ehrenamt.plus

Around 60% of Germany's more than 10,000 mayors work on a voluntary basis – often alongside their main job and care responsibilities. They carry responsibility for entire municipalities, but have little time for complex processes. Traditional spaces for exchange, such as local clubs and church communities, are increasingly disappearing. Digital civic participation offers a valuable opportunity to involve residents directly and strengthen trust in local democracy – provided the barrier to entry is low enough. This is precisely where the project "ehrenamt.plus" comes in: we provide five volunteer mayors with hands-on, one-on-one support in setting up their own participation project for their municipality – drawing on our many years of expertise in digital civic engagement.

The technical foundation is our open-source platform adhocracy+, which has been enabling free, GDPR-compliant participation since 2019. So far, it has been used mainly by professional administrations with the time and staff to set up participation processes. Volunteer mayors have neither. That's why we are further developing adhocracy+ as part of this project – with the goal of making it simple enough to work even under the conditions of voluntary service.
In doing so, we are strengthening a group that carries central responsibility for local democracy, but has only limited resources. When digital participation succeeds in small municipalities, residents experience directly that their voice counts. The five mayors become multipliers – inspiring others in their communities to embrace more participatory formats.