Ways to work together

An engine

The jobs board answers one question: how does a single capability get funded, built, and given to everyone? That loop works, and it stays. But a community does not run on one transaction type. A system with exactly one way to participate is a program. Real economies are plural: some work is one-and-done, some work is a service that must show up every Tuesday, some work is a business five neighbors run for twenty years.

So the system must hold many models of working together — under one constant charter. The charter never moves: what the community funds stays the community's, nobody's data is the product, the books stay open, the middle stays thin. Above that floor, people choose the arrangement that fits the work. In Carmen's Mission notebook the principle is already there, in two lines that belong together:

The family of models the engine starts with answers the same four questions differently: who forms it, where the money enters, who keeps what, and what the commons receives.

The two circles — July 2024

Design examples: The notebook’s 10% administration fee and illustrated profit split are working models. Final fees, ownership rights, the definition of distributable profit, and exit terms would be established in the applicable agreements.

Redrawn from the Funding Models notebook, page 8. One circle is the venture's profit; one circle is the local node's ownership. The relationship between them is the whole philosophy.

The first circle says the upside of a venture belongs substantially to the people doing the work, by a standing formula, re-approved every year in the open. Nobody grants it at their discretion. The second circle says the local operation is owned entirely, one hundred percent, by the people who run it. She wrote the rule in her margin: not ownership. The middle stays thin on purpose.

And underneath both, the small drawing that grounds them: revenue minus expenses equals profit. Salaries live inside expenses — which means people are paid to do the work before "profit" exists at all. The pool is the shared upside on top of a fair wage. That is what "so they can afford to live" means in practice: the floor is salary at posted fair-market rates; the formula promises that a good year belongs to the people who made it good.

The pool, as she drew it

Redrawn from page 9 — the same nine slices, the same margin notes. This is one template: every crew publishes its own version of this pie before its first dollar moves.

Three of her margin notes carry more design than most equity plans. They are what makes this non-extractive:

1. "Meet reserve first." Before anyone shares a good month, the venture funds its cushion. Distributions begin only after that reserve is met, so one bad season does not close a service people depend on.
2. "CEO paid outside pool." Whoever leads is paid a posted salary like everyone else. The person who administers the pool takes no share of it.
3. "Only while employed." A share in the pool attaches to doing the work: salary, bonus, retirement matching, profit share, all of it, while you contribute. Stop working, and the share returns to the people still working. Nobody accumulates a permanent claim on other people's future labor. Shares attach to work, which makes this the opposite of an absentee-shareholder economy.

The percentages themselves are hers from July 2024, a first sketch of one company's pool, C-suite roles weighted while a venture is young and judgment-heavy. Another crew's pie will look completely different: five equal slices, or weighted by hours logged, or seasonal. The system requires only that a split exist, published, before the first dollar moves, and a sheet, as her last line on the page says, "to see what the company looks like as it grows."

A venture, end to end

The mechanics, thought through: how a group of contributors goes from an idea to a shared living. Drawn from her "funding the work" flow (page 6), the funding-roles page (page 7), and the two circles.

Walk it concretely. Five people decide their town needs a senior-care coordination service: a trained Host, a bilingual builder, a retired nurse, a community organizer, a bookkeeper. They form. The forms, steps, and incorporation help cost nothing but the filing fee, because "expand who can raise capital" starts with paperwork not being a moat. They publish their split, maybe nothing like the July 2024 pie: five equal shares, a slice for the high-school apprentice, reserve target on the first page. They assemble a season of funding. This is where scale matters: a single funded job pays one builder for one deliverable, but pooled funding at a larger scale is what makes collaboration itself affordable, six months of runway so five people can work together properly. Without that runway they moonlight alone. Neighbors fund fractions; a sponsor who wants the capability to exist funds half; a grant covers the accessibility work. Funders purchase, in her notebook's words, a virtual good: recognition, funder events, a membership tier, a community of interest. They buy belonging. Ownership is not for sale.

They build and serve. The coordination toolkit they create (the care-calendar templates, the intake flows, the Spanish-first guides) goes to the commons, free forever, used next year by a crew in another county they will never meet. The service (showing up, configuring a family's setup, running the weekly calls, training the cousins) is charged at posted prices, because someone gives up a Tuesday morning to do it. Salaries are paid from revenue as an expense, at fair-market rates from the posted work breakdown. At season's end: reserve first, then the pool distributes by the formula everyone agreed to in the open. The crew can afford to live. The town keeps the capability either way.

The commons seam — free core, charged edges, nothing extractive

Every hybrid model lives or dies at one seam: what is free, what is charged, and whether the charged part ever creeps over the free part. Carmen's example is the solution center — some services charged, some free — and online functionality where the core function lives in the shared commons and premium value is charged at rates that drive money back into the local economy. The seam is governed by three rules, and the charter enforces them:

Notice what this seam makes possible: dignity in both directions. A family that cannot pay uses the commons fully, without a means test, because the commons is theirs — funded once, owned by all. A family that can pay buys human time and attention, and that payment becomes a neighbor's salary, a center's rent, a crew's good year. Nobody subsidizes anybody with their privacy; nobody's need becomes anybody's margin.

What funding buys at each scale

Her insight from the notebooks, generalized: the size of the pool determines the shape of collaboration it can afford.

One ladder, one charter, four sizes of togetherness. The engine must make each rung reachable from the one below it — a funded task teaches the board to trust a builder; a funded job teaches a crew they work well together; a funded season teaches a town it can keep its own wealth.

The tests any model must pass

The template library stays open — co-ops, guilds, circles, arrangements not yet invented. What is closed is the floor. Every model, present or future, passes these five tests or it does not run here.

1. The commons stays whole. Whatever the model, the core capability lands in the commons. Nobody can repossess it or fence it off again.
2. The formula precedes the money. Who gets what — split, salaries, fee, reserve target — is published before the first dollar moves, and re-approved annually in the open.
3. Reserve first, people next, in that order every season. Wages are expenses paid at fair rates; the reserve is met; then the upside is shared. No model may pay its upside by starving its wages.
4. The middle stays thin. The network takes no rent on the commons and no percentage of a place it doesn't run. Not ownership.
5. Shares attach to work. Upside belongs to present contributors — "only while employed." Money can buy recognition, belonging, and the existence of good things. Nobody can buy a permanent claim on other people's labor.

Her notebook keeps its open questions standing. So does this page: how does liability insurance work for centers? Can profit shares route to an IRA? What does the sheet look like "as the company grows"? Those are owed real answers by the working sessions — in the spirit of the line the whole engine is built under: I don't have all the answers, but maybe by listing the goals we can find the answers together.

Provenance

• Funding Models notebook, page 6 — "Funding the work + Requirements Gathering": the task/bid/contributor flow, pro bono and cash-to-fund-a-bid, the recognition loop, "surface what people need," experts + laypeople bidding.
• Page 7 — "Funding Roles": work breakdown structure, hourly rates from fair market values, fractional funding, "the Community of Funders purchases a virtual good," funder perks, franchise rules and free incorporation help, and the standing open question on liability insurance.
• Page 8 (dated July 2024) — the two circles: 50% profit-sharing pool approved annually; the 100% community-owned node with "Admin Fee 10% (Not ownership)"; "You own: real estate, your contracts, your workforce"; revenue − expenses = profit; "Define 'Profit' Clearly."
• Page 9 — the profit-sharing pool pie, redrawn slice for slice; "CEO paid outside pool"; "Meet reserve first"; total compensation "only while employed"; "create a sheet to see what company looks like as it grows."
• Mission notebook — "Contributions are collective → Compensation is Collective"; "We also have more control over the Money flowing into the system + the Money flowing out."
• Companion pages — the jobs board (the first model, live).