Mission

The Citizens Media’s^® mission is to catalyse the transition to an economic paradigm that works in harmony with the interconnected world in which we live. This transition calls for systems that bring equal opportunity for people and their communities to exchange in ways that are open, sustainable and authentic. They give sovereignty to communities, enabling them to do things in ways that serve unique identity and culture.

Such systems are already at play, including those initiated through grassrootseconomics.org. Abundance is achieved through peer to peer reciprocity and inclusive governance. In other words – unlike today’s economy where one person’s gain is another person’s loss and often to the planet too – the new economy causes people to work together such that one person’s gain benefits the whole. Competition is still at play but in a way where people help each other to excel, rather than being in envy of another for being “better”.

“Our core values are equal opportunity, community and authenticity.” – Caroline Smalley, Cofounder

Inclusive governance means people have a voice that actively shapes how things are done. Partnered with open ways of doing business – where advertising becomes obsolete – this voice will be an authentic expression of who they are, what they need and what they desire humanity to be.

These new systems presently work in parallel with today’s centralised economy, but – because of the unpredictable powerplay that’s intrinsic with fiat based finance, and the fact that the old ways of working are harming our planet and leave most people and communities underserved – we believe they have the potential to replace it entirely.

What Makes CM Unique?

The Citizens Media^® provides an inclusive and highly scalable strategy that gives people, their communities, nonprofits and philanthropists everywhere the ability to come onboard with minimal loss to admin and bureaucracy. It provides an open way of sharing and connecting what we learn along the way. It gives community members agency, serving both individual and critical community needs, formalising activities around a framework that maintains accountability peer to peer. Transference of fiat finance into non-fiat exchange – as enabled through CM Coins™ – works to increase economic equality. It allows communities to self-determine what their economy will look like and how it will work. CM Coins™ cannot be directly exchanged for fiat, but increase their impact through circulation within a community. This discourages corruption, encouraging participants to connect and uplift each other‘s skills from within. Giving finance through CM can achieve so much more than traditional charity because its impact keeps moving, creating and shaping resilient economies that are owned by the people they serve.

Start Local and Listen Up

Funds given through CM go to developing sustainable community economies, where demand and supply chains “trickle-up” in accordance to the needs of the people who live there. Increasing the market share of community based enterprise decreases the dependency of products manufactured elsewhere. This increases sustainable use of the world's resources. It reduces the power of corporate enterprise and the vulnerability of citizens from political fallout.

The circulation and release of CM Coins™ corresponds to economic activity enabled through funds. This makes it an excellent tool for measuring meaningful, short and long term impact of funds. The way it works differs from fiat based currencies, whose release/inflation and “value” is based on speculation, gamifying it by making it susceptible to ad-influenced perception and political volatility. Inequality between nations greatly impacts currency values too.

Information and conversations – social media – shared through the-cm.com will provide critical insight both in developing local solutions and in producing requests for proposals (RFP’s) aimed at overcoming common challenges that can’t be met locally. Content on the-cm.com will help identify where needs, challenges and solutions intersect.

To learn more, see Impact & Data Analysis and Community Exchange (downloadable PDFs).

“In a truly free trade economy, there’s no need for tariffs at all.” – Caroline Smalley, CEO and cofounder

Key Benefits

Click on the topics in the diagram below:

Community Members using the-cm.com, learn and teach each other as they go. The tools and community based activities they engage with provide opportunity to develop business skills and identify workable demand and supply chains. As the number of local businesses supported increases, so will the passing on of operational skills. Community Members gain insight by connecting together where they live, and through online conversations with people and communities elsewhere.

Activity mobilisation is initiated and supported by Community Coordinators – nonprofits and cooperatives – whose work includes ensuring inclusivity, validating participation and distributing funds.

Learn More

To get funding for a business, participants must:

Create a Business Page – an overview about what they do, why and how. They must effectively communicate why they are an important contributor to the community.
Post Funding Opportunity/s – a brief and line item budget about what the funding is for, desired outcomes, and the returns they promise to pay forward to their community.

Funders will be drawn to businesses who they believe are innovative, sustainable, most needed by the community and able to make the best use of funds. They will identify this through:

The circulation of CM Coins™ – as activity increases, the circulation of coins will indicate which businesses are creating the most economic activity from funds received.
The story behind the business – This story will in part be revealed through comments and open sharing of people outside their community who may have ideas to share, and are interested in how they are doing things and why. More importantly, it will come from community members who live there so they can speak directly to its cause. They will be able to answer funder questions too.

This means that for the success of businesses to get funds through CM, they will need to listen and respond to business insight within and beyond their community. They will need to connect and engage with their neighbours and friends. As the community meets together in this way – and businesses receiving CM Coins™ for their products look for ways to spend them – they will identify what other businesses and products the community needs and how they can help each other succeed.

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

Conclusion

Together we will pave the way for society to discover alternative means to serve humanities needs. Participants will make the system theirs. This system is an opportunity for humanity to rise up and stake its path. It will make sustainable use of the world‘s resources, rather than letting “business as usual” bleed it dry – business drenched in political argument that instigates war as well as climatic and environmental catastrophe. It doesn’t have to be that way. Get onboard and be a part of where it goes.

For more key benefits of transitioning economics through CM, see Shifts In Transition.

For more information on how CM works, see: Method – explains how the business model works and who the players are, and; Process – describes how members of a community engage.

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