GROUNDWORK in nine slides

Communities know what they want to own. They have no place to become one.

The block, the newspaper, the clinic, the fibre line. Capital is not the bottleneck. There is no public surface on which a community can become a legible institution before money arrives.

Legibility before fundraising.

Crowdfunders move money. They do not produce institutions that outlive their founders. The missing layer is structural: who decides, who can override whom, who can be recalled — before the first dollar moves.

A five-stage legitimacy ladder, visible on every initiative.

Unverified → Identity verified → Governance disclosed → Governance reviewed → Eligible. Each step requires public artefacts, not marketing copy.

Structured fields. No free-text 'community-first'.

Anti-theater by design.

Free-text 'about us' is the loophole through which founder-controlled entities call themselves cooperatives. GROUNDWORK replaces it with structured fields, vote-binding disclosure, and a public power map.

Friction proportional to authority.

Pseudonyms can pledge. Lightweight verification can organise. Strong verification is required to hold binding governance authority. The verification ladder mirrors the legitimacy ladder.

Drift is visible by construction.

Every amendment writes a permanent diff. Consequential governance changes queue in a public delay window. Institutional drift becomes contestable while it can still be reversed.

The platform is governed under its own rules.

GROUNDWORK is a member cooperative. Stewardship, review, and appeals are public roles on the public record. The platform's governance map sits at the same URL pattern as any initiative's.

/platform-governance

Become a co-owner.

One member, one vote. $20/year. Surplus returned to members or reinvested by member vote. No founder shares, no preferred stock, no investor veto.

Register your institution.

Disclose governance once, on a public surface that is legible at five seconds, one minute, five minutes, and depth. Then ask for what you need — under your own legal structure.