4.7 KiB
The Cosmolocal Foundation
Funding Overview for Aligned Philanthropists
"What is heavy should be local, and what is light should be global and shared."
Who We Are
The Cosmolocal Foundation is the operational wing of the P2P Foundation, the world's most comprehensive knowledge commons on peer production and commons governance. Founded by Michel Bauwens — who has spent two decades researching, documenting, and advising on commons-based economic transitions across four continents — the Foundation builds coordination infrastructure connecting locally rooted regenerative projects into a global network.
We are a small, self-organizing team that practices what we preach: open-source tools, transparent governance, and commons-aligned operations throughout.
The Gap We Fill
Regenerative communities are everywhere — eco-villages, cooperatives, transition towns, community land trusts, mutual aid networks. But they remain fragmented, underfunded, and disconnected from each other.
Values-aligned funders want to support systemic transformation, but find few vehicles operating at the right level. Project-level grants create dependency. Extractive impact investments contradict the mission. What's missing is commons infrastructure — the shared coordination layer that makes the whole ecosystem more than the sum of its parts.
The cosmolocal principle provides the design logic: keep production, governance, and stewardship local. Share knowledge, patterns, and tools globally. The Foundation builds the infrastructure to make this real.
What We Do
Open Knowledge Commons — Curated repository of regenerative production methods, governance models, and circular economy blueprints drawn from the P2P Foundation's 20-year archive.
Cosmolocal Coordination — A global network connecting locally rooted projects to learn from each other and coordinate across bioregions. Mycelial infrastructure that strengthens every node it touches.
Commons-Compatible Finance — The Cosmolocal Financing Facility channels capital into community-level projects through commitment pooling — communities issue vouchers backed by real goods and services, creating productive credit circuits without extractive debt.
Participatory Governance — Transparent, community-led decision-making combining cooperative governance traditions with conviction voting, quadratic funding, and DAO-based resource allocation.
Why Teal Funders
If you resonate with Laloux's evolutionary organizations, this will feel familiar:
- Self-management: We build infrastructure for distributed autonomy, not top-down coordination
- Wholeness: We refuse false separations between economy and ecology, local and global, productive and care work
- Evolutionary purpose: Strategy emerges from sensing what the ecosystem needs, not rigid planning
This is a living system asking you to nourish the soil from which many programs grow.
The Ask: $10,000/Month
| Allocation | Monthly | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Core Team | $6,000 | Stipends for 3-4 team members (ops, tech, comms, community) |
| Infrastructure | $1,500 | Self-hosted servers, CRM, automation, email |
| Pilot Seed Funding | $1,500 | Direct support for partner community pilots |
| Travel & Convenings | $1,000 | In-person gatherings and partner visits |
No executive salaries, no office, no consultants, no overhead that doesn't serve the mission. We seek 6-12 month commitments with full transparency and quarterly impact reports.
What You Get
- Full financial transparency on every dollar
- Quarterly impact reports
- Optional governance participation in our advisory circle
- Direct access to the P2P Foundation's global network
- Your name associated with foundational commons infrastructure (or anonymity — your choice)
- Potential tax advantages (consult your advisor)
Team & Network
Michel Bauwens — Founder of P2P Foundation. Led the Ghent Commons Transition Plan. Advisor to Ecuador and the Vatican on commons policy. Two decades of research and global network.
Jeff Emmett — Technology & operations. Maintains the Foundation's self-hosted infrastructure and designs the Cosmo-Local Credit protocol. Background in token engineering and Commons Stack.
Bryan — Editorial and community communications. Newsletter, publishing, and stakeholder engagement.
Partners: Grassroots Economics (commitment pooling), Commons Stack (conviction voting), GAIA Commons Trust (legal infrastructure), Crypto Commons Gathering (movement network).
Contact: hello@cosmolocal.world | cosmolocal.world | docs.cosmolocal.world