About the Commons Communities Project

I'm Michael Jensen, and the Commons Communities project is my brainchild. I've been doing Internet stuff for 35+ years (yes, even before the Web existed), mostly in the nonprofit scholarly publishing world. In the Fall of 2022, I was able to "retire," so I could build projects that were unlikely to be built otherwise: low-profit or no-profit digital projects, that might be useful for our world.

And alas, our world is burning. As I wrote recently in an essay: we each have a responsibility to do whatever we can, to add a few drops to the buckets available to hurl against the climate inferno that human society has created. We each must bring our peculiar talents to bear on the problem. Commons Communities is my implementation of that principle.

I grew up in bucolic Bloomington, Indiana and later went to university there; much of early adulthood I was in Lincoln, Nebraska. And we raised four teenagers in the Baltimore-Washington Metro area. Finally, for most of the last fifteen years, I've lived in delightful rural Nova Scotia, including nearly a decade on a gorgeous sustainable farm on a long gravel road, thirty minutes' drive from the nearest grocery store. In short, I've learned a lot about the many differences between city/town living, and rural living.

Rural = Different Communities, Different Transit, Different Rhythms
I won't wax rhapsodic about rural living -- better writers than I have done that, and it's all true. But there are also drawbacks to low population density. Personal cars are essential: there are virtually no taxi services, nor Ubers, nor Lyfts, nor scheduled bus routes or trains or trams. And it's a long way to anywhere. We each pretty much have to have a car. And we drive everywhere. Rural folks drive far more, over longer distances, than do urban folks.*

In the last few decades, we in country towns have also lost most of our media, as small regional newspapers struggled and died, taking with them a lifeline of information, interconnections, and shared experience within a small community. And we have seen the decline of other hyper-local institutions (churches in particular) that helped spur shared activities, and a shared set of goals.

Originally, the project was called Rural Carpool, focused only on helping a small region of a dozen small towns address their "Rural Transit Problem," by providing tools to coordinate carpools to larger towns. It was well received, but was intrinsically limited. It became clear to me that to have a real impact, the project had to get both smaller and broader. We needed to focus on a "microregion" (a small town or village, and its nearby hamlets); we also broadened the toolset offered, to address other hyperlocal needs. We evolved into the Commons Community platform.

We integrated Member Communications, Classified/Want Ads, local Events and Calendars, and a local Business directory, along with the local Carpool options, creating a hyperlocal online infrastructure for self-organization by members of a small community -- to save money, time, and CO2.

Enabling Technology
We are engineering this system so that we could (fairly) easily roll out dozens of locally-named, locally-designed, and locally-maintained Commons Communities, if there was local commitment. It requires a local leader or two, with some online savvy, to work with us to set up our local Commons Community information infrastructure, gather some like-minded folks as the Advisory Board, promote the Commons locally, and then invest a few hours a week in maintenance and promotion and outreach -- in order to provide their community with a Commons site tailored to their specific needs. This Manager role is designed to be a sustainable, freelance, paid, very part-time job, for a committed community member, or a small local group or committee.

And it's free? How will you survive financially?
By its nature and design, the Commons Community system cannot be a gigantic moneymaker for a bunch of stockholders, no matter how many Commons Communities get created. No venture capitalist would underwrite it, nor do I want them to. The system doesn't require (or even accept) money directly from its Member users. Carpooled Trip costs are shared equally and privately between the Riders and the Driver. Classifieds do not cost Members anything. No businesses are charged for being in the Commons Business Directory. All coordination is self-directed and self-organized. So how does a Commons survive financially?

A Commons Community is a niche service that works only as a cooperative environment. We hope to have the part-time pay of each local Manager (and a small percentage of our own salaries) funded by a mixture of local sponsorships, local advertising, and local foundation or county support. We estimate a total of $35,000/year cost to a community for its Manager, and the software subscription, and a local nonprofit's overhead to oversee the finances. It's not a business model that prioritizes moneymaking, or "enhanced shareholder value," but should sustain both growth and continued improvement. The appropriate mix of support will depend upon the region, its community character, and its own governance and funding systems -- much can be done with volunteers, or small groups. We are not locked into any single sustainability model.

Each Commons Community has its own database and website domain, and a common software infrastructure. We lean toward keeping control local whenever possible. Each Commons will have its own flavors of internal governance and self-definition. Our decentralized model is designed to do one complicated but simple thing: to help local folks purposefully connect, and then let the humans work out the details of their own cooperation.

Finally:
For me, this decentralized, distributed model of self-organization and shared support means that the Commons Communities can both grow and be sustainable, without charging the actual Members, without requiring venture capitalists, and without being driven by profit maximization. The Commons can just do its job, of helping people self-organize to improve their lives, and reduce their impact on the ecosystem.

We shall see where the Commons Community project goes, and whether we can get Commons Communities popping up like beneficial weeds, all over North America, saving CO2 and strengthening rural communities. To me, this isn't a business, but rather a personal mission, and I'll keep improving the system as we get feedback. If we do things right, I might be able to a) help make rural living more efficient for Members, b) save a lot of people a lot of money, and c) save a LOT of CO2 and other pollutants.

I should have "retired" earlier!

--Michael