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Solidarity Commons Protocol

Steward Ownership

Steward ownership matters because some institutions need to lock mission, control, and benefit over time without using ordinary investor ownership. Purpose Economy describes steward ownership around two principles: self-determination and purpose-orientation.

Basic Pattern

Section titled “Basic Pattern”

The core idea is to separate control from extractive ownership. People connected to the mission hold governance authority, while profit serves the purpose instead of becoming the purpose.

In the United States, one implementation pattern is a perpetual purpose trust. Purpose Foundation describes a perpetual purpose trust as a non-charitable trust created for a purpose rather than for a person. It can hold shares or other rights and use a trust agreement, stewardship committee, enforcer, and trustee to protect the purpose.

Why It Matters Here

Section titled “Why It Matters Here”

Steward ownership creates records that a generic cap table cannot explain:

  • Which purpose, mission, or constraint governs the asset.
  • Who can hold stewardship rights and how succession works.
  • Which rights are voting rights, economic rights, veto rights, or enforcement rights.
  • Which sale, conversion, dividend, or financing events are blocked or constrained.
  • Which affected group receives benefit, voice, information, or enforcement standing.

Those are governance and evidence records before they are financial records. They belong near Cooperative Governance and Community Investment.

What Software Should Not Flatten

Section titled “What Software Should Not Flatten”

Steward ownership is not a checkbox called “mission.” The actual constraint may live in a trust agreement, charter, shareholder agreement, golden share, operating agreement, securities instrument, or other legal document.

The coordination layer can preserve provenance, member-facing decisions, succession events, and evidence. It should not claim that software validation makes a trust enforceable. The legal enforceability remains in the relevant legal system.

Section titled “Read Next”