This got me thinking:

Should organisations that are not co-operatives be described as Platform Co-operatives?

I thought not and so I commented on the article (and then posted something similar on facebook too):

This is a nice list of projects moving in the right direction, but many of them are not co-operatives and therefore imho by definition cannot and should not be described as Platform Co-ops.

I knew for sure that Peerby and Juno weren’t co-ops, but at the time I didn’t actually know about the structures of many of the others on the list so I did a bit of research and discovered that the 11 ‘Platform Co-ops’ profiled in the Shareable’s article includes…

5 formal co-operatives

1. Fairmondo

After the great Platform Co-op event organised by Outlandish I had the opportunity to hang out with Fairmondo founder Felix Weth and got the opportunity to really dig into the nitty gritty details of how they are structured and how they organise, many of which are covered in this great interview on Shareable and in the video of his talk in London. In short: a formal multi-stakeholder co-operative ownership and governance structure, open source code, financial transparency and a four-way profit split enshrined in their rules.

2. Stocksy

Stocksy display their co-op credentials on their twitter profile pic

Stock photography platform Stocksy are pretty unequivocal about their co-operative structure:

We’re a cooperative, owned and run by all of our photographers — Source

We believe in creative integrity, fair profit sharing, and co-ownership, with every voice being heard — Source

We are a photographer-owned cooperative founded on the principles of equality, respect, and fair distribution of profits. Our contributing photographers receive 50% of a Standard License Purchase and 75% of an Extended License Purchase – and every single Stocksy contributor receives a share of the company. — Source

Lots more of the juicy details are available in Shareable’s fantastic interview with Stocksy’s Brianna Wettlaufer and Nuno Silva on Building a Cooperative Stock Photo Platform.

3. Union Taxi Cooperative

Union Taxi Cooperative in Denver are a proper co-op (.pdf), part of a growing movement of taxi co-operatives. They have developed a uber-like app, but it looks so far less than 5k people have downloaded their Andriod app and I imagine similar numbers of iPhone users. You can read lots more about them and other taxi co-ops in these Shareable and YES! Magazine and Fast Co.Exist articles.

4. Modo

Modo are a Canadian carsharing co-operative incorporated in 1997, making it the oldest carsharing organization in the area, the first carshare co-op in North America and the first carshare in the English-speaking world. With 3 different classes of shareholder (i.e. multi-stakeholder) who all hold non-transferable withdrawable shares (lots of similarity to Loomio’s Redeemable Preference Shares and Community Shares in the UK, see below), and an “asset-lock” on the distribution of any surpluses post-dissolution — a feature shared by UK Community Interest Companies, Community Benefits Societies and the wider Social Enterprise movement. The details of how all this is implemented at Modo can be found in their rules (.pdf), but in short Modo were a Platform Co-op before there were Platform Co-ops (i.e. before Trebor Scholz “gave a stray dog a name” in December 2014).

5. Tapazz

Tapazz is an “official cooperative company” (a CVBA in Belgium) who have also won a prestigious Ashden Award. Under Belgium law such legal entities are required to have “equality or limitation of the right to vote” and the Tapazz rules essentially allow investors to buy up to 10% of control (it is “one share, one vote”, but no one can have more than 10% of the vote).

This is a deviation from the “one member, one vote” rule enshrined in the official wording of internationally the recognised 2nd Co-operative Principle of Democratic Member Control. Personally I welcome such experimentation; steadfast commitment to “one member, one vote” often seems to go hand in hand with the outdated and misguided notion that “voting = democracy”.

So-called “representative democracies”, including those found in many of the world’s largest co-operatives, sometimes turn out to be neither representative nor very democratic.

In many cases it might be more appropriate for Platform Co-ops to use more participatory and multi-stakeholder approaches to governance and management that, for example, are better able to approximate Parecon‘s nicely framed decision-making principle that “everyone should have a say in decisions proportionate to the degree to which they are affected by them“.

Enspiral – more than a co-op

I’ve written about Enspiral before in my Open Co-ops piece for Stir Magazine.

If you’ve not already done so, be sure to read the Loomio and Cobudget back-stories and be inspired.

Loomio, the open source collaborative decision-making software built by a worker-owned cooperative who are part of the Enspiral Network is being used by innovative groups all over the world including the National Assembly for Wales and SolidFund, the UK’s new Worker Co-op Solidarity Fund. They also raised USD$450,000 in ethical investment using “Redeemable Preference Shares” which share many of the characteristics of the withdrawable “Community Shares” in the UK.

Cobudget was initially developed for internal use at Enspiral before being spun out as a tool for “collaborative funding for crowds with purpose”. The community that grew out of the POC21 innovation camp for open source sustainability have started to use it to collaboratively allocate funds they collect using Patreon, and the Embassy Network coliving community use it to create “a fluid cooperative dividend“.

Seriously, check out Shareable’s profile of Enspiral and read everything you can about this “bold experiment to create a collaborative network that helps people do meaningful work“, including their inspirational vision for “a suite of integrated and open sourced apps which support transparent, democratic and decentralised organising“, and building a Collaborative Technology Alliance to help bring such visions to fruition.

For some background and history see this video from 5 years ago by founder Joshua Vial and these great couple of talks he gave in 2014.

And for all the latest see this great 1.5 minute intro, read their comprehensive and new handbook, and watch these April 2016 videos with Joshua, Alanna, Richard and Mix.

TimeFounder – has plans to be a FairShares co-op

TimeFounder are trying to building “a fair and elegant equity split system” reminiscent of the Contribution-Based Compensation described in Bettermean’s Open Enterprise Manifesto (.pdf) and Open Value Network ideas, themselves arguably both a nature extension of the long-standing co-operative principles of “surpluses…benefiting members in proportion to their transactions with the co-operative”.

So far it is early days but they are exploring to option of formally incorporating as a co-op using the FairShares model.

@jdaviescoates @Shareable our legal mentors suggest a association+coop aproach. Well see

— Timefounder (@timefounder) May 26, 2016

@jdaviescoates @Shareable yes we know. We like anyway the fairshares model from uk. let's avoid frontiers and build a more natural economy

— Timefounder (@timefounder) May 26, 2016

@jdaviescoates @Shareable @FairSharesAssoc would love to join with Fairshares association to empower fair enterorises

— Timefounder (@timefounder) May 27, 2016

@FairSharesAssoc @jdaviescoates @Shareable we have read the book twice pic.twitter.com/7DY6H3ZwNj

— Timefounder (@timefounder) May 27, 2016

The book in question is The case for FairShares : a new model for social enterprise development and the strengthening of the social and solidarity economy.

VTC Cab – not a co-op, but owned by an NGO

VTC Cab is not a co-op but unlike the Venture Captial owned “Platform Monopolies” like Uber, it is owned and operated by an NGO which may well be democratically governed, does anybody know?

Backfeed – not a co-op, but doing relavant experiments

Backfeed is a private company owned and governed by the two founders Matan Field and Primavera De Filippi. The plan is to become a blockchain based Distributed Collaborative Organisation which they see as “the natural progression of the co-operative movement”. That of course remains to be seen — Francesca Pick’s great series of articles about OuiShare’s experiment with Backfeed concludes: “tools for decentralized coordination with blockchain are still quite unreliable and far from being ready to use” — but such experimentation is something to be celebrated nonetheless. Backfeed are not a co-op, but the software and ideas they are experimenting with and exploring could well generate valuable insights for many future cooperators.

@jdaviescoates @Shareable
No, we're not a coop. But eventually we'll be a Decentralized Collaborative Organization. Work in progress

— BACKFEED (@Backfeed_cc) May 26, 2016

@jdaviescoates @Shareable
No, actually we are incorporated as a privately held ltd, with @MatanField and @yaoeo as founders.

— BACKFEED (@Backfeed_cc) May 26, 2016

@jdaviescoates @Shareable
In our view DCOs are the natural progression of the cooperative movement.We actually do interface with the law

— BACKFEED (@Backfeed_cc) May 26, 2016

@Backfeed_cc @jdaviescoates @Shareable love that you two are chatting & great comments too. Made changes to the story based on them.

— Neal Gorenflo (@gorenflo) May 26, 2016

This is the change Neal made:

UPDATE, May 26, 2016: We’ve gotten a few comments that some of the above selections aren’t cooperatives in the strict legal sense. That is true. Some companies are in the process of becoming cooperatives (or blockchain versions of that like Backfeed), operate with cooperative principles (Enspiral), or are sharing the wealth more than their tech peers (Juno and Peerby). We want to point out and encourage a trend toward more sharing of value and power in tech companies. We, like others in the sharing community, use the term “platform cooperative” in a non-legal way to encompass such efforts.

But I take issue with:

We, like others in the sharing community, use the term “platform cooperative” in a non-legal way to encompass such efforts.

I don’t really see it being misused like that and if it is being used like that we should try and nip it in the bud now while we still can.

I much prefer this perspective from the good people at Gratipay; they are very much moving in the right direction and are very closely aligned to both the Platform Co-op and Open Co-op visions, but are in full awareness that they aren’t quite there yet.

Peerby – not a co-op, a crowdfunded on-demand rental platform

Peerby started life as a sharing platform but in response to user feedback and in search of large investment and growth they created Peerby Go to a on-demand rental platform that includes delivery in 30 mins or less.

The most recent press release on their site states:

Amsterdam-based local sharing platform Peerby raises $2.2 million over the course of a weekend from 1051 crowdfunders through Dutch sustainable crowdfunding platform OnePlanetCrowd.com. This amount surpasses the total amount of venture capital the startup received during earlier funding rounds, making the crowd the largest shareholder.

And Co-founder Daan Weddepohl repeated the “crowd the largest shareholder” claim when he posted on facebook saying:

We (Peerby.com) are very happy to announce that our members are now our biggest shareholder.

But if you dig into the details just a little deeper, it seems users are not the majority shareholder class; the founders and employees still own the most shares. Their $2.2m investment means users have now invested more than any other non-founder/ employee investors have, but they aren’t actually shareholders at all yet!

Again from Peerby’s CEO Daan:

The crowd is the biggest investor. Bigger than angel, VC and PE. Most shares are still held by founders and employees. I consider this one of the first exciting step towards exploring the possibility of being a true crowd company.

Matthew Cropp asked:

Is it simply broader-based ownership of one $, one vote type stock, or is this a signal of the company moving towards real cooperative ownership (one member, one vote, regardless of capital investment, with surplus distributed on a patronage basis)?

Daan’s response:

We don’t know yet. We’re taking it one step at a time. It’s currently a loan note, so we still have time to come up with what rights the shares will have after conversion.

Peerby are neither a co-op nor Platform Co-op.

Juno – not a co-op, a slightly fairer VC-funded Uber competitor

Juno founder Talmon Marco is quoted as saying “what’s important is that drivers are not just driving, they also own the business” and according to another article “by 2026, drivers will own 50% of all founding shares in the company“. This sounds great on the surface, but to me it translates to “drivers don’t actually own anything right now, and will never own a controlling share”. Not very co-operative. Taking a 10% cut of fees and given any ownership to drivers is still a lot more generous than Uber’s ultimately more exploitative model (20-25% cut, no ownership), but a Platform Co-op it does not make.

@digitalarun At the https://t.co/qvoWPv97BA directory, we treat @juno a "sharing platform" not a #platformcoop b/c it's not a full ICA co-op

— Nathan Schneider (@nathanairplane) June 19, 2016

In conclusion

Regardless of legal structure (there are actually plenty of unincorporated co-ops), the key thing is that to be considered a co-op (and therefore a Platform Co-op) you ought to uphold the internationally agreed co-operative values and principles.

We should celebrate and support real platform co-ops like Fairmondo et al who are genuinely (and passionately) co-operative (and in the case of Fairmondo open source to boot! not just a Platform co-op but an Open Co-op, even better!) in order to encourage others like Peerby and Juno to take the full leap and go the whole hog (although my bet is it’s both structurally and culturally too late for either of them to actually do so).

Ownership really does matter. A lot. And allowing “Platform Co-op” to mean “a company started by nice people with good intentions who also built an app” will result in the term quickly becoming meaningless.

Perhaps ultimately we’d like to transcend the whole concept of ownership and move onto something more akin to stewardship, but given the laws that exist at present that isn’t really very practical right now. And for the record, the argument often made in ‘Reinventing Organizations’ and ‘Teal’ (not the new black) circles — that having enlightened investors with a more highly evolved consciousness side-steps the whole ownership issue — is, well, laughable. And dangerous. Watch out! (but do read still read the book for it’s many useful and fascinating findings).

And if you want to deep-dive into all this stuff be sure to register your interest for the 2-day conference Open 2016: Platform Co-operatives in London later in the year…

The post Not a Co-op? Not a Platform Co-op! appeared first on P2P Foundation.

True sharing organisations share the organisation too, by making members owners with real democratic voting rights, enabling them to have a say in the decision by which they are affected.

Saturday night is not the time most people chose to meet to discuss disrupting democracy.  But that’s what happened at the Platform Co-ops event in London on the 21st of May 2016.

Whilst most of Brick Lane was quaffing vast quantities of craft beer and sipping organic low-fat soya lattes with tofu sprinkles whist discussing how awesome it was that #rainbowunicornkittens was trending on twitter, over the road at New Speak House, a collection of hackers, designers, systems thinkers and aspiring cooperators gathered to discuss the bourgeoning movement know as Platform Co-ops.

New speak House is an amazing place founded to “foster the creation of technology to disrupt the UK political / media / government complex” and it is doing exactly that. It’s an events venue, community space, residential incubator and general hangout set up for people who want to change society with technology, and meet other people with similar interests, the perfect place for progressive peers to plot.

The Platform Co-ops event was organised and sponsored by the excellent Outlandish which meant everyone was suitably furnished with bagels and beer absolutely free, a fitting start to a co-operative gathering, which was kicked of by Nathan Schneider, organiser of the Platform Co-ops event in New York last November.

Nathan is a journalist who, along with Trebor Scholz, has helped elevate the subject of Platform Co-ops into the zeitgeist. Whether the newfound interest in Platform Co-ops simply reflects the growing unease with the rise of the deathstar platforms like Uber, or is the makings of a movement to disrupt democracy remains to be seen but the buzz from the brains at New Speak house certainly implied the later.

Nathan Schneider

Nathan gave a great introduction, framing the debate superbly; it’s all about ownership and governance. The so called “sharing economy” platforms which “share” their apps with consumers and producers whilst rinsing value from them to make venture capitalists rich, is not really sharing at all. True sharing organisations share the organisation too, by making members owners with real democratic voting rights, enabling them to have a say in the decision by which they are affected.

Felix Weth

Next up was Felix Weth, founder Fairmondo, a German, co-operative, alternative to Amazon, which is owned and managed by its members. Felix spoke extremely candidly about the difficulties of putting Platform Co-operativism into practice. Building a working alternative to the worlds biggest online retailer is never going to be easy and it was refreshing to hear about Fairmondo’s open philosophy. Felix showed how any profits they generate are split four ways with 25% going to: Owners of shares in the co-op, People who have earned Fair Founding Points, to other Non Profits, and the final 25% to upscaling Fairmondo. I’ve never seen a founder of a company openly present a slide showing the status of their bank account before! We’ll be keeping a keen eye out for the UK version of Fairmondo, coming soon.

Fairmondo’s 4/4 model of profit distribution

Last up was Sarah Gold, creator of the concept “Alternet”, an open source, peer produced, run, owned and maintained version of the internet. Sarah’s work on Personal Data Licences which was exhibited at the Big Bang Data exhibition at Sommerset House kicked off some interesting discussions. In a post Snowden world the idea of owning your own data, as well as the platforms and other organisations upon which you depend is an inciting proposition.

Sarah Gold’s Data Licences concept

If the growing number of other examples of member owned platforms and co-ops we heard about are anything to go by, Platform Co-operativism is a concept that is only just getting started. Whether it can actually manage to disrupt democracy remains to be seen but the only way that is going to happen is if we (the people) make it happen.

Sign up at 2016.open.coop to be kept up to date about the two day conference on Platform Co-ops that is being planned for London later this year.

The post Outlandish – Platform Co-ops event appeared first on P2P Foundation.

illustration by Daksheeta Pattni

In 2002 I described United Diversity as “a member owned and stakeholder governed network of mutual advantage.” In truth, it was aspirational. At the time, the flexible off-the-shelf legal structures and open source tools needed to make such a network a reality simply didn’t exist. Now they do. Co-ops that combine best practices from the international co-operative movement with best practices from the open source software and hardware communities are now possible. Soon anyone will be able to set up an Open Co-op and invite all their stakeholders to help finance, govern and organise the co-op online.

Imagine transparent, democratic and decentralised organising for everyone. A society in which anyone can become a co-owner of the organisations on which they, their family and their community depend. A world where everyone can participate in all the decisions that affect them. This is the world United Diversity and the emerging network of people working on the legal structures and open source tools that enable Open Co-ops are working towards. Here I share some of the projects and ideas that have inspired us on our journey, and some of the legal structures and tools that are now available to put our vision into practice.

Inspiration

The Open Organisations Project

Out of a desire by the Indymedia UK London Working Group to go beyond both the formal top-down power structures found in governments and corporations and the informal ‘Tyranny of Structurelessness’ found in many voluntary and activist groups, The Open Organisations Project emerged. Their goal was “to explain how to set up and maintain transparent, accountable and truly participative communities” and they came up with a useful set of six process and eight functional rules together with some basic guidelines for how to implement them. At the time (2002), it was the clearest guide to organising openly we’d found and we still point people to it today.

A New Way to Govern and Gaian Democracies

Two books, A New Way to Govern: Organisations and Society after Enron by Shann Turnbull (2002), and Gaian Democracies: Redefining Globalisation and People-Power by John Jopling and Roy Madron (2003) were both very influential on our thinking. They introduced us to the principles behind Spain’s huge co-operative network Mondragon, and other large scale business with innovative organisational structures such VISA International and Semco in Brazil.

In A New Way to Govern Turnbull summarised the terminal flaws of command and control hierarchies: the tendency of centralised power to corrupt; the difficulty of managing complexity; and the suppression of “natural” — human —checks and balances. In their place he proposed organisations which are able to “break complexity down into manageable units, and decompose organisational decision-making into a network of independent control centres.” In short, his thesis argued that command and control hierarchies must be replaced by “network governance” and that where this includes stakeholders — not merely staff but customers, communities, suppliers or distributors — a whole new dimension of economic, social and political benefit opens up.

Viable System Model (VSM)

The chapter about network governance in Gaian Democracies explained Arthur Koestler’s term ‘holon’ (from the Greek ‘holos’ meaning ‘whole’, and the suffix ‘on’, meaning ‘particle’ or ‘part’), which he devised to describe entities that are simultaneously self-contained wholes made up of parts, and themselves a part of a larger whole. Stafford Beer used the term ‘viable system’ to describe the same thing and outlined some of their properties in the VSM. In short, the model says that in order to be viable (i.e., able to autonomously adapt and survive in response to a changing environment) a system must have the following five sub-systems:

System 1: Interacting operational units. Think organs in a body, or players in a team.
System 2: Responsible for stability and conflict resolution between operational units.
System 3: An ‘Internal Eye’ optimising and generating synergies between operational units.
System 4: An ‘External Eye’ allows strategies and plans to adapt to a changing environment.
System 5: Where ultimate authority lies and is responsible developing policy.

Bettermeans and The Open Enterprise Manifesto

In April 2010 a project called Bettermeans “formed to promote the values of openness, transparency, autonomy, contribution-based-rewards (meritocracy), democracy, integrity, and values-oriented, purpose-driven work” released The Open Enterprise Manifesto. It was a familiar story: replace “the command and control hierarchy” with “collaboration and open participation;” create organisations “more like living dynamic networks, and less like pyramids;” plus the standard mentions of Linux, Wikipedia, Mondragón and Visa to demonstrate how aspects of the model had already been shown to work at scale. Bettermeans were trying to bring these various aspects together in a single cohesive model, and they made a pretty good stab at building the necessary tools to make such a model widely available and adoptable.

Sensorica

Sensorica are an ‘Open Value Network’ focussed on two primary activities: creating open hardware products; and developing the Open Value Network (OVN) model. OVNs are variously described as “people creating value together, by contributing work, money and goods, and sharing the income” a “framework for many-to-many innovation” and a “model for commons-based peer production.” The basic concept is very similar to the Bettermeans “contribution-based-rewards” idea, but in OVNs contributions other than completed tasks are also accounted for. They are currently working with Bob Haugen and Lynn Foster at Mikorizal Software to develop a prototype open source value accounting platform called ValNet.

The Enspiral Network

Enspiral is made up of three parts: The Enspiral Foundation, Enspiral Services and Startup Ventures. I’d say they’re the best current example of an Open Co-op, but how they actually describe themselves is as “a virtual and physical network of companies and professionals working together to create a thriving society” and as an “experiment to create a collaborative network that helps people do meaningful work.” A core part of their strategy is to open source their model. In short, not only are they doing almost exactly what United Diversity wants to do — they’re also building the open source tools actually needed to do it!

The Enspiral Foundation is the charitable company at the heart of the Enspiral network. It’s the legal custodian of assets held collectively by the network, and the entity with which companies and individuals have a formal relationship. Decisions are made using Loomio and budgets are set using Cobudget (see below).

A network of professionals work together in teams to offer Enspiral Services, a range of business services under one roof. By default members pool 20% of their invoices into a collective bucket, 25% of which goes to the Foundation. Loomio and Cobudget are then used to decide how to spend the rest. For Startup Ventures, Enspiral works with social entrepreneurs to launch start-ups who then support the work of the Foundation, and Enspiral as a whole, through flexible revenue share agreements: ventures choose their own contribution rate, usually around 5% of revenue.

Legal Structures

In some countries there are a fixed set of legal structures that co-operatives must use. Here in the UK we’re more flexible. We do have legal structures specifically designed for co-operative and community enterprise: Co-operative Societies and Community Benefit Societies — but you don’t have to use them; off-the-shelf co-operative model rules for a wide variety of other structures are readily available. That said, pretty much all of the UK co-operative and community enterprises that most inspire us at United Diversity, i.e., those creating community-scale, community-owned renewably-powered infrastructure of all kinds, have chosen to incorporate as societies — and for good reason.

Societies have a number of special attributes that make them particularly suitable for community investment. A big reason most community land trusts, community energy projects, community farms, pubs and shops and so on. register as societies is because doing a Community Share offer is the best way to finance such projects. In recent years such Community Share offers have been growing exponentially and there is now a Community Shares Unit that offers advice and guidance on how to do it.

Multi-stakeholder Co-operatives

Rather than being organised around a single class of members the way that most co-operatives are, a multi-stakeholder co-operative is any co-op that draws its membership from two or more different classes of stakeholders. After two decades of local experimentation, Italy was the first country to adopt a multi-stakeholder statute in 1991. Over 14,000 ‘social co-ops’ now exist across Italy and provide social care, health and educational services to over 5 million people. In Quebec, home to one of the most productive and vibrant co-operative development sectors in the world, multi-stakeholder co-ops are now the fastest growing type of co-op, with more than 50% of all new co-ops opting to register what they refer to as ‘solidarity co-ops.’ The movement is just getting here in the UK, but there are now over 20 multi-stakeholder co-ops who have incorporated using the Somerset Rules.

Somerset Rules

Launched in 2009, the Somerset Rules were one of the UK’s first set of model rules for a multi-stakeholder co-op, and they’re arguably still the best. Packed full of best practice gleaned from decades of co-operative development experience, they’re structured to closely follow co-op principles, written in relatively plain English, and are cleverly drafted to allow for a wide range of different configurations. You can define the percentage of overall control each stakeholder group has. They are also ‘social accounting ready’ and are designed to enable the widest range of options for financing. In 2012 they were fully revised and overhauled and a version for use as a Community Interest Company limited by guarantee was developed. In May 2014 a Community Benefit Society version was created and we’re now in the process of adopting them for the United Diversity equivalent of the Enspiral Foundation.

FairShares Model

FairShares is a new brand and model for self-governing social enterprises operating under either Company or Co?operative Law. It offers a unique approach to enterprise ownership, governance and management through its recognition and integration of founders, producers, employees, customers, service users and investors. At the heart of the FairShares model is a definition of social enterprise based on: Specifying the social purpose(s) and evaluating the social impact(s) of trading activities; conducting ethical reviews of product/service choices and production/consumption practices; and promoting socialised and democratic ownership, governance and management by primary stakeholders. In addition, all intellectual property created by FairShares Enterprises and their members are managed as an Intellectual Commons using Creative Commons licences. This all sounds perfect for Open Co-ops and so we’re really looking to learning more at Inaugural FairShares Conference in Sheffield on July 1st.

Tools

Microgenius (and other funding tools)

Originally started by Cambridge-based entrepreneur Emily Mackay, Microgenius is the UK’s first platform for community share offers and is now part of the Community Shares Unit. Societies can also sell shares via Crowdfunder and BuzzBnk, and can advertise share issues on Ethex, the Trillion Fund, and on Shares.coop — where the widest range of live Community Share Offers in the UK are listed. Co-operative Companies Limited by Shares can do equity crowdfunding on Crowdcube (which also powers Microgenius) and Seedrs.  Open source platforms specifically created to help open and/or co-operative projects include: Goteo for crowdfunding the commons; Open Funding and Bountysource for cofunding free software; Gittip for giving small weekly cash gifts to people you love and are inspired by; Snowdrift, a monthly matched patronage system; and Coopfunding.net, a wordpress powered crowdfunding platform for co-ops in Spain (we’ve got plans for something similar in the UK). Catarse, Selfstarter and tilt are other open source options, and there are numerous bitcoin powered platforms out there, too (e.g. Swarm).

One Click Co-op

One Clicks Orgs, a social enterprise whose strapline is “Legal Structures and Group Voting Made Easy,” created the One Click Co-op in partnership with Co-operatives UK and NESTA. Launched in June 2013 and approved by UK regulators it is the first fully-online co-operative structure in the world. The open source platform permits members to contribute agenda items, browse archived minutes and participate in votes electronically. It’s pretty awesome, but having been built on a relative shoestring also pretty basic. Only Co-operatives UK’s multi-stakeholder co-operative rules are supported and you can’t, for example, the balance the interests of stakeholder groups by giving them different proportions of overall control (like you can with the Somerset Rules).

Loomio

Loomio — a free and open source tool for collaborative decision-making — is what happened when Enspiral met Occupy. Enspiral were committed to being a flat organisation, empowering employees to be autonomous and involved in leadership and decision making. But without the right platform, the overheads of engaging lots of people made it hard to deliver on this grand vision. In practice, only a few people were making most of the important decisions. Similarly, Occupy activists were finding it hard to make consensus decisions with large groups of people. Loud voices dominated and people with less time to commit to the process were being marginalised. They were missing out on the power of including a truly diverse range of perspectives. Together they developed Loomio.

Cobudget

Cobudget is another open source app being developed by Enspiral. It works like this: each month contributions to collective funds are published. Everyone can see who contributed what and how much money is in the budget. Basic core expenses (previously collectively agreed on Loomio) are subtracted and what’s left is the discretionary budget. Each person or company retains the right to allocate their part of discretionary funds and anyone in the network can start a “bucket” ­— a proposal to do work that requires funding. They write up a proposal making their case for why the work they want to do will benefit everyone and why they are the right person to deliver the project. Everyone then considers the buckets and decides which ones to “fill” with their portion of the discretionary budget. If people collectively feel like a project is a good use of resources, it will get funded. If there are critical budgeting priorities taking precedence, “nice to have” projects won’t get any funds that round. Funders can split up their allocations as they like, or put it all in one bucket. In aggregate, the result is a budget that reflects the collective priorities of the group, determined in proportion to real stakeholding and in the context of the big picture goals. The entire process takes place transparently.

The Open App Ecosystem

Building on the work of Loomio and Cobudget the Open App Ecosystem is an Enspiral project to develop suite of integrated and open sourced apps which support transparent, democratic and decentralised organising. The aim is for the software to act as a delivery mechanism for cultural viruses which decentralise money, information and control and promote happiness, empowerment and wellbeing throughout an organisation. They also have the side effect of helping organisations become more efficient, resilient and adaptable. Bring it on.

_____________

Josef Davies-Coates helps people discover, contribute to and replicate intelligent responses to climate, energy and economic uncertainty. He is the founder of United Diversity | @jdaviescoates

The post Open Co-ops: Inspiration, Legal Structures and Tools appeared first on P2P Foundation.

In this article, FairShares Association co-founder Rory Ridley-Duff outlines the continuing case for social and economic reform to support a FairShares Model of enterprise. FairShares brand principles change the way that investment activity is understood to ensure that capital is allocated for entrepreneurial, labour and user activities as well as financial contributions.  The result is wealth and power that is shared more fairly.

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Introduction

At the start of 2014, I came across new studies that acted as a powerful reminder of the need for a FairShares Model.  In this article I will describe the most striking of these, then argue that the co?operative and social enterprise movements need to concern themselves with everyone in the ‘bottom’ 80% of the population, not just those in extreme poverty.  They also need to protect the wealth embedded in our natural environment.

I recently came across a YouTube animation that portrays private wealth distribution in the US using data from a study at Harvard University[1]. This tells a completely different story to Shift Change[2], a documentary about social economy in the US and Spain.  While the Harvard study reports that top US CEOs get380 times the average worker’s pay, Shift Change reports that worker co-operatives either adopt equal pay systems or accept small wage differentials sanctioned by the worker-owners.  For example, the ratio between top and lowest paid workers in the Mondragon Co-ops – where there are 100,000 workers – averages just 5:1[3] [4].

The Harvard study claims that 90% of citizens are impoverished by private sector business practices.  The ‘bottom’ 80% owns just 7% of total wealth, while the top 20% has 93%.  Only 10% gain, and the top 1% gain disproportionately.  There is no doubt.  Hayek’s theory that economic freedom leads to a ‘trickle down’ effect is untrue.  It produces a ‘trickle up’ effect instead [5] [6].  But Shift Change shows that where co?operative business models become dominant, wealth is spread more evenly and equitably.  Member-owned businesses more often than not, are as (commercially) successful as their private sector counterparts [7] [8].  That’s where the FairShares Model comes in – it stimulates change to support growth in the social economy.

Most social enterprises focus on the poorest communities.  Whilst important, it is more urgent that we reform systems that exploit and impoverish up to 90% of working people (as well as the environment in which they live).  We need social enterprises for the bottom 90% (everyone impoverished) not just the bottom 10% (the most impoverished).  We also need a way to prevent the top 10% of earners acquiring hegemonic control over investment decisions.  If this task is beyond us, the goals of social enterprise will also be beyond us.

It is not an accident that most people are getting poorer (in both absolute and relative terms).  Studies of company law make it clear than private enterprises are not designed to share power or wealth [9].  Founders fix structures at incorporation to privilege a set of interests (i.e. entrepreneur(s) and financial investors in companies, consumers or workers in single stakeholder co-operatives). Charitable organisations are also inflexible: board and workforce members are subordinate to charitable/social objects set by the founders.

Entrepreneurship research clarifies how enterprises start.  One or more founding members – by design or accident – find opportunities to develop new markets for products and services [10]. If viable, they organise resources to support a business and build socio-technical systems to maintain management control.  Growing enterprises, however, also depend on the goodwill of the workforce, customers (service users) and institutional investors to access the human, social and financial capital needed for sustainability [11].

The key issue is that while we have developed systems for recognising the contribution of financial capital, we do not have adequate arrangements for recognising contributions of intellectual, human, social and natural capital.  To understand why, we have to review the way social norms for constituting joint-stock companies and non-share companies have developed.

There is a connection between business ideology and the arrangements in law by which entrepreneurs acquire share capital (ordinary shares).  They register as directors, then recruit employees to operationalize their ideas. New capital is issued when more financial capital is needed, but not when more intellectual, human, social or natural capital are needed.  In an unadapted CLS, employees and customers are subordinated to the interests of shareholders. They are not invited to be full members or to contribute towards decisions outside their specialist area of expertise [12]. If employees are offered share capital, voting rights are often limited or controlled by trustees who – in many cases – are under no legal obligation to vote in accordance with the wishes of their beneficiaries [13].

The intellectual property created by the workforce is acquired by the Company and controlled by executive managers and directors. In effect, majority shareholders treat intellectual, human, social and natural capital investments by others as if they were additional financial investments by themselves.  They continue to acquire rights to all the property created by the interactions between employees, customers and the natural environment.  This system of enterprise widens the wealth gap between those who own and govern the enterprise, and those who sell their labour to it, or buy goods from it.  Even in the richest countries, wealth inequalities grow wider (unless the state intervenes) [14] and the natural environment is degraded [15].

A typical response to the social problems created by privately owned economies is to create (private) charities and ‘non-profit’ companies using a Company Limited by Guarantee (CLG). This form of incorporation usually involves specifying charitable or social objects that define the purpose(s) of the enterprise. Founders reframe themselves as trustee-directors responsible for allocating resources in pursuit of social goals.

Charitable CLGs do not issue share capital so trustee-directors give up personal rights to the surplus wealth created by the enterprise. Their role (in law) is one of stewardship, ensuring that funds raised are used to further charitable (or social) objectives defined in the Articles of Association. As in a CLS, they employ staff to pursue social goals. Employees are still not (usually) legal members.  They continue to be subordinate to the trustee-directors and give up the (intellectual) property they create.

Do we have to choose between these two models? Three bodies of knowledge suggest we do not. Firstly, there is a global movement backed by the UN to increase responsible use of corporate assets [16]. Secondly, the UN’s International Year of Co-operatives highlighted the global growth of the social economy [17]. Particularly important is the way that the internet has reduced the costs associated with co-operative working.  The upsides of co-operation (intellectual exchange and collaborative decision-making) no longer come with the downsides of democracy (hefty co-ordination costs) [18]. Lastly, more enterprises identify themselves as social, deploying business models that improve human well-being through innovative trading strategies [19].

Creating non-shareholding companies enables the wealthier sections of society to address some symptoms of poverty and exclusion that private enterprises create, but it cannot address the root causes because it changes neither the ownership structure nor governance processes that creates and sustains them. Traditional private / non-profit models continue to institutionalise a division between producers and consumers on the one hand, and entrepreneurs and (social) investors on the other. For this reason, Level 1 of the FairShares Model asks important questions about representation in ownership, governance and management.

FairShares Model – Level 1

As shown above, the FairShares Model is based on an approach to social economy defined by Social Enterprise Europe.  It operates from the assumption that the exclusion of primary stakeholders from member-ownership (i.e. employees, producers, customers and service users) is a cause of contemporary poverty. At Level 2, the answer to each FairShares question suggests the set of corporate arrangements that is most favourable: entrepreneurs get Founder Shares; workforce members get Labour Shares; trading commitments are rewarded with User Shares; and financial capital creation is rewarded with Investor Shares.

FairShares Model – Level 2

This represents a new approach to valuing investments.  When there are surpluses (profits), not only do the providers of financial capital get a return, but also the contributors of other types of capital.  In a FairShares Company, half the capital gain is issued to Labour and User Shareholders as new Investor Shares,while the other half increases the value of existing Investor Shares.  In a FairShares Co-operative, surpluses can be allocated to restricted funds controlled by Labour and User member-owners, who then use their chosen approach to direct democracy to allocate surpluses to social investment projects.

None of this means that the conventional mechanism for allocating shares to external financial investors has to stop.  In a FairShares Company / Co-operative, Investor Shares can be issued to external investors if debt finance is hard to secure.  But, even with this, at least 70% of the wealth accumulated will find its way into the hands (and bank balances) of producers and consumers.  It enriches the ‘bottom’ 90% as much as the ‘top’ 10%.  And if this is not sufficient, FairShares Articles of Association (at Level 3) includes community dividends that act as an asset lock for philanthropic capital if the enterprise is dissolved.

The Articles of Association provided by the FairShares Association are not the only model rules that support FairShares brand principles [20].  But they do represent an ambitious attempt to bring together the most enduring developments in multi?stakeholder ownership, governance and management so that we change the way investments are recognised and valued [21] [22].  The FairShares Model offers a system for ensuring that capital is allocated to different types of contribution so that wealth and power can be more fairly shared.

References

The post The Case for FairShares appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Last night at 2:18am Alexia Tsotsis, Co-Editor at TechCrunch tweeted at me asking me to email or DM her. Intrigued, I did so.

Turns out, in response to the Newsweek article (see here if you can’t get to that) claiming to have the real identity of Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto, the ‘real’ Satoshi posted on the P2p Foundation Ning stating:

I started the P2P Foundation Ning back in 2008, where Satoshi posted information about their work on Bitcoin in Feb 2009, and so Alexia got in touch with me after seeing the Reddit post about Satoshi’s latest post on the forum.

She asked me a few questions, which I did my best to answer.

What’s the likelihood that it’s the same guy who posted the 2009 update commenting now?    

Could easily be the same person.  But who is to say the original creator of the account is by the “real” person.  I can confirm, however, that the registered email address on the account on our ning network is [email protected] which is the same one mentioned in the original paper.  So perhaps whoever created that account is indeed the “real” person, whoever that is.  I’d guess they likely are.

What’s the likelihood that that 2009 guy is the real guy?  

No idea to be honest (but they do appear to have the same email address as used on the original paper).  But now I understand why random people have suddenly started asking me if I know who Satoshi is!

Is there any way to tell or prove it?  

Not that I’m aware of.  But perhaps if some hard core geeks got access to both Ning and gmx log files they might be able to work something out. Unlikely though, I’d guess (the sort of people who can come up with stuff like bitcoin tend also to be the sort of people who know how to cover their digital tracks should they so choose, which it would appear they do).

Thoughts on the Newsweek article in general?

What article? (I just googled newsweek satoshi and see they’ve got an article about “the real face behind bitcoin” but for some peculiar reason it claims I’ve reached my 5 free articles per week, which can’t be true because I’ve not been there in the last week at all)

Can I use all this in a TechCrunch post?

So long as you mention and link to United Diversity, sure!  (and, of course, to the P2P Foundation wiki  and blog – I assume you’ll link to the Ning site anyway).   May as well link my name to @jdaviescoates too – I’m more active on facebook but could do with more twitter followers!

You’re the owner of the P2PFoundation site right?  

Well, I created the P2P Foundation Ning site, yes.  Details here: http://uniteddiversity.coop/2008/03/07/p2p-foundation-ning/

What is your involvement in the foundation?

I’m mostly just a supportive friend.  I very occasionally post on the P2PF blog and wiki, and fairly regularly participate on internal P2PF community mailing lists about how to build and develop the P2PF community. I also help to manage the P2PF Facebook page.

and your role within the Bitcoin community?

I have no role within the Bitcoin community, although I’ve been aware of the project since Satoshi posted it about it on our Ning forum (i.e. longer than most), and have also been involved with another open source digital cash project called OpenCoin (http://opencoin.org – link to that too would be nice – not .com, which is something completely separate from and unrelated to http://opencoin.org).  I’ve also been involved with community currency project for many years (my mother co-founded one of the first LETS in London, UK, and I worked with Time Banks UK during my time at the new economics foundation), which is perhaps why I have very little interest in Bitcoin.   I (like most others who’ve been thinking about alternative/ complementary currencies for a while) am far more interested in mutual credit networks and others systems that actually empower people and communities (rather than just mimicking the social and power dynamics of our existing failed financial systems, or those of a bygone era – Bitcoin tries to be like digital gold, but basing exchanges systems upon which we all depend on gold or others things like it, of which there is a limited supply and which can be hoarded – is really rather silly. See e.g. recent FT article).  I do not own any Bitcoin.  The blockchain is a great example of a distributed ledger and a real innovation.  But what I overall think about Bitcoin is probably best summarised here:  http://brokenlibrarian.org/bitcoin/  And in the writing/ talks of e.g. http://jembendell.wordpress.com/tag/bitcoin/ and Leander Bindewald (e.g. recent appearance on RT http://communitycurrenciesinaction.eu/ccias-on-russia-today/ ) and my friend tav http://tav.espians.com/why-bitcoin-will-fail-as-a-currency.html

I also posted the following tweets, which have now all be retweeted umpteen times:

Shortly after, TechCrunch had a piece about it.  I also forwarded on my responses to Raphael Satter, a journalist for The Associated Press who also got in touch via twitter.  The story is now all over the place.  Overnight the story made it on to Forbes and The Guardian, and this morning Paul Vigna from The Wall Street Journal got in touch has just put this WSJ Money Beat blog post up.  A quick google news search also brought up articles in The Evening Standard, The International Business Times, PCWorld, Here is the City, The Domains, Finextra, The Drum and more (LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Telegraph, The Express Tribune, NBC News, CNBC, UPI, The Week Magazine, Mashable, Engadget, Slate, Sydney Morning Herald, LA Weekly, Zee News, Forex News, Heavy, Tech Week Europe, Info World, The Verge, Guardian Liberty Voice, Franchise Herald, Gawker, CSO, and the list keeps growing)

Numerous other threads about this have surfaced on Reddit too, including fun wild speculation that I am myself Satoshi (I’m not!), and, in response to this post by P2P Foundation’s Nicolas Mendoza, asking various questions about whether or not there has been any suspicious activity etc on our Ning site.  At present, all we know has been included in this post, but we’re awaiting a response from Ning re the following supported ticket we filed with them:

Hi there,

As you may be aware, this post:
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/xn/detail/2003008:Comment:52186

By this member:
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topic/listForContributor?user=0ye0gncqg772o

Has caused quite a stir e.g. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zrshb/real_satoshi_nakamoto_denies_being_dorian_nakamoto/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zs3cm/real_satoshi_nakamotos_friend_online_after_last/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zs8fi/i_am_nicolas_mendoza_from_p2p_foundation_we_are/

People are asking us if there is anyway we can check things like:

1) has the password been recently changed on this account
2) has there been any suspicious activity related to this account
3) do yo have any IP logs related to this account  etc.  

Are you able to help us answer any of these questions?  

Thanks in advance,  

Josef.

We await their response to see if we can get any more info about all this…

The post Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto reconnects with P2P Foundation after five years appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet”

Crowdfunding’s poster child, Kickstarter, launched in April 2009. It wasn’t the first online crowdfunding platform (ArtistShare launched in 2003), but it was the first to become widely known and scale.  In just 3 and a half years Kickstarter has helped over 32,000 projects raise a total of over $350 million.

But Kickstarter is now just one of over 450 crowdfunding platforms worldwide.  In 2011, these platforms together raised almost $1.5 billion and successfully funded more than one million campaigns. This figure is expected to double to nearly $3 billion by the end of 2012:

Source: Crowdfunding Industry Report

So, crowdfunding is big and growing fast.  Aside from the cool art projects and funky products we’re all familiar with, can crowdfunding be used to fund positive social change too? It sure can.  As you’ll soon see, with the Top 40 Platforms for Crowdfunding Social Change listed below it is now easier than ever to crowdfund social change.  But people have been successfully pooling resources to meet shared goals and needs for a long time.

An example of particular interest to P2P Foundation readers might be the story of how Jonas Salk created the very first polio vaccine in the 1950s; it is was crowdfunded and patent-free.  Salk’s research “was not funded by private foundations or pharmaceutical companies, but by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, a public effort, financed by the donations of millions of ordinary Americans who were asked to give a ‘dime at a time’“.

More recently, crowdfunding has been used with great success to finance political action.  A mainstream example is the Obama 2008 US Presidential Election Campaign which set new fundraising records by gaining support from a record-breaking number of individual small donors.   More radically, a coalition of Occupy groups called Strike Debt are currently crowdfunding the awesome Rolling Jubilee initiative – a “bailout of the people by the people” – that seeks to buy debt for pennies on the dollar and then abolish it.

Inspired to take action? Here is a handy list of great crowdfunding platforms specifically designed to help raise funds for positive world changing projects:

Top 40 Platforms for Crowdfunding Social Change

web | twitter | facebook | github

Goteo is an open source platform for ‘crowdfunding the commons’.  Their code and all the projects listed on the site are ‘100% Open’.  If you want to crowdfund your Open Hardware design, Creative Commons content or Open Source software project, Goteo is the platform for you.

web | wiki | twitter | facebook | github

Another open source platform, Akvo is primarily for Water and Sanitation projects.  There is the accompanying wiki Akvopedia plus lots of useful code.

web | twitter | facebook | github

Catarse was both the first crowdfunding platform in Brazil and the world’s first fully-fledged open source crowdfunding platform.  Check out this community raising money on Catarse to support the creation of their own currency and read this great interview with one of the team.

web | facebook

WeTheTrees is an open source platform for crowdfunding Permaculture projects, powered by Catarse code. What’s not to love?

web | twitter | facebook

Credibles is amazing because it elegantly combines three wonderful things: Crowdfunding, Community Currency and Food.  It shares much in common with Community Supported Agriculture and works like this: people support food projects by pre-buying their produce.  In return they receive ‘edible credits’ that they can then spend with any of the participating food projects in the network.  Such a great idea. We all eat, and as they say “if you eat, you’re an investor”.  Prediction: things will start to get really exiting on the food front when Sustaination start doing this with everyone in their rapidly growing network!

web | twitter | facebook

The sheer scale of ambition is what I love most about the Trillion Fund, a crowdfuding platform for renewable energy projects.  Their goal is to help direct a Trillion dollars of investment into renewable energy projects over the next 10 years.  Due to launch in early 2013, their own platform will empower people to ‘profit from renewable energy’ by making it easy to invest in shares and bonds that offer decent returns.  In the meantime they offer a very handy directory of renewable energy investment opportunities.   All very exciting.  Be sure to register on their website to get notified as soon as they launch!

web | twitter | facebook

Microgenius is brilliant.  It simplifies and enables one of the most intelligent responses to climate, energy and economy uncertainty there is: getting together to start co-ops and then doing community share issues to raise funds for community scale infrastructure. In this case: cooperatively-owned renewable energy infrastructure. They don’t put it exactly like that, but that is why I love them.  Only downside: it’s only for renewable energy co-ops (and not yet for Community Shops, Co-operative Pubs, or Fan-owned Football Teams) and the minimum investment is £200.  But, whatever, Co-ops and Community Shares rock!

web | twitter | facebook

With the ability to invest as little as £5 a month Abundance Generation makes investing in UK renewable energy projects really affordable.  Their innovation model allows you to invest in ‘debentures’ which pay you a your fair share of the profits generated from your investment as a steady income over 25 years.  Affordable long-term investments in UK renewable energy projects. We like.

web | twitter | facebook

Buzzbnk was the first crowdfunding platform in the UK specifically for Social Enterprises and other Social Ventures and is itself a Social Enterprise, backed and owned 63% by leading charities and foundations.  They have a social purpose to reinvest and support the social enterprise community and the development of the social investment sector.

web | twitter | facebook | github

Launched in 2011 Peoplefund.it was originally focused on “business ideas that might just change the world” and their aim was “to launch a generation of entrepreneurs, businesses and charities who are commercially sustainable and have social innovation at their heart”.  These days PeopleFund.it is general purpose crowdfunding website and claims to be the biggest in the UK (although some would say that accolade belongs to Sponsume and now Kickstarter is in the UK too).  As part their NESTA funding requirements a snapshot of their code was published on github shortly after their launch.  Sadly the code has not been updated or maintained since.

web | twitter | facebook

Spacehive is the world’s first funding platform for neighbourhood improvement projects.  They make it as easy to fund a new park or playground for your area as buying a book online.  Check out Capital Growth are using it to raise funds for urban growing space in London!

web | twitter | facebook

Flattr describes itself as “the worlds first social micro-payment system”.  Whereas most crowdfunding platform exist to fund projects before they happen, Flattr is a way to reward content producers after they’ve published their content.  It is potentially another very important part of the puzzle in the “how to content producers get paid when the marginal cost of copying is virtually zero” conundrum.

web | twitter | facebook

If, like me, you spend too much time trying to convince great authors to look beyond restrictive copyright rules and update their business models for the networked digital age, you’ll love unglue.it – afterall, to “unglue” means “to make a digital book free to read and use, worldwide”. Great stuff. They unglued one book.  Amazon shut them down. Now they’re back!

web | twitter | facebook

ioby describes itselt as the crowd-resourcing website that helps bring your environmental ideas to life, block by block.

web | twitter | facebook

LoudSauce is all about amplifying ideas that matter and preaching beyond the choir.  It is the first crowdfunded media buying platform that help groups of people spread ads they believe in out to mainstream channels like billboards, TV and bus shelters.  Remember, just 6 companies own over 50% of all media, so projects like this are incredibly important for getting the word out.

web | twitter | facebook

Launched in 2009, Zidisha is “The Online Micro-Loan Platform that Kiva Wants to Be Like“.  It was was the first peer-to-peer microlending service to offer direct interaction between lenders and borrowers across the international wealth divide.  In short, it actually does what you always thought Kiva did.  The average Zidisha borrower pays only 8.02% in annual interest and fees, including interest paid out to lenders. This is much lower than most MFI rates and below the rate of inflation in many developing countries.

web | twitter | facebook

Have a crazy brilliant idea that needs funding?  The Awesome Foundation isn’t a normal crowdfunding platform but does award $1,000 grants every month. It couldn’t be simpler! Your idea is yours alone. They don’t want a stake in it. They just want to help you make it happen!

web | twitter

Gen Community, itself cooperatively-owned, is quite similar to the Microgenius community shares platform.  They too offer the opportunity to invest in community shares in renewable energy co-ops, but rather than being a platform for other projects they organise all the projects themselves.  They also focus on larger projects aimed at bigger investors: projects are in the £1-2million range and the minimum investment is £500.   Technically not a crowdfunding *platform* at all, I’ve included them because Co-ops and Community Shares rock!

web | twitter | facebook

Did I mention that Co-ops and Community Shares rock?  Well, they do. And Shared Interest, a co-op that lends to fair trade organisations, is a great example of what can be achieved.  Since their launch in the 1980s they have raised over £20 million in community share capital from over 8000 members.

web | twitter | facebook | github

A platform for “Community-funded reporting”, Spot.Us is an open source project to pioneer “community powered reporting.” Through Spot.Us the public can commission and participate with journalists to do reporting on important and perhaps overlooked topics. It is an utterly brilliant idea.  But I have to say, I’m not too impressed with the implementation.  If you can code or help with the design, get involved and help make it better!

web | twitter | facebook

Crowdfunding for Main Street. CloudFunded is a finance platform for local and sustainable business you know and trust.

web | twitter | facebook

Localstake is a locally focused crowdfunding marketplace that connects businesses looking for capital with local investors.

web | twitter | facebook

Citizinvestor is a very interesting platform that has great potential for local replication. In short, it allows municipalities to post projects which citizens can then contribute towards. It also enables citizens to start petitions.  It reminds me a bit of Participatory Budgeting.

web | twitter | facebook

Neighbor.ly is just like Citizinvestor.  Neighbor.ly is designed to accept projects only from local governmental and civic-natured entities.  However, if you know of a local official who might be the right person to talk to about your idea, send them an email asking them to consider Neighbor.ly

web

Kiva is probably the best known and biggest online microfinance platform.  Whilst it gives the impression that investors can lend directly to entrepreneurs in developing countries, all the money actually goes via parter MFIs (Micro Finance Institutions).  Kiva Zip is a new project that works just like Zidisha.

web | twitter | facebook

StartSomeGood connects social entrepreneurs with people who want to help.  One nice thing about their story is that they raised the money for their project on IndieGoGo, another crowdfunding platform.

web | twitter | facebook

Similar to StartSomeGood, Inpact.me is a Latin American crowdfunding site supporting social entrepreneurs in Chile and beyond.

web | twitter | facebook

SunFunder is a crowdfunding platform connecting investors to high-impact solar projects in off-grid communities around the world.

web | twitter | facebook

Solar Mosaic was one of the first renewable energy crowdfunding platforms and successfully raised funds for a few solar projects before entering into “a quiet period”.  Their website now says: “Coming soon, a new way to create clean energy in your community and around the world”.

web

Solar Schools is a UK 10:10 project that help schools crowdfund for a solar roof. Donate £5 or more to sponsor your very own tile.

Selfstarter
web | github

Selfstarter.us is an open source ‘roll your own crowdfunding’ platform by the guys at Lockitron, who created it after they were turned down by Kickstarter.

web | twitter | facebook

Rocket Hub isn’t specifically for social change projects, but it does play host to the brilliant #SciFund Challenge: “The #SciFund Challenge is an experiment – can scientists use crowdfunding to fund their research? The #SciFund Challenge is also a way to get scientists to directly engage with the pubilc”.

web | twitter | facebook

iAMscientist is a crowdfunding platform for science.  It is a global community of science, technology and medical researchers who come together to accelerate research, support career development and drive the distribution of discoveries.

web | twitter | facebook

Another crowdfunding platform for science, Petridish is “a new way to fund science and explore the world with renowned researchers”.

web | twitter | facebook

Microryza is “an online platform that lets you discover new research, support the research you think is important, and then connect with scientists. In return, you receive updates directly from the researchers to get a window into how they work and see your impact in the process of discovery”.

web | twitter | facebook

WATSI enables you to directly fund low-cost, high-impact medical treatments for people in need.

web | twitter | facebook

Catapult is a crowdfunding platform connecting people with projects that advance the lives of girls and women worldwide.

web | twitter | facebook

ethex isn’t live yet, but they want to make truly ethical investments open to everyone, become the 1st not-for-profit stockbroker, support social businesses and unit ethical investors.

web

“Connecting capital markets to social ventures”, the Social Stock Exchange‘s goals are very similar to ethex: “to become the premier venue and access portal for Social Enterprises and Social Purposes Businesses seeking to raise risk capital and for Social Impact Investors who wish to find global businesses that reflect their values.”

web

Very little info so far but the energybank vision is “for a Europe-wide market in energy-bonds, backed by renewable assets and owned by the people and businesses that use them”. Sounds great, let’s hope they pull it off!

 About the author

As co-founder of United Diversity, a co-operative partnership based in London, UK, Josef Davies-Coates helps people to discover, contribute to and replicate intelligent responses to climate, energy and economic uncertainty.  He has ran and advised many successful crowdfunding campaigns and has assisted numerous Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies to set-up and launch Community Share issues.  He helped set-up the Trillion Fund blog in May 2012 and it is his ongoing work with them that prompted him to pen this post. Thanks, Trillion Fund!

The post UPDATED: Top 40 Platforms for Crowdfunding Social Change appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The cheapest Ning plan available for a community of our size (689 members so far) is Ning Plus, costing $19.95/month or $199.95/year (saving 16%).

Our goal is to raise $500. In part, this is because $500 is the minimum goal allowed on IndieGoGo, the crowd funding platform we’d opted to use for this last-minute funding drive. We note, however, that this minimum may be a blessing in disguise, because it forces us to simultaneously raise extra funds towards the creation of a more long-term strategy, i.e. building the network a nice open source social networking/ publishing site using Drupal (probably starting off with the new Drupal Commons distribution from Acquia).

Please visit our page on IndieGoGo now and contribute what you can – Save the P2P Foundation Ning!

You can read this post for the backstory on out how the P2P Foundation Ning came to exist in the first place.

Thanks in advance for your generous contributions!

The post Can we raise $500 in 5 days? appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This is particularly heartening for me because I can claim my own small part in making it happen, which helps me to sleep at night…

It all started with a short blog post about one of the most sampled drum breaks in history, known as the ‘Amen break’, frequently used as sampled drum loops in hip hop, jungle, breakcore and drum and bass music.

Finn Jackson (not actually sure its the one I’m linking to there?) was the first to comment on that post, beginning with:

Many thanks for a very interesting and quite novel way to spend 20 minutes. For me this video actually has quite a LOT to do with the Transition Movement! :o)

There are three interwoven themes here: innovation, copyright, and business.

Rob Hopkins who penned the blog post about Amen Break responded positively:

Thank you Finn, that was quite beautifully put! …. The Transition idea as a funky sample, I rather like that!

Neil L then waded in and mentioned Creative Commons, quoting their homepage:

Share, Remix, Reuse — Legally

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved.”

We’re a nonprofit organization. Everything we do — including the software we create — is free.”

Then I went in for the kill:

Yes, Rob, the transtion idea is a damn funky sample!

Now, to ensure it spreads even more virally than it is already doing so, please (re-)release the contents of Transition Handbook (and this blog) using Creative Commons (or similar) license.

…

I’d REALLY really love to see the contents of Transtion Handbook book re-published on a wiki (mediawiki probably best, or perhaps just put it on http://appropedia.org) where people are free to remix it as they see fit (so long as the remixes/ copies they make carry the same freedoms).

…

lets open source the Transition Handbook so that everyone can get to hear what a funky tune it is!

A week later I got an e-mail from Rob (which I trust he doesn’t mind me sharing):

Dear Josef

Greetings. Sorry that your comment only just appeared on the site, somehow it got put in my spam folder, and I don’t often check through that. I am intrigued by the idea of making a wiki version of the book. I would love to hear more thoughts on how it would work and what would be the advantages of doing so. What kind of format would it appear, and how and why would people add to/change it? Wouldn’t it just become a great deal of work moderating it? I like the idea that the book itself becomes updated in an ongoing fashion by those that have been inspired by it…. but I am puzzled by the practicalities of it and the work it would entail. Any illumination or examples you could point me to would be much appreciated.

Best wishes and thanks

Rob

I sent a lengthly reply but started with:

In short, I’d recommend contacting the people at Appropedia about it.

A couple of weeks later, Rob was reading Charles Leadbeater’s We Think and then in his Transition Network structure proposal he wrote:

Host the collaborative rewrite of ‘The Transition Handbook’ using a wiki approach, with the original book serving as the basis for a gathering of tools, stories, experience and insight from across the Transition … The new web platform will be designed with this as a central aspiration

This really made me smiles and then three days ago Rob wrote a blog post entitled “WeThink”, and an invitation to participate in the collaborative rewrite of The Transition Handbook

And here we have it: The Transition Handbook on Appropedia

Please, go and chip in to help make it the most successful wiki-book-edit ever!

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