Method

This section explores the role of nonprofits and investment cooperatives as Community Coordinators. It touches on the need for media support.

The Citizens Media Ltd^® – the-cm.com / “CM” is a transparent, forward thinking approach for giving people everywhere the ability to get inspired and take action that brings wellbeing for themselves, humanity and the place we call home.

To make things scale at the speed we all need, we’re seeking nonprofits and investment cooperatives who have a local and active presence mobilizing communities to increase their impact and funding potential by partnering with us as a Community Coordinator. Your goal will be to help the community/s you work with to increase resilience by connecting together, developing and supporting their local economy through CM. Your mission will be to take community members to a place where you can hand over the steering wheel, such that the community coordinates activities themselves. This is achieved by birthing their own Community Investment Cooperative that’s able to receive and direct funding and investments directly.

What You Will Do

As a Community Coordinator, you will be giving the people you serve the ability to:

1. Be seen, heard and understood;
2. Have agency in becoming active contributors to themselves and their community.

What do I have to do to get going?

Complete the contact form below and we’ll schedule a call to chat. If we’re aligned we’ll enter a partnership agreement.

What’s involved in being a Community Coordinator?

Tasks include i) hosting Community Gatherings and/or Business Development and Media Workshops, and; ii) developing awareness through leaflets, SMS and noticeboards.

Being a Community Coordinator involves:

1. Collecting and distributing funds awarded to business Funding Opportunities.
2. Creating a Community Page – tells people about the community and links to all its members and their content. Admin rights can be shared. To learn more, see Platform Pages (downloadable PDF).
3. Verification of Community Members.
4. Maintaining accountability of businesses and funding requests, which includes auditing community content and activities within the CM Coin™ Marketplace.
5. Coordinating development and voting around a Community Empowerment Plan.

To ensure inclusivity, Community Coordinators are encouraged to overcome literacy and language barriers, which could involve supporting community members in developing, recording and/or translating content. Community Coordinators can employ Media Facilitators to assist.

How does the collection and distribution of funds work?

Funds donated to businesses on CM are received by a payment platform called Stripe, and sent to the Community Coordinators’ bank account, who then distributes the funds in accordance with details noted in Funding Opportunities. Note: the ability of international nonprofits to receive funds locally across multiple currencies, reduces merchant banking fees so that more money goes directly to the projects themselves.

How does Community Member Verification work?

To earn funds for a local business and/or CM Coins™, Community Members must be verified as living in a community that has a Community Coordinator assigned. Note: a Community Coordinator can be either a nonprofit or an investment coop that the community manages themselves.

How It Works

As part of the process for creating a Community Page, Community Coordinators must provide information about how its Community Members get verified. This must be an in-person process, whereby the Community Coordinator is able to confirm they are who they claim to be through their CM account. Participating members must renew their verified status on an annual basis.

To get verified, a Community Member must first create a CM account. When logged in – if they have a coordinator assigned – they will see a link to “Get Verified” on their profile page, and any other page requiring this step.

Note: If a user lives in a community that doesn’t yet have a Community Coordinator, their attempt to “Get Verified” in a particular community will be noted and used to help identify where Coordinators are most in demand.

The “Get Verified” link:

1. Presents the user with the message provided by their Community Coordinator, which gives them instructions about what to do next.
2. Sends a notification to the Community Coordinator letting them know that someone new in their community has signed up. The Community Member’s name is added to the “unverified” list of members on their Community’s Page. Note: their name will not appear in public view until they have been verified.
3. Once a Community Coordinator has verified the Community Member, they can login to their CM account and verify the member directly from the Community Page.

How does the relationship with Media Facilitators work?

Community Coordinators can support a Community Member by linking their account with a Media Facilitator. As with member verification, this is done by accessing member accounts on the Community Page. If a Media Facilitator has been added to an account, a link to their profile will appear on content posted through its login.

How Media Facilitators are rewarded is up to the Community Coordinator. CM can provide data relating to how much funding and conversation their efforts helped to attract.

What is a Community Empowerment Plan?

The Community Empowerment Plan identifies how a local demand and supply chain might work and evolve within a particular community. It incorporates both products from local businesses and critical ‘public’ services. Note: We can assist by connecting you with currency exchange gaming tools to help out.

What is the Community Empowerment Fund?

The Community Empowerment Fund is a similar concept to tax. It generates revenues for critical community services identified in the Community Empowerment Plan, such as access to water, medical services, sanitation and school fees. The fund is collected as a percentage that gets added to the community’s Funding Opportunities. It can be supplemented through external funding.

The percent collected – and what it will be spent on – is determined collectively by local discussion and voting between members. Only verified Community Members can vote. Community Coordinators are responsible for coordinating the voting process and managing subsequent expenditures.

“From a grassroots economics perspective, such discussions highlight the need for economic systems and tax policies that are not only legally sound but also equitable and sensitive to the historical and cultural contexts of the populations they serve. This could lead to more inclusive economic models that support sustainable development and rectify historical inequities.” – On Tax Avoidance and Poverty by Will Ruddick.

What does auditing of content and the Community Marketplace involve?

Content auditing involves reviewing, assisting, approving and releasing of Business Pages and Funding Opportunities submitted by Community Members before they go live. Marketplace auditing involves: (a) reviewing of fiat values given to products in both Commitment Pools as well as local products which may be added to the Marketplace over time, and; (b) ensuring any products added to the Marketplace were/are locally and sustainably produced. To learn more, see Community Exchange (downloadable PDF).

1. To be promoted through CM, businesses and their Funding Opportunities must be community based and work to serve both people and the environment.
2. Auditing is assisted peer to peer by giving Community Members the ability to flag content and activity which they believe to be inaccurate and/or misleading. This works because the actions of an individual impacts their neighbours too.
3. Community Coordinators can opt to moderate other content, such as blogs, comments and forum entries.

Why will community members want to engage?

I am concerned about rising prices, increasing inequality and uncertainty going on. Tension is rising, people are feeling disconnected and at a loss for what to do. Fear, violence and mental struggle is increasing. When we don’t know who we can turn to, we must look to ourselves. When the system behind the economy we depend on isn’t serving us, we must build something that does. That’s why we started The Citizens Media^® - a tool for individuals to build a resilient economy from within their community, one person, one connection at a time.

Responses we’ve received from members of communities we’ve been connecting with include:

1. I need an affordable and reliable way to feed my family and to do something that will help build a future that my children can thrive in too.
2. I want to feel part of my community - to be seen and heard, to build friendships with my neighbours and to hear and see them too.
3. I’m concerned about the climate. I believe in buying local, in reducing long distribution chains, in cutting out unnecessary costs like marketing and packaging, and I want to support businesses that care about our planet too.
4. Earning local products by being a voice to the businesses in my hood is an awesome idea!
5. I can’t get an affordable loan, but without investment my business will collapse.
6. Getting support, connecting and sharing with others to develop a plan and access finance, could help me to start and grow my own business.
7. I do not have a bank account, which restricts my ability to get what I need.
8. I want to use my voice to build connection and understanding in helping our world be a more equitable place.
9. We live in uncertain times and need to learn how we can meet our needs locally. We cannot risk leaving our future to AI and billionaires.

What’s CM’s target demographic?

CM’s initial target demographic is people living in underserved communities – notably Global South and Indigenous – aged 18-35.

How We Support You

In addition to providing the platform, CM is here to help its partners in any way we can. This includes giving you a say in how we operate, providing consultancy services, brainstorming ideas and helping to attract much needed funds.

The Citizens Media^® (CM):

• Provides a strategy and framework for communities to work together in meeting their needs.
• Helps economic success stories, models and ideas to be promoted and scaled.
• Provides funders and supporters with a means to measure and increase impact of funds.
• Builds peer to peer accountability and transparency for how funds are being used.
• Promotes activity through podcasts, Sensemaking and Impact Economy Summits.

Voting Rights

In addition to giving our partners necessary access within CM’s platform, we give you the option of voting rights within the organization itself. Becoming a Community Coordinator isn’t just about using our services, it’s a partnership meant so we can focus on what we do best. This is why we believe you need a say in how The Citizens Media^® and its platform develops and evolves.

Impact and Data Analysis

As part of our partnership, we will work with you in using content and data collected on the platform to produce Impact & Data Analysis Reports. Although content created on the platform belongs to the person who created it, we reserve the rights to analyse its data to help identify and overcome challenges their conversations help bring to the surface.

Funding

Community Coordinators can choose to add a percent service fee to their Community’s Funding Opportunities. This fee would be in addition to the 5% service fee that’s due to CM. Money collected by Community Coordinator service fees can be used to offset administration costs – such as merchant banking fees – and costs related to inclusivity, such as the hiring of Media Facilitators.

Aside from adding service fees, finance for Community Coordinator activities will be sourced through philanthropic donations directed at you: our nonprofit and cooperative partners. The Citizens Media^® will support your funding efforts by delivering podcasts that attract attention and awareness around why we are collaborating, what’s happening and what we need. These podcasts invite engagement between the communities you work with and the wider world. Any excess funding received in this way will be distributed to participating community Funding Opportunities.

In some instances – and at such a time they become available – activities such as Media Facilitation may be supported through CM grants.

Act Now

By becoming a Community Coordinator you will be partnering with us in a forward thinking strategy for overcoming pressing challenges faced by underserved communities. Our model for connecting and rewarding the voice of the people with funders and entrepreneurs from communities around the world, will increase awareness and open sharing of ideas and solutions for sustainably increasing social and economic wellbeing.

We believe that by giving each other the tools and encouragement to have agency in helping themselves, their families and community, we can change the world. We provide the platform. We need you to connect it with the people.

Together we’ll learn, move and think forward, proving how great humanity can be, restoring our planet as we go.

Think New. Think Forward.^® the-cm.com

Crowdfunds are directed at local businesses through Funding Opportunities. Money is collected and distributed by Community Coordinators, which maintains accountability and reduces administration costs.

Note: How and when the funds will be distributed is detailed in the Funding Opportunity itself. Unless you opt to remain anonymous, how much you give and to whom is promoted from your Profile.

What you get

1. Crowdfunders will be invited to join us live to share thoughts through Impact Economy Podcasts.
2. As activity increases, we’ll be working with our Community Coordinators to invite star Crowdfunders to visit and engage with a community they support. These expeditions could include opportunities to create promotional media, and to embark on more touristy things – through the eyes and guidance of a local.
3. Giving through CM could mean investing directly in your own future too. This happens through Crowdfund Sponsorships.

Direct philanthropic support to Community Coordinators helps to offset their service costs.

Note: Community Coordinators can add service fees to Funding Opportunities for both:

1. Supporting their services, and;
2. Financing Community Empowerment Funds.

The more disadvantaged the community, the more finance they’ll need. By giving to Community Coordinators you reduce the fees they need to add to crowdfunds targeted at local businesses.

Philanthropists can choose to:

1. Award finance to Community Coordinators for use at their own discretion;
2. Target finance at Media Facilitator Grants;
3. Distribute finance among Funding Opportunities over a predefined period, and/or;
4. Assign finance to Community Empowerment Fund/s.

What you get

Philanthropists will be invited to attend Impact Economy Summits and Sensemaking Sessions.

Subject to agreement on terms integral to CM’s values and intentions, Philanthropists may have an active role in CM’s decision making. To learn more see Manage.

To learn more about why giving through CM makes sense, see Why Give a Buck?.

Our sponsors and investors are looking for an outcome greater than a financial benefit: committed to supporting initiatives where outcomes are continually upcycled and recycled, to create real and sustainable change in society. These changes better the circumstances for people and communities. Sponsors may also be interested in the learning opportunities, made available through the support, growth and success of funds that they give.

Sponsors

Connect your brand with forward thinking economic opportunities that help you, humanity and planet earth too. There are two types of sponsors we seek:

1. Platform: Money you give affords CM’s ongoing maintenance and development costs.
2. Crowdfund: What you give adds investment motivation for people to Crowdfund.

Crowdfund Sponsors are typically a governmental body looking for innovative ways to manage risk by establishing fiscal and mental resilience within communities. Your gift could be to match Crowdfund donations given to communities in your remit, by adding to the crowdfunders state pension or medical insurance plan. Your contribution helps funders to afford their gift by investing in their future. Sponsoring Crowdfund donations given to global south communities compliments international aid.

What you get

Sponsors are promoted through Impact Economy Podcasts and Impact Economy Summits. They are invited to attend Sensemaking Sessions.

Subject to agreement on terms integral to CM’s values and intentions, Sponsors may have an active role in CM’s decision making. To learn more see Manage.

Crowdfund Sponsors

CM’s invitation to become a Crowdfund Sponsor provides public entities with a means to channel and uplift finance peer to peer, cognizant of changing climate and demographics along with rising threats on national and cultural sovereignty.

Crowdfund donations don’t just build resilience through social connection and cross pollination of skills and resources, but they increase the coffers in Community Empowerment Funds too. This reduces the strain on tax budgets.

Building and connecting resilient communities decreases dependency on external supply chains.

To learn more about why giving through CM makes sense, see Why Give a Buck?

Angel Investors

Unlike most other business startups, our exit strategy is not to go public, but rather to release ownership to the people and communities who take part. Ownership will be fluid and cooperatively led. This means that ongoing development can only be afforded through philanthropic and capped investments. CM cannot give away ownership through shares. To learn more, see Manage.

What you get

Investors are invited to attend Impact Economy Summits and Sensemaking Sessions.

Subject to agreement on terms integral to CM’s values and intentions, Investors may also benefit by contributing an active role in CM’s decision making. To learn more see Manage.

To learn more about why giving through CM makes sense, see Why Give a Buck?

Current global turmoil and the reduction of government aid is creating urgency for nonprofits and philanthropists to direct funds in new and innovative ways that lead to real and lasting change. This requires funnelling finance through a system where people who receive can pay it forward, continually reinvesting to build community and economic resilience from within. The system must be open, give people a voice, and embody accountability by measuring impact, just like CM.

CM is a journey where we learn and invoke change together as we go. Investing in CM and the communities it hosts not only helps local businesses meet financial needs, but it supports the development of authentic conversation locally and globally. These conversations provide valuable insight for how we can work together for a more beautiful and resilient world. The benefits of becoming an investor in CM rests as much in the journey as the outcomes themselves.

Much like life insurance provides a backup to individuals, so investing in CM does for our economy. AI and global inequity hold the very real possibility that depending on exchange in fiat based markets is a game of risk where the hyper wealthy make all the rules. CM provides a backup we could depend on, should access to fiat begin to run dry and the markets it supports become unaffordable. As activity and investment in community economies through CM increases, so will the size of their markets, the skills and solutions shared, the number of people employed and community citizens empowered through trust and agency.

To kickstart activation, startup participation will be incentivized by promising lump sums of philanthropic finance for release to Funding Opportunities across a set of communities over a period of time.

Why will Funding Grants work?

How will the distribution of Funding Opportunity Grants work?

Distribution of grants among Funding Opportunities can be based on matching crowdfund donations pledged, and/or:

1. Quantitative Funding Opportunity benchmarks, such as attracting a certain number of comments by different participants which have been viewed, liked and uplifted by sharing on other platforms.
2. Qualitative benchmarks, such as those that relate to the content and clarity of a Business Page and live Funding Opportunity, and how the business and its conversations are helping the community and environment.

Impact Economy MediaBlasts are 3-10 minute podcasts that speak to aspects embodied within CM. They speak to our values, intention and purpose, presenting which processes achieve what, how and why.

1. Impact Economy Podcasts are based on conversations with:
2. World leaders who are paving the way to a world that thrives through sustainable, inclusive economic wellbeing, and;
3. Members of communities using CM to strengthen the economy – and resilience – where they live.

Impact Economy Summits are 3-5 day events where Impact Investors, Impact Entrepreneurs, NGOs, Project Leaders and members of underserved communities come together to present and discuss how we can invest for accelerating sustainable social and economic wellbeing. Each agenda will be based on activity that is happening through CM’s platform, and will include peer to peer podcasting, where attendees group together to produce short videos conveying key learnings from the previous day.

Sensemaking Sessions are quarterly online meetups, where Community Coordinators connect with CM’s team as well as leading experts who are able to assist in areas that activities have drawn attention too. These experts could be involved in anything from community engagement to entrepreneurs working on solutions for overcoming common challenges being experienced by communities, and evolving tech such as blockchain and AI.

I³ stands for exponential impact on people, planet and purpose.

People: Community based approach in connecting needs, skills and resources to develop economic opportunity from within.

Planet: Supports forward thinking solutions that meet needs locally, uplifting and recycling local resources.

Purpose: Incorporates transparency and inclusivity, activating open sharing of designs and solutions that maximize connection and wellbeing.

The I³ as a Community Coordinator

The I3 currently exists as a BC (British Columbia, Canada) investment coop. As such, it can accept investments, and – should the need arise and community-based support be available – is able to adopt the responsibilities of being a Community Coordinator.

Coop Memorandum

The I³ Investment Cooperative works to manifest real opportunity for a more vibrant shared economy that maximizes community resilience, prosperity and social wellbeing, while being respectful of natural ecologic limits. In alignment with its vision, and in collaboration with its members, the Co-operative:

1. Creates investment opportunities, that maximize economic, social and environmental returns
2. Provides loans, loan guarantees, grants, and other financial assistance;
3. Provides assistance with the development, evaluation and assessment of business enterprises and other economic projects;
4. Provides investment services to members and customers (including but not limited to project assessment, risk analysis, related administration and financial services);
5. Engages in public education and community development, and encourages research and development into innovative solutions.

The ideas behind CM have been developed over a number of years. Systems change is a process. We’re at the beginning. Existing as a limited corporation has lessened potential bureaucracy. It has helped us stay nimble, open to creating and shaping as we learn from the people and communities we’ve sought to help. It also enables us to gatekeep our core values – Equal Opportunity, Community and Authenticity – as we transition ownership.

Transfer will happen at such a time that investment capital is paid back and our core values have become firmly established in user behaviour. Note: Developments in the transition will likely include migrating CM’s Community Exchange to a network of community based blockchains. Doing this will facilitate opportunities to manage CM development through Smart Contracts. Local businesses using CM will be able to manage work agreements through Smart Contracts too.

Accountability in terms of CM’s technology and provision of service will be maintained by giving our partners and participants complete transparency and a say in how we develop and grow.

Accountability in terms of user behaviour is assisted by CM’s technology but led by Community Coordinators – who are required to validate participants in person – and peer to peer.

For this initiative to succeed, it is critical that everyone is invested in maintaining its values and goals.

Because shared ownership that gives people equal ability to do something – to be seen, heard, access resources and to govern – drives agency and competition for doing better peer to peer. Individual agency fuels power to the whole. Fire burns within each of us. How we interact with that fire will be our future or demise.