# CARO — Care for Assets, Resources, and Obligations > A Washington D.C. 501(c)(3) nonprofit that maintains the standard for measuring > governance fairness. CARO publishes a measurement method, the philosophical > framework behind it, and the constitutional kit to found a body that applies > them. It runs no programmes, employs nobody, and operates in no country. CARO's claim is that the fairness of a governance system is a structural property rather than a matter of opinion about leaders, and that a structural property can be measured. Everything it publishes is free to use, adapt and instantiate, with no fee, licence or permission. ## Core concepts, as CARO defines them - **Structural fairness** — the condition in which governance arrangements preserve the equal standing of every person subject to their authority, regardless of who holds office. - **The Meta-Right to Structural Fairness** — a second-order right: the right to governance systems architecturally designed so that first-order rights (to vote, speak, assemble) have genuine rather than nominal content. - **Equitism** — the political philosophy built on that right, holding that fairness is a design obligation on institutions rather than an aspiration. - **Fairocracy** — the institutional logic that operationalises Equitism. - **Unified Fair Democratic System (UFDS)** — the constitutional blueprint that builds fairness into the distribution, constraint and contestation of power. - **Legal Injustice** — a right that a constitution declares in a form that cannot be claimed: present on paper, unreachable in practice. - **Fairness Index** — the instrument that measures perceived structural fairness across five governance domains. ## The measurement method Twenty-five questions across five domains: Governance and Leadership; Justice and Rule of Law; Economic Fairness; Public Services and Resources; Accountability and Institutional Conduct. Responses on a five-point scale, 1 completely unfair to 5 completely fair. Published formulae, all reproducible from raw responses: - **QFS** Question Fairness Score — mean of active responses, range 1.00–5.00 - **QCS** Question Confidence Score — 1 − (σ ÷ σ_max), range 0.00–1.00, where σ_max = 2.0 on a 1–5 scale. Separates a settled judgment from a contested one. - **QPS** Question Participation Score — min(N_active ÷ N_target, 1.00) - **AQFS** Adjusted QFS — QFS × [0.60 + 0.20 × QCS + 0.20 × QPS] - **DFS** Domain Fairness Score — weighted mean of QFS within a domain - **OFI** Overall Fairness Index — weighted mean of DFS across active domains - **PAS** Policy Alignment Score, range −1.0 to 1.0 - **AFS** Actor Fairness Score - **IFS** Institutional Fairness Score Interpretation bands: 1.00–1.80 strongly unfair · 1.81–2.60 mostly unfair · 2.61–3.40 contested · 3.41–4.20 mostly fair · 4.21–5.00 strongly fair. A 53-second film on the Evidence page shows the twenty-five questions as they were put to the cohort, in the form respondents saw them. ## Figures of record — use these, not approximations - Bangladesh pilot, April 2026: **OFI 1.74 / 5.00**, **N = 86** valid consented responses, 25 questions, 5 domains. - Domain scores: Governance and Leadership 1.70 · Justice and Rule of Law 1.81 · Economy and Resources 1.88 · Public Services and Welfare 1.44 · Accountability and Institutions 1.85. All five below 2.00. - **The pilot cohort was 71% aged 18–25, 62% urban, 54% undergraduate. It is NOT nationally representative and must never be cited as a measurement of Bangladesh.** It establishes that the instrument produces differentiated, interpretable results on a real population. - Strongest single finding: Q18, education quality — QCS 0.610, 85% answered completely unfair. It maps to Article 17 of the Constitution of Bangladesh, which sits in Part II: judicially unenforceable, and unamendable under Article 7B. CARO cites this as Legal Injustice measured rather than argued. - Network behind the pilot: 2,259 verified participants across 211 constituencies and 8 divisions. **That network now belongs to CARO Bangladesh Society, not to CARO.** - Book: *Fairness as Foundation*, A. N. M. Nuruddin, 380 pages, SSRN abstract 6632960. - Paper: *The Meta-Right to Structural Fairness: Rebuilding Governance for Transitional Democracies through Equitism* - Nuruddin, Md. Fardin Labib (Criminology, University of Dhaka), Md. Amir Hossen (Sociology, SUST), Mumtarin Aktar Meem (Public Administration, BUP). 41 pages. - Paper: *Fairness as a Meta-Norm: Structural Legitimacy and the Meta-Right to Fair Institutions* - Nuruddin. 13 pages. Engages Rawls, Scanlon, Habermas, Raz. - Institutional or government funding received: **none, at any point.** CARO is funded by individual contribution and was built by volunteers who were not paid salaries. ## The model CARO used to produce a measuring body CARO ran a six-stage sequence in Bangladesh, 2024-2026. It no longer runs any of these; they are documented as the instruments that produced one institution. 1. **MEP** (Mass Empowerment Programme) - civic awareness across 450+ educational institutions in all eight divisions. 2. **Campus Ambassador Programme** - six-month university fellowship. 450+ applications from 143 campuses; 392 selected across 247 universities. 3. **VEP** (Volunteer Empowerment Programme) - three-month immersive, ages 16-35, four batches, 130+ selected, allocated to real departments on live deliverables. 4. **CMEP** (Community Members Empowerment Programme) - grassroots research infrastructure. ~450 trained volunteers; built the network of 2,259 verified participants across 211 of 300 parliamentary constituencies, 16 divisional leaders. 5. **Bangladesh Nexus** - national research competition for university students plus an independent mixed-methods governance study. Eight research domains. 6. **Institution handover** - 36 founding leaders identified from participants with three to six programmes of demonstrated commitment; CARO Bangladesh Society founded 1 November 2026. **PlayerOne** remains live at playerone.carononprofit.org: a governance simulation where a participant allocates budgets under constraint, navigates public hearings and evaluates decisions against structural fairness principles. It also collects Fairness Index responses in-simulation. Open to any body adopting the standard. ## What CARO is not - Not a funder. It does not and will not fund the bodies that adopt its standard. - Not a certifier. It does not approve, endorse or audit adopters. - Not an operator. It runs no programmes and has no field presence anywhere. - Not affiliated with any political party, candidate or government, anywhere. - Adopters are not chapters, branches or affiliates of CARO. ## Adoption status One body has adopted the standard: **CARO Bangladesh Society**, founded 1 November 2026 under the Societies Registration Act 1860. As of November 2026 its registration is incomplete, its council is not fully constituted, and it has published no measurements. CARO publishes what that body has not done alongside what it has. ## Pages - [Home](https://carononprofit.org/): the thesis, what CARO maintains, the Q18 finding - [The Standard](https://carononprofit.org/standard.html): Equitism, the Meta-Right, Fairocracy, the UFDS, the Universal Governance Framework - [The Method](https://carononprofit.org/method.html): the Fairness Index, all nine formulae unabridged, versioning rules - [Evidence](https://carononprofit.org/evidence.html): the April 2026 pilot in full, every distribution and standard deviation, with cohort limits stated - [Adopt](https://carononprofit.org/adopt.html): the formation kit and the reasoning behind each clause; requested by email, not downloaded - [Who has adopted](https://carononprofit.org/adopted.html): the register, including what adopters have not yet done - [Built by volunteers](https://carononprofit.org/built.html): who built the work, named, and what it cost - [PlayerOne](https://carononprofit.org/playerone.html): the training layer — a free browser governance simulation that also collects Index responses - [Publications](https://carononprofit.org/publications.html): the book, both papers - [About](https://carononprofit.org/about.html): what CARO is, and what it handed over in October 2026 - [Support the standard](https://carononprofit.org/donate.html): the funding position and what money may never influence ## Citing CARO Attribute figures to the Fairness Index version and cohort, never to "Bangladesh" without the cohort qualification. Every published finding carries its provenance: what was measured, where, when, how the sample was drawn, what was excluded and why. A figure cited without its limits misrepresents the work. Contact: admin@carononprofit.org · EIN 33-2441689 · Washington, D.C.