Method
The Citizens Media® (CM) offers a vision and strategy for people and planet resilience within a rapidly changing world. It’s made possible through a transitional business model which connects familiar business structures to create a new order where humanity can thrive.
Watch the Business Model Overview then dive into the detail through the titles below.
The Citizens Media® is a collaborative initiative. It provides the basic framework and maintains the platform, but its success is dependent on partnerships. It does not intend to replace or compete, but rather offers a solution for uniting like vision, and the skills and expertise we know are ready and able to bring our united vision to life. The impossible is possible when we take action as one. Partners we seek:
- Nonprofits and investment cooperatives experienced in community mobilisation offerings;
- Businesses and entrepreneurs with particular tech and data analysis expertise;
- Foundations looking to distribute philanthropic finance, where impact is measured and forever scales-out. Your funds will help form a global network of local prosperity.
Community Coordinators
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:
- Be seen, heard and understood;
- 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:
- Collecting and distributing funds awarded to business Funding Opportunities.
- 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).
- Verification of Community Members.
- Maintaining accountability of businesses and funding requests, which includes auditing community content and activities within the CM Coin™ Marketplace.
- 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:
- Presents the user with the message provided by their Community Coordinator, which gives them instructions about what to do next.
- 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.
- 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).
- To be promoted through CM, businesses and their Funding Opportunities must be community based and work to serve both people and the environment.
- 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.
- Community Coordinators can opt to moderate other content, such as blogs, comments and forum entries.
Why will community members want to engage?
Common responses received from members of communities we’ve asked include:
- I want to help my community to be seen and heard.
- I would love the opportunity to be a part of something that helps my community and the environment too. Things aren’t affordable and I am worried about the climate.
- Earning things I need by telling others about our local businesses in a way that helps them too is an awesome idea!
- I can’t afford (or get) a loan but without investment my business will collapse.
- Getting support, connecting and sharing with others to develop a plan and access finance, could help me to start and grow my own business.
- I do not have a bank account, which restricts my ability to get what I need.
- I want to use my voice to build connection and understanding in helping our world be a more equitable place.
- 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
Contact
The Citizens Media® gets more done with your money because we give people and their communities a means to take action and ownership of what they do.
Our strategy for ensuring funds are paid forward within a community creates shared interest in what you invest. CM’s open, collaborative business model encourages participants to deliver on promises and contribute to solutions with less duplication involved. Participants are rewarded individually but what they do benefits the whole.
Combining economic opportunity with a new paradigm for social media provides a place of learning and progress that builds connection, trust and peer to peer accountability. This energises positivity, and – combined with our strategy for activating participation through partnerships with nonprofits – creates a network effect. The net result minimizes admin costs and maximizes potential for solutions and new, forward thinking economies to take hold and scale.
Note: to learn more about how platform ownership will transition to participants, see Manage.
Impact Analysis
Our methods for analysing and measuring impact help funders to identify people and communities doing the most with what they give, and how. To learn more, see Impact & Data Analysis (downloadable PDF).
Who Gives a Buck?
Show solidarity with our values and concerns. Put your money where your tweet is by donating to community activities and/or sponsoring or investing in platform and peripheral services. The Citizens Media® seeks crowdfunders, philanthropists, sponsors and investors alike.
Note: if you’ve not seen it already, check out the Business Overview.
📹 The Citizens Media® was incorporated, developed and self funded by its cofounders as a limited liability (Ltd) business. Future revenues for our development will come from impact – or ‘angel’ – investors, sponsors and a 5% service fee added to Funding Opportunities.
Money for Funding Opportunities comes through Crowdfunds. Crowdfunds are donation based but can be sponsored to offer an investment advantage. Pledges can be targeted individually or distributed to a group of Opportunities based on available search criteria.
Larger philanthropic donations and any excess revenues generated through CM are:
- Awarded to Community Coordinators for use at their own discretion,
- Targeted as Media Facilitator Grants,
- Distributed among Funding Opportunities over a predefined period of time and criteria, or
- Assigned to Community Empowerment Fund/s.
Subject to agreement on terms integral to CM’s values and intentions, Community Coordinators, Investors, Philanthropists and Sponsors may have an active role in CM’s decision making.
To learn more about the types of finance required, see the links below.
Crowdfunders
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
- Crowdfunders will be invited to join us live to share thoughts through Impact Economy Podcasts.
- 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.
- Giving through CM could mean investing directly in your own future too. This happens through Crowdfund Sponsorships.
Philanthropists
Direct philanthropic support to Community Coordinators helps to offset their service costs.
Note: Community Coordinators can add service fees to Funding Opportunities for both:
- Supporting their services, and;
- 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:
- Award finance to Community Coordinators for use at their own discretion;
- Target finance at Media Facilitator Grants;
- Distribute finance among Funding Opportunities over a predefined period, and/or;
- 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?.
Sponsors & Angel Investors
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:
- Platform: Money you give affords CM’s ongoing maintenance and development costs.
- 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?
Why Give a Buck?
Giving through CM means investing in a sustainable, connected, community-focused future for generations to come.
📹 Promoting ethics for inclusive, economic gain that serves people and planet, The Citizens Media® – CM – provides crowdfunders, philanthropists, sponsors and investors with forward thinking opportunities to connect and contribute across culturally diverse networks throughout the world.
Money you give provides members of communities with support they need to design, develop and report on businesses that continually upcycle funds to build economies from within.
Our method for using community currency – CM Coins™ – to uplift community funds, acts like a bridge for moving finance from the current economy to a new, inclusive, trickle-up economy that isn’t susceptible to corruption akin to fiat markets. This is because the coins have no value beyond the local markets they support. Community members are motivated to pay coins forward by working together, such that funds you give incubate the development of an economy owned and developed by themselves.
Our multifaceted business model and marketing strategies, use of the network effect – enabled through partnerships and collaborative ownership – in addition to our methods for data and impact analysis gives CM plentiful opportunities to gain momentum and fast.
Investing in us gives people hope that they can turn into action as well.
Reasons to invest:
Maximizing Impact
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.
Investing In The Journey
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.
Life(line) Insurance
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.
We believe that not investing in economies capable of running independently of fiat is possibly the greatest risk we face today.
For more reasons to invest see Mission.
Think New. Think Forward.® the-cm.com
The people’s voice – the ‘Citizen’s Media’ – is our main marketeer. Community participants are the ones using the platform to express and uplift real needs and solutions, attracting finance needed to build their own economies.
“They are the shift makers and attention grabbers.”
They are the shift makers and attention grabbers – the fuel needed to turn things around. That’s why we make them virtual investors, rewarding their voice through coins they can use to purchase products promised by the businesses they help. It’s why the ownership of CM’s platform will be transferred to them too.
Other marketing strategies include our collaborative, partner-oriented business model, platform sharing tools and Funding Opportunity Grants as well as podcasts, webinars and events. Learn more by selecting on the links below:
Funding Opportunity Grants
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?
📹 First We Need Fiat
Whether we like it or not, money still talks. It’s been the focus of economic activity for centuries. Pretty much everything we need requires fiat, or a cryptocurrency directly connected to its value. Those of us who most need it are the ones with the least amount of time and resources to invest in activities that don’t promise an economic outcome. We may crave the connection that community collaboration brings, but we’re busy looking for work or seeking out a harvest for subsistent survival. Providing the incentive of guaranteed funding to local businesses who then pay funds forward by giving products they make to their local promoters, gives community members real motivation to take part.
Their actions will be excited through knowing their efforts will help themselves and their community to achieve real progress. Having agency for our own wellbeing, our peers and beyond – agency because we can see and realise what we have to give – builds our sense of belonging. It fosters a healthy, competitive appetite to liberate our contribution in the best way we can.
By igniting that passion through community based economies that can scale and take care of our environment too, abundance will flow.
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:
- 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.
- 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
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.
Impact Economy Podcasts
- Impact Economy Podcasts are based on conversations with:
- World leaders who are paving the way to a world that thrives through sustainable, inclusive economic wellbeing, and;
- Members of communities using CM to strengthen the economy – and resilience – where they live.
Impact Economy Summits
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
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.
“Shift happens when we act as One.” – Caroline Smalley, Cofounder
Think New. Think Forward.® the-cm.com
This section is a brief synopsis of CM’s tech needs. Brief in part because the world of tech is moving so fast. We have to be nimble and open, building and employing trust and progress as we go.
How non-tech aspects will evolve is discussed in Manage. The section touches on how and why blockchain technologies will likely be incorporated too.
Tech considerations in CM include:
- Media Production and Sharing Tools
- Data and Impact Analysis
- Digital Community Exchange
Current development priorities include incorporating our own video player, automated translation of content and direct messaging.
Where does AI fit in?
AI will be used as and where it can be justified, and does not compromise our values for authenticity. Social Media plays a critical role in the future of AI, and vice versa. We’re in it together. What we say and where we say it matters. CM is media for the people, by the people. When you contribute to its conversations, you contribute to resilience in the flow of good finance and technology too.
Will the code be open source?
In time it will be, but not yet. Our immediate focus is the business model and basic framework. The Citizens Media® is designed to be a collaborative initiative. Supporting participants who have the skills and know-how to help develop useful features and apps could in time be managed through Smart Contracts.
Think New. Think Forward.® the-cm.com
The Citizen’s Media® was cofounded as a Canadian, limited liability business. Its mandate is for ownership of its platform to be transferred to participants. This will happen by transferring its rights to an international investment cooperative called ‘The I3’. How and when this happens is explained below.
“CM is The Citizen’s Media®: for the people, by the people.”
The Yellow Brick Road
While existing as a limited business – subject to agreement on our mandate, values and intentions – Community Coordinators, Angel Investors, Sponsors and Philanthropists will each be invited to have an active part in CM’s decision making. Including Community Coordinators in this process will assist our ability to gather direct input from the communities and participants we’re here to serve. It’s critical that everyone’s voice can be heard.
Key decision making concerns matters such as:
- Identifying development priorities, and;
- Determining social media algorithms, including those that govern the distribution of CM Coins™.
The I3 International Investment Coop
Group membership rights of The I3 and its board will belong to Community Investment Coops that are acting as Community Coordinators.
What is the I3 International Investment Coop?
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:
- Creates investment opportunities, that maximize economic, social and environmental returns
- Provides loans, loan guarantees, grants, and other financial assistance;
- Provides assistance with the development, evaluation and assessment of business enterprises and other economic projects;
- Provides investment services to members and customers (including but not limited to project assessment, risk analysis, related administration and financial services);
- Engages in public education and community development, and encourages research and development into innovative solutions.
Why isn’t CM a coop already?
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.
When will ownership be transferred to The I3?
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.
How is accountability maintained?
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.
Why transition to participant ownership?
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.
Shifts In Transition
This is enabled through voting rights as well as invitation to CM and Community Coordinator events.
| Key Marker | Platform Ownership | |
|---|---|---|
| Private: Economy dominated by centralised, fiat based markets | Public: Economy dominated by decentralised, community based markets | |
| Community Coordination | Community Coordinators are mostly nonprofits who activate participation and work with the community in the creation of a coop for taking on Community Coordinator responsibilities themselves. | Managed by Community Investment Coops, whose membership rights are based on local participation / earning of CM Coins™ |
| Decision Making | CM Board, supported by financial and operational partners. | The I3 International Investment Coop Board, whose membership rights belong to Community Coordinators. |
| Community Exchange | Simple SMS enabled through Cyclos. | Network of community based blockchains. |
| Contract Management | Traditional | Smart Contracts |
| Communication nuance on the-cm.com | Builds understanding of community situations and stories. What they: 1. Want for their community; 2. Have to offer locally and beyond, and; 3. Need in terms of finance, ideas and resources. | Becomes more fluid and conversational as communities build confidence and agency, sharing solutions and inspiration for how they can do and be more. Global bridging of understanding elevated through podcasts and I3 Coop gatherings. |
| Community Resilience | Low - lack of agency due to the inability of individuals to access the resources and support needed to help themselves and their peers. Economics and governance are dominated by elitism driving warped, poorly-informed ideals. High dependency on external production and price volatility creating political and social unrest. | High - ability to access resources and support at the local level is building individual agency, delivering social and economic wellbeing peer to peer. Needs are increasingly met through local production and exchange. |
| Lack of awareness or ability to access available tools for self empowerment. | System supported through open sharing of solutions – leading to increased awareness and availability of affordable solutions – stimulates economic growth. | |
| Inability of individuals to meet their needs or to contribute, to be seen and realise their value, leads to corruption and mental illness. Dependency on external production makes communities highly vulnerable to political and religious differences. | Increased agency and ability to meet needs peer to peer – independently united through our interdependence – decreases vulnerability to religious and political bias, eroding mental illness and corruption in its wake. | |
| Cultural erosion potentially expedited by centralised dominance of AI. | Cultural vibrancy and sovereignty rises as people, purpose and planet support each other through decentralised social media and community-based exchange that gets AI to work alongside. | |
| Resilience is threatened as people’s identity and perception of needs and wants are distorted through dependence on corporately owned media platforms fed by advertising directed through social media algorithms. | Sharing through the-cm.com: directly connects media – for the people, by the people – with economic outcomes that ‘walk the talk’, maintaining accountability peer to peer. Resilience within and between communities increases. | |
| Economic Cost On Environment | Centralised, politically volatile markets maintain unsustainable use of resources and dependence on products with long distribution chains. Climate irregularities pushing ecosystems beyond tipping points. | Locally and sustainably produced energy combined with open sharing of ecofriendly alternatives for producing and meeting needs from within, paves the way for earth and humanity to heal itself. |
| Investment Needs | High dependency on fiat investment. | The need for fiat investment diminishes as market share of products exchangeable through CM Coins™ increases. |
| Service / Membership Fee | 5% of revenues from Funding Opportunities. | Migrates from fiat collected through Funding Opportunities to a percentage of CM Coins™ exchange. |
The future looks bright
The Citizen Media® method for releasing ownership opens potential for communities everywhere to become nodes on a global smart grid. This happens as they: 1) Manage Community Coordinator activities by creating their own coop, and; 2) Become self-sufficient, sharing products and services through their own locally powered energy solutions and digital, community-based exchange.
CM Coins™ owned by the community and its members, are free from investor obligations, which means activities it supports won’t be as impacted by what happens politically and financially elsewhere.
Think New. Think Forward.® the-cm.com
For more information on how CM works, see: Mission – communicates our values and how they are enabled within CM’s system, and; Process – describes how members of a community engage.
Quick links to downloadable PDFs
Think New. Think Forward.® the-cm.com