Fund collective work

Shared work needs shared resources. These tools help a community raise and manage money for collective work — keeping it transparent, and keeping the core a commons rather than a product. For the bigger picture of how commons-based projects get funded, see Funding the commons.

Raise money together

• Goteo — a crowdfunding platform built specifically for the commons and community-oriented projects, which can add institutional match-funding on top of community donations.
• Open Collective — transparent collective finances: every contribution and expense is public, and a “fiscal host” handles the legal entity and banking, so a group without its own legal structure can still receive and spend money openly.

Keep it going

• Liberapay — recurring donations to people and projects, run as a non-profit with no cut taken; good for sustaining ongoing work rather than one-off campaigns.

Decide together how to spend it

• CoBudget — lets a community allocate a shared pot of money collaboratively: members propose ideas, see the budget, and decide together where it goes. Pairs naturally with participatory budgeting.

Own it together

• Community land trusts (CLTs) — a non-profit holds land in trust for lasting community benefit, taking it permanently out of the speculative market so housing or farmland stays affordable and locally governed. A practical form of relational property.
• Community-supported agriculture (CSA) — members pay a local farm up front for a season’s share, sharing the risk and keeping the farm viable: patronage and a shared stake instead of pure market exchange.

Two patterns worth knowing as you grow — capped returns (investors earn up to a ceiling, then the venture reinvests all surplus in its mission) and open value accounting (tracking and rewarding everyone who contributes, not just founders) — are explained in Funding the commons.

More tools will be added here over time. Know one that belongs? Use the “Edit page” link below.