The Fund in Plain Language
The plain-language companion to the Unified Fund (GT-4). The General Terms promise every member the right to understand how the network’s money works without reading the math (GT-4.6); this is that explanation. It describes the shape the network is committing to. The exact figures — the size of the network’s slice, how often things settle, how much room each place has — are set and revised by Board resolution in the Association’s parameter register (the Living Governance Resolutions). The shape below does not change with them.
For the precise rules, see the General Terms and Conditions (GT-4).
One picture
Think of each place in the network — a hub, a project, a venture — as a small living organism with its own metabolism. It earns, it spends, it keeps itself well. A healthy one heals its own scrapes first, shares what it does not need with the others, and is carried by the rest when it genuinely cannot stand on its own. The whole network is these organisms sharing one bloodstream — a single shared account — while each keeps its own life. (This is the same thing the Overview and the Introduction call each place’s envelope inside the one shared account — pictured here as a living body, because that is closer to how it behaves.)
That is the entire idea. Everything below is just that picture, made precise.
Where the money goes, in order
When a place takes in money, it moves through the same five steps everywhere in the network — always in this order:
- A small slice goes to the network. Off the top of any earnings, a modest contribution funds the shared things no single place pays for (the Network Regeneration Contribution).
- The place covers its own costs. Upkeep, insurance, and the real cost of the people who keep it running are met first, before anything is spent freely.
- Those who tend it direct what is left. The people actively caring for the place decide how to use its spare money, within its purpose and a ceiling — funding what the place needs next.
- Lasting surplus rises to the commons. What a place keeps not needing, season after season, flows up to a shared pool held by the Elder Council. It does not pile up privately.
- A place that falls genuinely short is caught. If a place cannot cover its own costs for real and sustained reasons, that same shared pool carries it — so no place fails for lack of cover alone.
(How big the slice is, how often this settles, and how much room a place has before surplus overflows or shortfall is caught are Board-set parameters in the Association’s parameter register, LGR-5.)
A place in a lean stretch is not punished: its free spending simply narrows in proportion to the gap, and the gap is worked off gently over time rather than clawed back all at once. Overspending heals itself this way and never becomes a network matter; only a real, structural shortfall reaches the common pool.
Two refinements to the order
- If you earned it on a borrowed place, a slice goes back to that place too. Just as a slice goes to the network (step 1), when money is made using a hub, vehicle, or tool that someone lent to the network at cost, a matching slice returns to that place. Monetising a gift should rebuild the gift, not drain it. It is the same idea as the network slice, simply pointed at the asset — the Asset Regeneration Contribution.
- A place saves toward its own renewal. Between covering its costs (step 2) and free spending (step 3), a place sets aside a protected line toward replacing itself when it wears out — and, where the owner is willing, toward buying itself outright. The people who tend it cannot spend this line on anything else; it only grows toward renewal. Over time, this is how a borrowed place can become a place the network owns (see “From borrowed to owned” below).
The network is a place too
The network itself is one of these organisms. The Board tends it the way a steward tends a hub — covering the shared costs (the platform, insurance, administration), directing what is left to network-wide needs and to catching struggling places, under the same rules and the same one-member-one-vote governance. And it runs the same five steps, which means it cannot hoard: if the network ever takes in more than it needs, the surplus does not pile up at the centre — it overflows to the common pool like anyone else’s. The centre is held to the same metabolism as every place it serves.
From borrowed to owned: complete commons
Most places start lent to the network — used in common, but still privately owned, and the owner can ask for them back. The savings line above is the bridge to something sturdier: as a place sets aside toward its own renewal, it can accumulate enough to buy itself into the commons at a fair, pre-agreed price, or an owner can simply give it. Once the network owns a place, it can never be sold back out of the commons — by law it can only ever pass to another mission entity. A place that began as a generous loan becomes, in time, permanent shared ground.
The two things “contribution” decides
This is the part most people tangle, so here it is plainly. Your contribution is read in two different ways for two different purposes — and neither one is ever a vote.
| What you can get (access) | What you can direct (allocation say) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads | Your whole-life giving, across every role and hub | Your recent giving to this particular place |
| Scope | Portable — it travels with you everywhere | Local — only where you actually tend |
| Decides | Your priority and your price for the network’s resources — more given, more freely received, up to free | Your share of how this place’s spare money is directed |
| Is it power? | No — it is access, never a vote | No — it is administration of delegated money, never a vote |
In the Association it is always one member, one vote. Contribution changes what you can receive and what spending you help direct — never your voice in governance.
The common reservoir: insurance, not charity
The shared pool the healthy feed and the struggling draw from is mutual insurance — a metaphor: solidarity inside one association, not an insurance product, and never a promise to anyone outside it (GT-4.8(d)). Feeding it in good seasons is, in effect, paying the premium on the cover that catches you in hard ones. So it rewards giving without making it a sacrifice:
- first call on the pool’s help when you need it;
- a longer leash — a place that proves steady earns more room to run itself;
- recognition — your generosity is recorded in your Network Passport and counts toward your standing (and, in time, Eldership).
What it never buys: a vote, a say over the commons’ spending, or personal income. Generosity is seen and remembered — never turned into power or profit.
And the pool is answerable in both directions: every allocation made from it is posted to the network when it happens, and a small group of members or stewards can question any of them — and must receive a public answer within thirty days.
The promises that never bend
However the figures are finally set, the Fund is bound by a handful of plain guarantees that no version of the model may suspend:
- Need first — real operating needs are met before any free spending.
- Subsidiarity — within its purpose and ceiling, the place decides; no one upstream pre-approves its in-scope spending.
- Two-part purpose — every allocation serves both the place’s own mission and the wider regeneration.
- No personal income — no one allocates money to their own benefit; no flow is a profit payout.
- Mutual aid — a place in genuine shortfall is supported; a place in lasting surplus contributes.
- The floor holds — the basic access guarantees are never reduced by any version of the model.
- Transparency — every flow is recorded and reported in the annual bilancio sociale.
The tunable figures
Set and revised by Board resolution in the Association’s parameter register (LGR-5) rather than here:
- the size of the network’s slice (a uniform rate, within a narrow band);
- how often the cycle settles;
- how much room a place has to run itself before surplus overflows upward or shortfall is caught;
- exactly how each place measures the contributions that set local allocation say.
The shape on this page is what the network is committing to. These figures tune it; they do not redraw it.
Plain-language companion to GT-4. Not a legal instrument — the binding text is in the General Terms and Conditions and the Association’s governance resolutions.