Services for digital autonomy

We’re not building from scratch — the alternatives already exist; they just need the resourcing to reach more communities. Right now we focus on three areas: replacing “free” hyperscaler services (Google, Microsoft, Meta) with open-source, community-governed collaboration tools; helping communities build and govern their own social spaces on the fediverse — Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, Matrix — free from surveillance, shadow-banning and algorithmic manipulation; and supporting the specific, unglamorous tools that keep organisers running, like Foodsoft, the open-source food-buying platform used by co-ops across Europe but chronically under-resourced.

These aren’t slick platforms built for growth metrics. They’re the everyday infrastructure — communication, file sharing, project management, food buying, mutual aid — that lets cooperatives, buying groups and communities run themselves, on their own terms.

Our funding model is deliberately bottom-up and runs in stages. It starts with the transition community — member organisations and individuals pooling time and resources to support each other’s shift to digital autonomy. From within that community, local Funding Circles form to seed and validate the projects that matter most.

Validated projects then go to public crowdfunding, on platforms like Goteo, where public and private institutional funders match what the crowd gives — multiplying the impact of grassroots solidarity rather than replacing it.