This playbook emerges from the Reimagining Power Project’s 18-month journey exploring how web3 technologies might redistribute rather than replicate existing power structures. What began as technology exploration evolved into fundamental questions about participation, ownership, and collective decision-making. The playbook documents how three organizations evolved from centralized control to autonomous cells coordinating within shared purpose, achieving measurable improvements in participation, innovation, and impact. Based on 18 months of real-world experimentation, it provides tested patterns for enabling meaningful stakeholder participation without sacrificing operational effectiveness.
This guide serves nonprofit leaders ready to distribute power rather than concentrate it, organizations facing governance bottlenecks that limit growth and innovation, and teams seeking authentic stakeholder participation beyond advisory committees. Through concrete examples from sports coordination, sustainability initiatives, and international grantmaking, it demonstrates how decentralized governance patterns work in practice.
Context & Orientation
The Challenge Landscape
Traditional nonprofit governance creates systematic inefficiencies that limit both impact and stakeholder satisfaction. Board structures disconnect from constituent needs. Operational decisions bottleneck through overloaded executives. Volunteers contribute labor without influencing direction. These aren’t failures of individual organizations but structural limitations of hierarchical models designed for different contexts.
The Reimagining Power Project began with a hypothesis: web3 tools could address these systemic governance failures. The journey revealed both the promise and limitations of that hypothesis.
The Institute for Community Sustainability faced this directly - centralized decision-making in their core team created delays while their motivated volunteer base lacked meaningful participation in strategic direction. They had clear goals to increase volunteer agency and decentralize governance into their local community, but no clear path forward until discovering viable entry points through coordi-nations participation.
All In For Sport struggled with an even more fundamental challenge: attempting to serve everyone led to serving no one well, while unclear boundaries between strategic and operational decisions paralyzed progress.
Equality Fund faced challenges transferring funds to partners in developing countries without encountering delays, bureaucracy, high costs, and risk.
These challenges reflect sector-wide patterns that no amount of strategic planning or board development can resolve within existing structures.
Who This Serves
This playbook specifically addresses organizations experiencing governance bottlenecks where decisions queue for senior approval, volunteer frustration with limited agency despite significant contributions, difficulty scaling participation as organizations grow, tension between maintaining mission alignment and enabling innovation, and resource allocation conflicts consuming disproportionate energy. If your organization faces at least three of these challenges, the patterns in this playbook offer tested alternatives.
Readiness Indicators
Before beginning, assess your organization’s readiness through these indicators:
✓ Leadership willing to distribute rather than consolidate power
✓ Core team committed to sustained experimentation
✓ Tolerance for productive confusion during transition
✓ Existing culture of transparency in decision-making
✓ Basic digital literacy among core participants
Organizations scoring 4-5 indicators can begin immediately. Those with 2-3 should focus on building readiness. Below 2 suggests fundamental preparation work needed before attempting governance transformation.
Core Principles Guiding Implementation
Start Small, Validate, Then Scale: AIFS achieved significant change with just 4-5 core participants. ICS found success by partnering with web3-native contributors through the Green Pill Network, a global movement of web3 practitioners focused on using blockchain technology to create positive externalities and solve coordination failures. Attempting broad adoption before building core capacity consistently fails.
Flexibility Enables Opportunity: ICS pivoted from workshops to cohorts; AIFS abandoned Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) for coordination. Rigid adherence to initial plans guarantees failure in governance transformation.
Technical Infrastructure Supports Social Change: Governance transformation requires primarily social change, with technical tools serving as enablers rather than drivers.
Innovation Requires Dedicated Resources: Equality Fund discovered that innovation work cannot succeed as add-on responsibilities to operational duties. Their experiment revealed that transformation requires protected time and resources separate from daily operations - a principle their organizational structure couldn’t accommodate.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Recreating Old Hierarchies: web3 tools don’t automatically create equitable governance. Without intentional design, organizations often replicate the same top-down power structures they sought to escape. Clear separation between strategic and operational governance helps prevent this concentration.
Security Vulnerabilities: Organizations face real risks of losing funds through phishing attacks or compromised wallets. Basic security practices - hardware wallets for treasuries, multi-signature requirements, regular security audits - are essential prerequisites often overlooked in governance excitement.
Wrong Chain, Wrong Tools: Each blockchain has different costs, speeds, and capabilities. Some chains’ high fees make small transactions prohibitive. Some chains prioritize speed over decentralization. Research infrastructure requirements before committing - migration is difficult and expensive.
Governance Theater: Creating elaborate voting mechanisms without real power distribution wastes resources. ICS strategically built governance infrastructure through Green Pill London, establishing foundations with committed web3 contributors before attempting broader adoption - demonstrating that sustainable governance requires patient foundation-building.
Why Web3 & Social Impact
What is Decentralized Governance?
In governance systems, decentralization refers to distributing power and authority across stakeholders rather than concentrating it in representative bodies or executive leadership. This can involve direct participation in decision-making, delegation mechanisms that preserve accountability, and nested governance structures that handle decisions at appropriate scales.
Traditional nonprofits and philanthropic organizations tend to be structured around management hierarchies, confining important decision-making to board and executive levels of organizations. Decentralized governance aims to distribute decision-making power across stakeholders - community members, contributors, volunteers, beneficiaries, donors etc. Blockchain tools make this practically possible by allowing entities and individuals to coordinate horizontally though transparent and verifiable decisions and agreements, rather than chains of command.
Why Blockchain for Social Impact?
In a social impact context, decentralized coordination is becoming increasingly important for several reasons:
- Legacy hierarchies - the world is increasingly conscious of the colonial double standards found in a small number of capital holders making decisions on behalf of a large number of disempowered “beneficiaries”
- Collective intelligence - hierarchies are ineffective at operating in complex problem spaces. What is needed are distributed networks that can surface and evolve an understanding of a complex problem space.
- Systemic exclusion - conventional financial and governance systems systematically exclude marginalized communities, reinforcing existing power imbalances; decentralized coordination can operate outside these gatekeeping structures
- Cross-border coordination - global challenges require coordination across jurisdictions and cultures, but existing institutions move slowly and often exclude the most affected communities; decentralized systems enable “cosmolocal” approaches that combine local autonomy with global funding flows and knowledge sharing
Blockchains and other web3 primitives and patterns provide four capabilities traditional systems lack:
- Transparency: Every decision and fund movement is permanently recorded
- Accessibility: Anyone with internet can participate regardless of geography
- Resistance to Capture: No single entity can override collective decisions
- Inherent Trustfulness: Systems can be relied on to be accurate and trustworthy independent of third parties
These primitives can be composed in order to create decentralized governance and decision-making structures that reimagine the allocation of power and authority in organizations.
For a deeper dive into web3 in the social impact space see: Reimagining Power: How Web3 Can Transform Social Impact- https://pub.superbenefit.org/reimagining-power-how-web3-can-transform-social-impact?share=true
Understanding Patterns in Context
Governance patterns are practical tools addressing specific organizational challenges rather than abstract frameworks. The following pattern groups emerged from real experimentation, each solving particular problems while creating foundations for others.
Pattern Group A: Separating Strategic from Operational
Organizations consistently struggle with decisions queuing across all levels, from daily operations to long-term strategy. This pattern group creates clarity by establishing distinct governance domains.
Community Governance
A pattern for enabling collective stewardship through community-driven decision making at constituency scale, where broad networks of stakeholders collectively guide organizational evolution through transparent, participatory processes.
In nonprofit contexts, community governance transforms traditional board-centric models by distributing strategic decision-making across all stakeholders - staff, volunteers, beneficiaries, and supporters. This creates accountability to those served rather than just major donors or board members.
Problem it solves: Mission drift occurs when operational pressures override organizational purpose. Community governance protects core values while enabling operational flexibility.
How AIFS used it: AIFSIP-04 proposal separated community stewardship (protecting mission/values) from operational execution. The community maintains authority over strategic direction while operations teams execute freely within those boundaries. Result: proposal passed “without significant contention” because it addressed recognized needs.
First step: Map your current governance decisions into two categories: those affecting mission/values (strategic) versus those affecting daily operations (tactical). Survey stakeholders about which decisions they want voice in - you’ll likely find they care most about strategic direction, not operational details.
Link to full pattern: Community Governance
Operational Governance
A pattern enabling effective day-to-day operations through sociocratic coordination of autonomous teams (cells), where execution decisions happen at the edge rather than the center.
For nonprofits drowning in approval processes, operational governance creates “departments with decision rights” rather than advisory committees. Program teams gain authority to execute within clear boundaries, dramatically accelerating response times while maintaining alignment through shared protocols rather than hierarchical oversight.
Problem it solves: Bureaucratic bottlenecks when every decision requires senior approval, slowing response to opportunities.
How it worked in practice: AIFS operational cells gained authority for execution decisions within mission boundaries. The Tech365 coordination cell managed relationships with 25 organizations across 16 countries without constant board approval. Each cell operates with full autonomy within defined scope and shared values.
Note: Cells are autonomous teams with defined scope operating within shared organizational values - like departments with full decision-making power rather than advisory committees requiring approval. Creating the structure is quick; activating cells with engaged teams takes time.
First step: Identify your most frustrated program team - the one constantly waiting for approvals. Define clear boundaries (budget, scope, values alignment) within which they can make all decisions without seeking permission. Start with a 3-month experiment to build confidence on both sides.
Link to full pattern: Operational Governance
Pattern Group B: Building Participation Infrastructure
Limited volunteer agency represents wasted human potential. These patterns create meaningful participation pathways beyond traditional volunteerism.
Token-based Governance
Digital voting systems that make influence transparent and verifiable, using blockchain technology to ensure every decision is recorded and participation is clear.
Nonprofits often struggle with invisible influence networks where persuasive individuals dominate regardless of contribution. Token-based governance makes all voting transparent - who participated, what they decided, and why. This doesn’t require cryptocurrency; tools like Snapshot enable gasless voting tied to participation rather than wealth.
Problem it solves: Informal influence systems where persuasive individuals dominate regardless of contribution or expertise.
ICS implementation: Multisignature wallet requiring 2-of-4 signatures for financial decisions, integrated with ENS domain (blockchain-based naming system like theics.eth). Green Pill London members established this transparent decision-making infrastructure as the foundation for future ICS governance expansion.
First step: Set up a free Snapshot space for your organization and run your next strategic planning survey through it. This creates a permanent, transparent record of stakeholder input without requiring any cryptocurrency. Use the results to demonstrate the value of transparent decision-making to your board.
Link to pattern documentation: Token-based Governance
Peer to Peer Payments
Direct transfer of funds between organizations or individuals without intermediary banks, using blockchain networks to enable censorship-resistant, transparent transactions.
For international nonprofits, P2P payments promise reduced fees and faster transfers. However, as Equality Fund discovered, the real value lies in building prerequisites for deeper transformation - getting partners comfortable with wallets, understanding decentralized systems, and laying groundwork for future participatory governance. The technology matters less than the organizational readiness it builds.
Problem it solves: High transaction costs and accessibility barriers in international fund transfers, particularly in politically restricted contexts.
Equality Fund’s discovery: P2P payments exploration revealed deeper insights about prerequisites. Equality Fund had anecdotal evidence that it was expensive to move money around the world but through the experiment with Women Win (WW) identified they move money without fees. The real value wasn’t in solving transaction costs but in building preconditions - wallet adoption among partners, organizational change readiness, hands-on experience with decentralized concepts. Last-mile delivery challenges with local banking restrictions remained the actual barrier. This challenged sector-wide assumptions about blockchain’s primary value proposition.
First step: Before exploring blockchain payments, map your actual transaction costs and pain points at the most granular level - not country by country, but city by city, partner by partner. You may discover, like Equality Fund, that your assumed problems don’t exist while real barriers lie elsewhere.
Related resources: P2P Payments
Privacy Payments
Financial transactions that protect sender and recipient identities while maintaining verifiable proof of transfer, using zero-knowledge proofs and other cryptographic techniques.
Human rights organizations and their grantees face real surveillance risks from traditional banking systems that create permanent records accessible to hostile governments. Privacy payment tools offer protection while maintaining audit trails for legitimate oversight. This isn’t about hiding from accountability but protecting vulnerable communities from persecution.
Problem it solves: Traditional financial systems create data trails that can endanger activists and organizations working on sensitive issues in restricted contexts.
What Equality Fund identified: Safety constraints made this pattern essential rather than optional. Grant recipients in politically sensitive contexts need protection from surveillance that traditional banking inherently enables. The planning process exposed how regulatory compliance often conflicts with recipient safety.
First step: Conduct a threat assessment with your most vulnerable grant recipients. Map which ones face genuine risks from financial transparency - considering not just current governments but potential future regime changes. Use this assessment to guide whether privacy tools are essential infrastructure or nice-to-have features.
Link to pattern documentation: Privacy Payments
Participatory Governance
Decision-making processes that meaningfully include affected communities, moving beyond consultation to shared power over resources and direction.
Traditional grantmaking treats recipients as beneficiaries rather than partners, perpetuating colonial dynamics even in well-intentioned programs. True participatory governance shares decision power - over funding priorities, evaluation metrics, and strategic direction. web3 tools can enable this at scale, but as Equality Fund discovered, regulatory structures often prevent the very transformations nonprofits seek.
Problem it solves: Traditional grantmaking excludes recipient voices from decision-making, perpetuating power imbalances even in well-intentioned programs.
Equality Fund’s constraints: While committed to the principle, regulatory constraints as a non-profit prevented implementing cooperative ownership or governance structures. Safety concerns also limited direct engagement with recipients. The tension between meaningful participation and regulatory/operational constraints revealed that participatory approaches require fundamental infrastructure changes, not just policy adjustments. This validated their interest in the DisCo pattern (Distributed Cooperative Organization) - a framework for creating dedicated resources for innovation, resource exchange, and governance compensation separate from operational work.
First step: Start where you have most freedom - often program design rather than fund allocation. Create a formal advisory group of current recipients with real veto power over new program proposals. Document how this shifts power dynamics and use evidence to advocate for deeper governance changes.
Related resources: Participatory Governance
Pattern Group C: Bridging Divides
Knowledge gaps between communities prevent collaboration. These patterns create productive dialogue across difference.
Gatherings
Structured yet emergent spaces for cross-sector relationship building, designed to create “productive tension” between different knowledge communities rather than comfortable consensus.
Most nonprofit convenings reinforce existing divisions - technical people talk to technical people, community organizers to organizers. Gatherings intentionally bridge these divides through careful design: shared opening/closing sessions for alignment, specialized middle sections for depth, and skilled facilitation that helps participants sit with discomfort long enough for new insights to emerge.
Problem it solves: Traditional meetings reinforce existing divisions rather than building bridges between technical and community perspectives.
AIFS breakthrough: 111 participants across 6 gatherings created “productive tension” generating new insights. Key innovation: allowing specialized discussions within shared purpose rather than forcing universal accessibility.
Critical learning: Selective participation based on relevance produced higher engagement quality than mandatory attendance. The “productive tension” between web3 developers and grassroots sports organizations generated genuinely new insights about coordination infrastructure.
First step: Design a 2-hour pilot gathering on your most pressing challenge. Invite 8-12 people split evenly between “insiders” (staff/board) and “outsiders” (community members, technical experts, or other perspectives you lack). Use this structure: 30-min joint opening to frame the challenge, 60-min breakouts by perspective group, 30-min joint closing to share insights. Document what emerges when different groups tackle the same problem.
Link to full pattern: Gatherings
Local Nodes
Coordi-nations are networks of aligned organizations sharing resources, governance practices, and collective action - examples include Green Pill Network for regenerative finance and Gitcoin’s grants ecosystem.
For isolated nonprofits, joining a coordi-nation provides instant connection to global movements while maintaining local autonomy. Rather than building everything alone, organizations tap into existing infrastructure, funding mechanisms, and peer communities. ICS discovered this was their breakthrough - not implementing web3 tools in isolation but finding their tribe within the regenerative finance movement.
Problem it solves: Isolation from broader movements limits access to resources, validation, and peer learning. Organizations need entry points to web3 ecosystems.
ICS success: Established Green Pill London as a local node connecting grassroots sustainability initiatives with global regenerative finance networks, building on London’s existing sustainability community. Achieved top 10% ranking in Gitcoin Grants round #23 through engagement with Regen Coordi-Nation. External validation accelerated internal confidence for further transformation. The node provided community engagement pathways and funding support that ICS couldn’t achieve alone.
First step: Map your mission to existing web3 coordi-nations. Green Pill Network serves regenerative projects. ReFi DAO connects climate initiatives. Gitcoin funds public goods. Research which networks have local chapters you could join or where you could pioneer the first node in your city. Apply with a clear value proposition of what you bring to the network, not just what you hope to receive.
Related resources: Local Nodes
Pattern Interactions and Dependencies
These patterns reinforce each other when properly sequenced. Community/Operational governance separation must precede autonomous cells. Gatherings build relationships necessary for other patterns. Local nodes provide external validation that builds internal momentum.
Equality Fund’s discovery adds another critical dimension: context varies dramatically at hyper-local levels. Infrastructure differences exist not just between countries but between cities and neighborhoods. Any pattern implementation must account for this granular variation, especially when working across geographic boundaries. They also found that partnership complexity grows geometrically - coordinating across Equality Fund, Women Win, and SuperBenefit created friction that slowed progress, suggesting smaller initial partnerships may be more effective. Most importantly, their experience revealed how systemic barriers from regulatory structures prevent cooperative approaches, validating RPP’s premise about institutional dependencies on existing power structures.
Suggestion: Attempting all patterns simultaneously fragments focus and exhausts participants. Start with one pattern group based on the most pressing challenge.
Implementation Paths
Three tested pathways emerged from the Reimagining Power experiments, each suited to different organizational contexts and readiness levels. Choose based on your starting point, risk tolerance, and existing capacity.
Whatever path you choose, consider starting with tiny experiments to build confidence and understanding:
- Create a simple multisig wallet for small budget decisions
- Run one gathering to surface governance challenges
- Connect with an existing coordi-nation aligned with your mission
- Document governance decisions for one month to see patterns
These micro-experiments build familiarity with concepts before committing to transformation.
Path 1: Collaborative Learning Journey
For organizations seeking shared understanding through emergence
Best suited for: Organizations facing complex challenges without clear solutions, multiple stakeholder groups needing alignment, or situations where relationship building matters as much as outcomes.
The collaborative learning journey creates structured yet emergent spaces for cross-sector relationship building and collective sensemaking. AIFS’s gathering series exemplified this approach - 111 participants from 38 organizations discovered together that AIFS’s value lay in coordination infrastructure, not NFT sales. The journey itself builds the trust and shared language necessary for any governance transformation.
Key elements:
- Monthly gatherings over 6-18 months
- Diverse participants creating “productive tension”
- Multi-modal documentation (including creative approaches like poetic harvesting)
- Skilled facilitation enabling emergence within structure
Start by designing a 2-hour pilot gathering on your most pressing challenge with 8-12 participants split between insiders and outsiders.
Path 2: Experimentation
For organizations ready to test hypotheses through controlled experiments
Best suited for: Organizations with specific governance challenges, capacity for controlled risk, and openness to discovering their assumptions might be wrong.
Experimentation involves discovering actual needs around power distribution, identifying viable interventions, and implementing carefully-scoped tests. ICS experimented with web3 governance tools with just 4 core team members, discovering that communities wanted participation in decisions more than new funding. Equality Fund’s planning process revealed their core assumption about transaction costs was incorrect - the real barriers lay elsewhere.
Key elements:
- 2-3 month discovery phase questioning assumptions
- Controlled scope (participants, resources, timeline)
- Multiple parallel experiments when possible
- Success measured by learning, not just implementation
Start by identifying your biggest governance bottleneck and designing a 3-month experiment with fewer than 10 participants to test one specific intervention.
Path 3: Governance Implementation
For organizations with existing flexibility to rapidly implement decentralized governance changes
Best suited for: Digital-native organizations, existing DAOs or co-ops, small to medium organizations with experimental cultures, or situations requiring rapid response.
Leveraging existing governance flexibility and emerging governance practice and tooling, to quickly translate insights into structural changes. AIFS transformed from NFT platform to coordination infrastructure within 8 months, using their DAO proposal system to ratify changes and launch operational cells. ICS built foundations (multisig, role management, network connections) positioning them for future evolution.
Key elements:
- Existing mechanisms for implementing change
- Small aligned teams with authority to act
- Connection to external networks for acceleration
- Continuous documentation of governance evolution
Start by assessing your governance flexibility - if you can implement structural changes within 30 days, you’re ready for rapid governance implementation. If not, build foundations first.
Choosing Your Path
Consider these factors:
Collaborative Learning Journey if you have:
- Unclear problem definition
- Multiple stakeholder groups
- Time for patient relationship building
- Complex challenges requiring emergence
Experimentation if you have:
- Specific hypotheses to test
- Tolerance for productive failure
- Capacity for controlled risk
- Resources for documentation
Governance Implementation if you have:
- Existing governance flexibility
- Digital-native operations
- Small, aligned teams
- Urgent need for change
Organizations often combine or sequence paths. ICS used experimentation to build foundations for effective adoption. AIFS’s gatherings (collaborative learning) informed their governance transformation (adaptive evolution). Equality Fund’s experiment revealed they needed extensive collaborative learning before attempting transformation.
The key is honest assessment of your starting point. Pushing beyond organizational capacity wastes resources and erodes trust. Meeting your organization where it is, then building toward transformation, creates sustainable change.
DAO Primitives Framework & Guides
The ICS and AIFS experiments leveraged the DAO Primitives Framework to help design and implement governance experiments and final structures. The framework contains a set of lenses through which to understand how governance structures can be composed to serve specific organizational needs across a series of different phases and scales. These lenses, along with implementation guides and governance patterns, provide a framework for creating small experiments that can evolve into sophisticated decentralized governance structures that can operate at scale.
- artifacts/guides/dao-primitives-framework/dao-primitives-framework.md
- artifacts/guides/dao-primitives-framework/dao-primitives-implemention/implementation-guide-community-governance.md
- artifacts/guides/dao-primitives-framework/dao-primitives-implemention/implementation-guide-multi-stakeholder-governance.md
- artifacts/guides/dao-primitives-framework/dao-primitives-implemention/implementation-guide-operational-governance.md
Case Studies & Examples
All In For Sport: From Product to Platform
Initial State: Started with NFT project attempting to fund grassroots sports, struggling with unclear value proposition and volunteer burnout.
Patterns Applied:
- Gatherings (6 sessions, 111 participants)
- Community/Operational governance separation (AIFSIP-04)
- Coordi-nations model (evolved from single organization to network of aligned communities operating through voluntary association rather than hierarchy)
- Operational cells (Tech365, partnerships)
- DAO state (notes/dao-primitives/implementation/patterns/dao-patterns/dao-state.md)
Transformation Process: Eight months of experimentation revealed AIFS’s true value as coordination infrastructure, not direct service provider. Governance proposal separated mission protection from operational execution. Gatherings created bridges between web3 developers and sports organizations previously unable to collaborate.
AIFS’s governance team utilized the DAO Primitives Framework and implementation patterns developed within SuperBenefit to inform the design on the updated AIFS governance system. This included developing an overarching community governance structure (DAO) that wraps a network of small teams (Cells) responsible for operational execution.
artifacts/guides/dao-primitives-framework/
Measurable Outcomes:
- Selected for IOC Tech365 coordination (25 orgs, 16 countries)
- IOC project funding $30K, for Unlocking Money & Tech for Grassroot Sports with partners Sarreya Sport, love.fútbol, Bonito Foundation, and All In For Sport
- Chillz project funding $10K, for Fostering community governance of local sports spaces with love.fútbol and All In For Sport
- Partnership with Women Win for web3 exploration
- Governance proposal passed without contention
- Maintained volunteer engagement despite organizational uncertainty
Key Lesson: Organizations must abandon failing models when evidence shows limited value. Flexibility enabled transformation from product to platform.
AIFS’s transformation raised questions the project continues exploring: How do we value coordination work in economic systems designed for direct service? Can network sovereignty truly emerge without new funding models?
Institute for Community Sustainability: Building Foundation
Initial State: Three successful programs (Repair Café, Thing Library, Workshops) constrained by centralized decision-making and frustration with limited agency of volunteers. Clear goals to increase volunteer agency and decentralize governance, but no clear implementation path. As a federal nonprofit exploring web3, they faced the additional challenge of bridging traditional structures with decentralized approaches.
Patterns Applied:
- Token-based governance (multisig wallet)
- Local nodes (Green Pill London)
- DAOs structure (decentralized autonomous organization framework combining technical tools with social governance protocols)
- Effective adoption (responding flexibly to emerging opportunities rather than following rigid implementation plans)
Implementation Journey: One ICS member worked with web3 contributors from London, Ontario to establish Green Pill London as a local node. This created the entry point ICS needed - participation in coordi-nations like Green Pill Network (for community engagement) and Regen Coordi-Nation (for funding support). They established collaborative workspaces (CharmVerse), voting systems (Snapshot), and role management (Hats Protocol) as part of their DAOs infrastructure. Discovered 6-18 month timeline for meaningful web3 adoption. Pivoted from single workshop to cohort model based on community readiness.
They leveraged design patterns outlined in the DAO Primitives Framework to develop their governance design and organizational readiness.
artifacts/guides/dao-primitives-framework/
Measurable Outcomes:
- 4 Green Pill London members actively using governance systems (web3 contributors, not ICS staff)
- Top 10% Gitcoin Grants ranking through Regen Coordi-Nation partnership
- Established Green Pill chapter in London (4 meetings)
- Technical infrastructure operational for future ICS scaling
Critical Insight: Finding viable entry points through existing coordi-nations proved more valuable than attempting isolated implementation. The partnership approach provided community, funding, and legitimacy that ICS couldn’t achieve alone.
ICS’s experience validated RPP’s evolving understanding: adoption timelines stretch far longer than the web3 ecosystem typically acknowledges. The 6-18 month journey reflects human pace of change, not technological capability. Their principle “You get as much as you give” captures how influence comes from contribution, not position - a fundamental shift in governance thinking.
Equality Fund: Discovering Prerequisites
Initial State: $20 million feminist fund seeking to implement DisCo (Distributed Cooperative Organization) principles for participatory governance and autonomy among grant recipients and partners. However, DisCo framework creators promised but never delivered web3 tooling, leaving Equality Fund without implementation pathways. Additionally, regulatory constraints as a highly-regulated non-profit prevented cooperative ownership structures.
Patterns Explored:
- Peer to peer payments (explored as accessible entry point)
- Participatory governance (original goal, limited by regulatory constraints)
- Privacy payments (identified as essential)
Discovery Findings: P2P payments were explored not as the end goal but as an accessible way to build necessary preconditions - wallet adoption, organizational change readiness, hands-on experience with decentralized concepts. Through this exploration, they discovered that the assumed problem (transfer costs between major organizations) didn’t exist. Real friction occurs at last-mile delivery with local banking restrictions. Country-level analysis proved insufficient - hyper-local understanding is essential. Most critically, innovation requires dedicated resources, not add-on responsibilities, which Equality Fund’s structure was not in a position to provide.
Value Despite Non-Implementation: Prevented larger failure by revealing prerequisites. Identified actual vs. assumed barriers. Demonstrated importance of discovery before solution design. The experiment revealed how Reimagining Power’s core premise manifests - inequities stem from dependencies on capitalist, colonial structures from which philanthropic institutions source their power.
Emergent partnerships: An additional outcome of the Discovery process for this project was an emergent partnership between Equality Fund and Women Win. The RPP was structured in a decentralized way, allowing for collaborative networks to form around project goals. During the discovery phase of the project, Women Win joined the experiment. This partnership connected the high-level grantmaking of Equality Fund with Women Win’s local, on-the-ground grant recipient context. This allowed the project to evolve in a new direction, not accounted for in the original project plan, yielding the insights outlined above.
Key Learning: Small experiments revealing requirements provide more value than rushed implementations addressing wrong problems.
Equality Fund’s discoveries challenged core RPP assumptions about blockchain’s primary value. The project evolved from promoting technical solutions to understanding prerequisites - a humbling recognition that continues shaping our approach. Their experience demonstrated how regulatory constraints and institutional structures themselves prevent the transformative governance approaches web3 promises.
Resource Directory
Patterns
- Community Governance - Collective stewardship through constituency-scale decision making
- Operational Governance - Sociocratic coordination of autonomous teams
- Gatherings - Structured spaces for cross-sector relationship building
- Token-based Governance - Digital voting systems for transparent decision-making
- Privacy Payments - Protection for sensitive financial transactions
- Peer to Peer Payments - Direct fund transfers without intermediaries
- Participatory Governance - Meaningful inclusion of affected communities
- Local Nodes - Connection points to global movements
- Knowledge Gardens - Living documentation ecosystems
Implementation Guides
- Governance Implementation Guides:
artifacts/guides/dao-primitives-framework/- Community Governance Implementation Guide
- Operational Governance Implementation Guide
- Multi-stakeholder Governance Implementation Guide
External Tools
Governance Infrastructure:
- Snapshot - Token-free voting and proposal systems
- Hats Protocol - Role management and permissions for organizational structures
- Gnosis Safe - Multi-signature wallets for financial decisions
Collaboration Platforms:
- CharmVerse - Collaborative workspace designed for DAOs
Funding Opportunities:
- Gitcoin Grants - Quarterly quadratic funding rounds
- Giveth - Donation platform for public goods
Networks & Communities:
- Green Pill Network - Global chapters focused on regenerative finance
- Platform Cooperativism Consortium - Research on democratic digital organizations
- SuperBenefit - DAO Primitives and governance patterns
Learning Resources
- Sociocracy for All - Consent-based decision making training
- Art of Hosting - Facilitation practices for participatory leadership
- DAO Talk Forum - Discussions on governance experiments
- MetaGov Community - Research on digital governance innovation
- Designing web3 Financial Innovations for Social Change - Report on web3 and finance innovation
Connect & Contribute
Join the Movement
These patterns continue evolving through practitioner experience. Connect with others implementing similar transformations:
SuperBenefit Network: Access weekly community calls, governance pattern library, and implementation support at superbenefit.org
Green Pill Chapters: Find local regenerative finance communities exploring governance innovation at greenpill.network
Platform Cooperativism: Connect with cooperative governance practitioners at platform.coop
Contribute Your Experience
Document your implementation journey to benefit others:
- Share pattern adaptations that worked in your context
- Report failures and lessons learned
- Propose new patterns emerging from practice
- Offer facilitation for others beginning transformation
Resources for Continued Learning
Technical Infrastructure (when ready):
- Snapshot: Token-free voting for governance decisions
- CharmVerse: Collaborative workspace for DAOs
- Hats Protocol: Role management and permissions (digital organizational charts with automated authorities)
- Gnosis Safe: Multi-signature wallets for financial decisions
Governance Frameworks:
- DAO Primitives Framework
- Sociocracy for All: Consent-based decision making
- DAO Governance Patterns: Emerging web3 governance models
- Community Rule: Template library for governance structures
- Implementation Paths: Collaborative Learning Journey, Experimentation, and Adaptive Evolution approaches from this playbook
Funding Opportunities:
- Gitcoin Grants: Quarterly quadratic funding rounds
- Giveth: Donation platform for public goods
- Retroactive Public Goods Funding: Various programs
The patterns work when given time to take root.
Credits
This playbook was created through the collaborative efforts of the Reimagining Power Project, documenting real-world experiments in decentralized governance from 2024-2025. The project itself transformed through these experiments - beginning with technology enthusiasm and maturing into nuanced understandings of social change.
Questions remain: How do we bridge the vast conceptual gap between web3 and traditional nonprofits? What economic models can sustain coordination infrastructure? How can organizations transform when their very structures depend on the systems they seek to change? These inquiries guide continued exploration.
Special recognition to All In For Sport, Institute for Community Sustainability, and Equality Fund & Women Win for courageously experimenting with new models and sharing both successes and failures.
Supported by Ontario Trillium Foundation. Facilitated by SuperBenefit. Documented with gratitude for all participants who contributed time, wisdom, and patience to these experiments.