Hi D:Food-ers / GOATs —
We’re just checking in to share an update on the work of the Community of Organizations (CoO) — a cross-organizational collaboration that grew out of last year’s DWeb Camp, and that some of you may have known as ExCue, Enterprise, or the Community of Companies, depending on when you last connected with us. This work has been the fruit of ongoing discussions that began at DWeb and evolved through gatherings at Pie Ranch, GOAT, and UBC. We’re grateful to everyone who has connected with and inspired us along the way.
At its core, CoO is a collaborative search for better ways to fund and sustain open-source, public-good agricultural technology. Our goal is to move beyond fragile grant cycles and short-term projects, to build self-sustaining and scalable companies and organizations that succeed by creating value for the farming communities we serve, rather than extracting value from them.
As the report details, we’re designing CoO as a ‘bottom-up’ confederation, where each member company or organization remains independent but benefits from shared talent pools, tech stacks, standards, fundraising strategies, and referral networks.
This is all still a work in progress, but we’ve now crystallized our approach to the point where we have created clearly defined foundations for collaboration in the shape of a mission and values statement, a definitions of success statement, an MOU, SOPs, and a co-designed strategic roadmap. We’ve included links to these foundation documents in the attached report, which also provides a transparent account of the CoO project budget and expenses, as part of our ongoing commitment to operating in a spirit of openness and transparency.
As we move forward, we’re experimenting with cooperative funding models, shared services frameworks, and hybrid fundraising approaches that blend nonprofit and for-profit approaches — all designed to build durable, community-owned ag tech infrastructure. Additionally, with thanks to the 11th Hour Project, our first integration pilot launches this month, connecting LiteFarm, Open Food Network, and Market Organic via open standards-based APIs — testing interoperability, cross-platform sales, claims verification, and cooperative tech development in the field.
Full roadmap + context here: Community of Organizations - Progress & Roadmap_2025-06-13.pdf
Reflections, feedback, and critiques are welcome! Please DM if you want to connect to learn more, or are interested in joining the community.
Lastly, special thanks go out to Samuel Oslund and the 11th Hour Project for the funding support and event convening that made this work possible!