Introducing: Actionable

As some of you may remember, shortly after the presidential election, I posted a piece in which I proclaimed (somewhat ominously) that we were going to be making some changes to the site. Specifically:

“While we’ve always had a not so secret agenda here of encouraging people to vote with their dollars and support brands that actively try to mitigate the harm their supply chains cause… ultimately, Well Spent is just another distraction… And though I do believe there is some value to distraction… in order for us to make it through the next four years, we’re going to need to stay active and diligent – and fuck if I’m gonna dedicate my time and effort to running a website that distracts people from doing that. That doesn’t mean Well Spent is going away… But it does mean some changes are coming.”

Initially, the plan was to start doing weekly round-ups of non-fashion news stories and related political actions from non-profits that we support, in an effort to help keep focus on our president’s (and his cronies’) more nefarious doings. What I wasn’t anticipating, however, was just how many nefarious doings there would be, and how much news they would generate. And so, not wanting the site to be completely overwhelmed, the idea was abandoned.

Shortly after, however, a good friend (who also happens to be a gifted app developer), mentioned wishing there was a way he could use his skillset to fight back against the new administration’s agenda. Feeling similarly, I pitched him a stripped-down version of my round-up idea: what if we created an app that collects political actions from leading non-profits and displays them in a single feed? Basically, something that can make discovering – and acting on – non-profit actions as simple as scrolling through Facebook or Instagram? He liked it, and so we got to work.

That was about four months ago. And today, after so many evenings and weekends spent designing, developing, and refining, I’d like to finally introduce you all to Actionable – The Progressive Political Action App. I hope (at least some of) you find it useful.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.