The model documented on this site is not proprietary. It is not licensed. It is not the exclusive property of Fund the Auditor or anyone affiliated with it. The point of documenting it here is to make it replicable — in your city, by you, without asking anyone's permission.
Civil rights violations occur in every jurisdiction in the country. The financial mechanism that creates accountability — documented violations, funded claims, recurring financial exposure — is available in every jurisdiction. What is not in every jurisdiction is the fund.
No single organization is going to build a funded accountability fund in every city. The only way this works at the scale the problem requires is if the model is replicable by anyone who has the three participants: an auditor, a civil rights attorney, and a capital source willing to invest in documented constitutional claims. Those three exist everywhere. The architecture for connecting them is documented here.
This is what "open source" means in the context of a litigation finance model. It does not mean software. It means: the architecture is documented, the structure is explained, no intellectual property claim attaches to the model itself, and the explicit invitation is for anyone who can build this to build it — without a franchise agreement, without a license fee, without centralized approval.
The goal is a funded accountability infrastructure in every jurisdiction. That goal is not achievable by a single fund operator. It is achievable by anyone who reads the model itself and decides to build it.
Open source in the context of software means the source code is available to inspect, copy, and modify without restriction. The equivalent here is the model documentation — the structure of the fund, the role of each participant, the ethics requirements, the tithe mechanism, the performance-only repayment terms. All of it is documented here. All of it is available to copy.
You do not need to contact Fund the Auditor to build a fund on this model. You do not need approval, certification, or a franchise relationship. The documentation is the permission. Read it and build.
The model is not a licensed product. There is no royalty, no ongoing affiliation fee, no percentage of settlements owed to any central organization. The funds you build belong entirely to their participants.
A fund built on this model in Denver does not need to call itself a Fund the Auditor fund. It does not need to use this site's branding, link here, or maintain any ongoing relationship with the organization that documented the model. Copy it and run it under whatever name makes sense for your jurisdiction.
If you build a fund and discover that a component of the model needs adjustment for your jurisdiction, adjust it. The model is a starting architecture, not a rigid franchise specification. The core requirements — performance-only, attorney ethics wall, tithe built in — are structural for reasons documented here. Everything else is adjustable.
The minimum viable accountability fund requires three participants. These are not roles that require special creation — they exist in every metropolitan area in the United States. The model connects them in a structure that didn't previously exist.
Auditors are the front line. They document what happens in public. They produce the evidentiary record that makes civil rights claims fundable. Every city has First Amendment auditors already operating. The fund gives their work financial consequence.
Attorneys are the essential capital partners. They evaluate claims, navigate the ethics requirements, advise on case selection, and carry the legal execution of funded claims. Civil rights attorneys who understand the performance-only model are the technical infrastructure of the fund.
Investors complete the triad. They provide the capital that converts documented violations into funded claims. Performance-only returns mean they are compensated from settlements — not from auditors, not from fund fees, not from any source other than the accountability the fund produces.
The architecture for connecting these three participants — the fund structure, the repayment terms, the ethics wall, the tithe mechanism — is what is documented on this site. It is not the participants themselves. Those already exist. The gap is the structure that converts their individual roles into a coordinated accountability mechanism.
A single fund in a single city produces accountability in that city. That is valuable. It is also bounded in a way that the underlying problem is not. Civil rights violations do not occur in a single city. The departments that have never faced funded accountability pressure are not concentrated in one jurisdiction. The problem is distributed. The solution has to be too.
The financial mechanism works at industry scale when enough funds are operating simultaneously to create signal pressure on municipal insurance markets — which is the mechanism by which individual city accountability becomes systemic pricing pressure on civil rights compliance. That threshold requires more funds than any single organization can build.
The model is open source because the goal is saturation, not market share. A Fund the Auditor fund in one city and a differently named fund in another city that uses the same architecture both contribute to the same accountability infrastructure. The brand is irrelevant. The structure is what matters. The structure is documented here so that anyone who wants to build it can build it without needing anything from us.
Replicating the fund structure is not the constraint. The model is documented. The constraint is finding the three participants in a given city and convincing them that the structure is sound. This site exists to solve that second problem — to give potential fund operators, auditors, attorneys, and investors a documented argument for why the model works, backed by the financial and legal reasoning that makes it credible to the people who need to make the decision to participate.
Precision about scope prevents the model from being oversold or misunderstood by people who might otherwise build it. These are the limits.
The fund is a litigation finance structure, not a legal services provider. Attorneys who participate are independent capital partners, not employees of the fund. The fund does not provide legal representation to auditors.
Performance-only means no settlement means no payment. That applies to investors, attorneys, and the fund itself. The model generates returns when cases resolve. Cases that do not resolve do not generate returns.
The fund sets qualifying criteria for the auditors it finances. It does not have authority over auditors who are not in the fund, auditors who fail to qualify, or auditing activity more generally.
The financial mechanism is one lever. It operates alongside complaint processes, legislative advocacy, journalism, and other accountability mechanisms. It does not replace them and does not claim to.
The fund requires auditors who meet the qualification criteria — documented knowledge of constitutional rights in public spaces, professional conduct on camera, and a track record sufficient to evaluate. Funding an unqualified auditor produces neither returns nor accountability.
The fund structure described here is a performance-only investment vehicle. Investors expect returns from settlements. The fund generates returns. This is not a donation model — it is a civil rights investment model with financial returns and accountability outcomes.
The model is documented. The architecture is here. If you have the participants in your city — an auditor, a civil rights attorney, capital — the only remaining step is the decision to build.
The model described on this site is presented for informational and replication purposes. Nothing here constitutes legal advice, investment advice, or a guarantee of outcomes for any fund built on this architecture. Funds built on this model must be structured and reviewed by qualified legal counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. See our full disclaimer.