Community Enterprise Framework
The pressures are real
Rising needs, eroding trust in institutions, deepening polarization, calls for reconciliation, acceleration of artificial intelligence. These forces are compounding, driving wealth concentration and amplifying community challenges.
We need to go beyond rhetoric about a broken system to a critical and informed understanding of how a real systemic alternative might actually work.
— Gar Alperovitz —
First Principles
To build a real alternative, we returned to first principles thinking. We stripped away the assumptions of the status quo to examine the fundamental truths of psychology, organizational design, governance, and community systems. What we found was a singular, pervasive geometry that defines our world.
For centuries, our systems have been built on the pyramid. This hierarchical pattern is fractal – repeating at every scale. We see it in top-down management structures, in the steep concentration of wealth, and in political systems that centralize power.
This fractal pattern is not just external; it lives within our psyche. It manifests as a suppression of our humanity – prioritizing linear rationality while silencing our emotions, intuition, and embodied experience.
We have built incredible technologies that can reshape the world, yet our internal operating system has not kept pace with the tools we have created.
Okanagan Community Proposal
Community Enterprise Framework
Today’s complex challenges require a full systems approach – one that amplifies the incredible work already being done across community while creating new capacity for scale and transformative impact.
We offer the Community Enterprise Framework (CEF) as a practical pathway to re-balance our local economy. It combines the stewardship of a not-for-profit with the resilience of for-profit business models, to keep prosperity circulating within community. While rooted in the Okanagan, this model is designed to replicate and scale to regions across the country.
The Framework consists of three interconnected elements:
NOTE: Circularity.One operates as a federal Not-For-Profit without charity status. This allows us to operate across the full economic spectrum without the constraints of charitable purposes, while collaborating with existing charitable partners.
Community Is The Relational Heart Of The System
Central to the Community Enterprise Framework is a modern “town square,” with circle principles, where diverse perspectives converge to spark collective intelligence. This provides a dynamic space for key organizations and community members to gather, share knowledge, and incubate ideas. Here community voices directly shape critical initiatives in housing, food security, and environmental health.
COMMUNITY ENTERPRISE FRAMEWORK
A Unifying Framework for Community Ownership
Generational Opportunity To Transform Our Economy
1. Community Acquisition
Business is the lifeblood of community, and entrepreneurs are its builders. They take risks, drive innovation, and pour years of life into creating value. But as we approach a historic demographic shift – where 75% of Canadian business owners will retire in the next decade – we face a critical $2 Trillion transition of assets.
Currently, Private Equity is highly organized to acquire these prime assets, consolidating wealth and moving decision-making to distant urban centers. This accelerates wealth inequality, where the top 5% of Canadian families already own 43% of the nation’s wealth.
Meanwhile, our vital non-profit sector faces a structural ceiling. Despite doing the heavy lifting of community care, they often operate in silos without the capital to compete at this commercial scale. Yet, the resources exist: Canadian foundations hold over $135 billion in assets – capital that can be unlocked to power community economic resiliency.
HARNESSING THE POWER OF BUSINESS
Community Entrepreneurship through Acquisition (ETA) flips the traditional startup script. Instead of building a company from scratch, we acquire established and profitable businesses with community-aligned capital.
Building The Operating System For What Comes Next
2. SHARED SERVICES AND VENTURE BUILDER
To compete with major corporations, community enterprises need more than just passion—they need infrastructure. Small businesses often struggle with the “business of business”—legal, accounting, HR, and IT. Without support, they hit a growth ceiling or burn out.
We are building the commercial engine to solve this. By housing Shared Business Services in a central Hold Co, we provide our portfolio of ventures with the sophistication of a large corporation at a fraction of the cost. This isn’t just about saving money; it’s about creating the structural capacity to scale local solutions into regional systems.
The Venture Builder acts as our engine room. We incubate new solutions to regional challenges—such as our Community Solar Initiative—and guide the professional “Exit to Community” process, structuring deals to transition private assets into the portfolio.
A COORDINATED ECOSYSTEM
We move beyond isolated businesses to create a unified force. By centralizing the complexity of scaling, we allow our community ventures to focus on what matters.
Designing For Trust And Agency
3. GOVERNANCE & INVESTMENT STRUCTURE
We integrate circle and dynamic governance principles to build a “fractal of wholeness,” repeating collaborative patterns at every level of the organization. This responsive architecture enables distributed decision-making aligned with a shared North Star, building agency at scale.
DUAL Governance PILLARS: Balancing Mission with Economics
We have separated the relational governance from the economic management to ensure neither overpowers the other.
RESILIENT SHARED WEALTH: Capital that Serves Community
Our investment structure reflects our governance: it is designed to protect the mission while attracting diverse forms of capital.
How it comes together
A unifying framework for Community Ownership
Phased Development Plan
The Power of Collaborative Community
Together, we have the resources and expertise to build systems for resilient community wealth and wellbeing.
The design lab is a collaborative process to build infrastructure and transition local businesses into community ownership as a foundation for systemic transformation.
Design Lab Process:
- Convene key community partners into multi-week design lab.
- Co-design hybrid financial/legal structures.
- Develop investment, philanthropic, and blended capital pathways.
Outcomes:
- Develop pipeline of acquisition targets.
- Comprehensive community acquisition roadmap.
- Pathway for training community entrepreneurs.
In collaboration with key stakeholders we finalize the framework and operationalize.
Actions:
- Execute 1-3 first acquisitions using the roadmap.
- Secure blended investment and guide transitions.
Outcomes:
- Stabilize and grow ventures as community-owned ventures focused on job retention and shared returns.
- Build shared infrastructure and expand the portfolio
Community capacity really starts to build momentum. Collectively we have capacity to address larger systemic challenges.
- Deploy centralized Shared Services & AI tools for efficiency and smart governance.
- Grow & scale ventures to address housing, food, health, and energy challenges.
- Reinvest locally for intergenerational prosperity and land stewardship.
- Convene next community design lab focus on local challenges.
Invitation To Co-Create
Building The Future Of Community Wealth & Wellbeing
Whether you’re here to build, invest, create, or connect, your role matters. Let’s grow lasting community wealth that builds a flourishing future. This includes key organizations and groups – technology accelerators, economic development, municipalities, academia, First Nations, non-profits, and philanthropic foundations. And includes everyday community members. Join us to build a flourishing future.
Who we are
Circularity.One emerged in Kelowna, BC, from a deep inquiry into root causes of our shared challenges. The foundation of our work – the Community Enterprise Framework – was co-created during a community design lab in 2020.
Our experienced team is committed to going beyond symptoms to design resilient systems for community wealth. We believe circular practices and structures hold the key to unlocking individual and collective potential.
