As we discussed starting a new nonprofit around Eterna, one of the first things we needed to do was develop a clear picture of both our purpose and our unique role in fulfilling it. We'd already gone through exercises around defining our mission and vision - what we do and the future we want to create through our work.
For Eterna, that mission was to democratize the invention and application of RNA technologies through game-based hybrid intelligence, and a vision of a world where everyone's quality of life improves through equitable and ethical RNA technologies. We saw the power of our community in solving challenges at the forefront of RNA research which could lead to not just better understanding our world but improving peoples lives - especially in under-resourced populations. We also saw an opportunity through radical accecss to the research process to help ensure the benefits of this research could reach everyone and be in service of the public good.
Working through material for nonprofit development (special shoutout to FastForward's tech nonprofit playbooks here) presented another key tool for formulating and communicating the direction and importance of our work: the "theory of change". We were forced to sit down and think that little bit more granularly: What need/problem/gap are we setting out to address? What actions are we going to take, to what effect, and with what long-term impact?
Need and opportunity
It became clear that the need and opportunity went beyond RNA - and Eterna.
RNA is a particularly striking example of a scientific field and technological foundation which has the potential to be transformative, but also carries the risk of any high-impact technology: how it develops and who it serves is dictated by a relatively small group of people who have the privilage of knowledge, access, and opportunity. At the same time, a lack of knowledge and trust among the public can (and has) lead to an adversion to life-saving interventions based on these advancements.
There is a need to increase access to science, and more specifically, research. Breakthroughs are achieved by people who look at problems in new ways - more people, more ideas, more discovery. Agency requires opportunity to contribute, and equity requires access to opportunity. Ethical development, application, and policy require people to be knowledgeable, informed, and participating in the process. And what better way to develop trust than to invite people to be involved and influential in that process?
Eterna has proven itself effective in the RNA space. The medium of games provides a powerful toolset to make complex problems approachable and engaging, and through Eterna we can develop a blueprint for scaling this approach. And still Eterna has yet to reach its full potential. There is so much more we can do to make it more accessible and engaging. By establishing Frameshifter, we have the opportunity to invest intentionally in cross-disciplinary expertise focused on supporting public participation in research - from design, to engineering, to community engagement. This is an area identified as a limiting factor across many similar projects, and we can build infrastructure to support projects across our ecosystem.
And with that, we land on our theory of change.
Our theory of change
Our goal is to expand access to the ability to contribute to scientific research. Conventionally, contribution to research requires years of expensive, advanced training and credentials. By making contribution to scientific problems accessible, we can: leverage inherent human curiosity and creativity to make discoveries that would have been fewer, slower, unlikely, or even impossible when limited to existing experts and approaches; build a new pipeline for expanding the current field of experts; ensure ethical and equitable development and application of research by increasing the number and diversity of individuals with input into research; enable individuals to personally make an impact on causes that matter to them (especially local or under-resourced problems/communities); and improve scientific literacy and trust through direct, deep engagement in the research process.
We build participatory science platforms that invite everyone to contribute to research. Through human-centered design and games, we build these platforms in a way that allows complex scientific problems to be attractive and engaging while making understanding and contribution intuitive. At the same time, we integrate collective and hybrid intelligence approaches to maximize human capabilities. This results in more people engaged in science, leading to a wide array of scientific discoveries and development of catalytic technologies - all centered around the public interest, supporting a robust, inclusive scientific enterprise and a well-informed public.