“The commons can be seen as a social system that intimately associates people or stakeholders with their resources and the participatory and mindful ways they are managing/producing/caring for them.

Commons can be described in a variety of ways and along several dimensions. The three below function together as a whole:

• As object, the commons are the Common Wealth, the assets that we inherit or create, use and change,  and that serve our livelihood (our natural, social and cultural  resources,  genetic and biological diversity, knowledge, etc), that  people pass on to future  generations. These assets need to be nurtured, (re)generated and to be indiscriminately accessible to the greatest number.  They must therefore be protected against capture, over-exploitation, depletion and abuse.

• As practice, the commons are the Common Ethos of which people are an integral part; the culture and the relationships they build with each other, with their resources and with the earth, the ways of being and doing in common (caring,  sharing, nurturing, replenishing our  common assets with discernment, transparency, empathy, equity, justice,  mindfulness…). This practice critically depends on sustained and adaptive know-how, on increased knowledge flows, and continuous collaboration and learning including ways of working together on problem solving. This practice takes multiple forms and names. Sustainable living and development is one of them.

• As result, the commons are the Common Good, the outcomes of the practice (access, capacity, well being, quality of life, prosperity, abundance). They are the life blood of the process, those that make the world thrive, and become in turn assets to nurture…

Because of the relationships and interactions between these various elements, the commons are generative systems, which provide the tangible conditions that empower and enable communities in relation to their purpose and to the ecological contexts they find themselves in, at various levels and scales.

From this perspective, commons may serve as a medium for accelerating the adoption of sustainable practices that address social, environmental and economic dimensions in a sustainable, cohesive and interconnected manner. They can also serve as a vetting system to assess the impact of sustainability policies and practices.

Thus nurturing, and growing the commons in all their dimensions and manifestations can serve as a guiding vision for global citizenship and global justice.”

Here is the original link: http://deeep.uservoice.com/forums/226440-topic-1-vision-global-citizenship-and-global-jus/suggestions/4801603-the-logic-of-the-commons-to-build-global-citizensh?utm_campaign=shorturls&utm_source=deeep.uservoice.com

The not-for profit model is one that takes off the pressure from the drivers of unsustainability, as redistributor and re-equaliser of financial equity. For Donnie, a shift to a not for profit global economy is inevitable and will change the game. He foresees in the next 30 or 40 years not for profits outcompeting for profits across every sector. For us it is a matter of looking at the agency we have to accelerate trends to ensure it happens at a speed and with enough sensibility to insures that its not too late…

This big claim is made on the basis of the competitive advantage that not for profits have over for profits (these are expanded in summary below)

Donnie’s thesis is that as long as the system perpetuates the centralization of wealth and power whether private (ultraliberalism) or state (socialism) we will not be able to adopt a sustainable path. Fundamentally, all current solutions are technology or innovation based but they still centralize wealth and power (interface, I add Unilever) or depend on centralization of wealth and power (philanthropy), and continue to fuel financial inequity. They look at the problem in terms of techno, lifestyle or charity ‘fixes’ but they don’t address the financial aspect. No one has put forward a serious economic model that addresses this financial inequity problem.

He suggests looking more closely at ‘not-for-profit’ enterprise that operate as businesses. In such enterprises, profit is not redistributed to individuals on an equity basis -there is no equity-. Individuals receive wages, and profits are redistributed within the activity or to fund other not for profit social initiatives. These companies contribute to the market with other players on the market and can make as much profit as they want. They exist in every sector of the economy. He gives the example of Myuma, an engineering company in Brisbane and of Brac in Bangladesh, the largest not for profit in the world, that makes 80% of its revenue through enterprise. He also gives the example of credit unions in the US, that very few people realize are not for profit cooperatives.

In Donnie’s definition, not-for-profit does not mean that they cannot or are not able to make profit, it means the profit cannot be private. They exist not for the purpose of making a profit, they put a social purpose first and they exist to fulfill social or their member’s needs. Profit is a secondary outcome that enables the main purpose.

This big claim is made on the basis of the competitive advantage that not for profits have over for profits especially in periods of crisis:

• in case of financial downturn, the not for profit can ‘afford’ not to make a profit, does not need to make profit, while the for profit would need to continue to make profits. In the current crisis credit unions did better than banks in the US, Mondragon did better than average businesses.
• they keep their client base in economic downturn as they provide ‘indispensable’ social services (health education, social sectors) potential in times of crisis is bigger because the ‘product’ is a socially useful one. Not for profit contribution to GDP has been increasing over the last 15 years, now 8% of GDP in Canada: 8%.