The Efficacy System
engage.re answers the question: "What is working to solve humanity's problems, and how do we know?"
The Core Metaphor: Tide & Boats
The Gap (98) represents natural improvement, external factors, and untracked causes. This honesty is a feature, not a bug.
What engage.re Is — and Isn't
engage.re IS
- A contribution tracking system
- Recording attribute changes on users and entities
- Linking changes to participating initiatives
- Aggregating claims from local → national → global
- Enabling comparison of different approaches
engage.re IS NOT
- A population statistics system
- Claiming causation ("X caused Y")
- A replacement for rigorous research
If engage.re shows "500 unemployed in Hackney", it means 500 tracked users — not the actual unemployment rate.
Two Separate Systems
Outcome Tracking
"Who helped produce this change in the world?"
When a user finds employment or an air quality sensor shows improvement, we record the change and ask what initiatives contributed.
See: Tracking and Attribution
Input Equity
"What has each team member contributed to this initiative?"
Track time, money, knowledge, and other resources that participants invest — enabling fair recognition and equity distribution.
See: Equity
The Foundation: Contribution Analysis
Based on John Mayne's methodology (1999), used by UNDP, IUCN, and major foundations worldwide.
In complex systems, proving that X caused Y is often impossible. Too many factors interact in unpredictable ways.
Contribution analysis asks instead: "Was X a plausible contributor to Y?" — both more honest and more useful for decision-making.