Reimagining Power @ ICS
ICS experiments with decentralized governance tools, discovering that communities seek participation in decision-making rather than just new funding mechanisms
An Institute for Community Sustainability Case Study in Decentralized Governance Implementation
Executive Summary
The Institute for Community Sustainability implemented Web3 governance infrastructure from January to July 2025 as part of SuperBenefit’s Reimagining Power Project.
The experiment successfully established operational governance systems using token-based governance, multistakeholder governance patterns, and DAOs structure, all managed through roles implementation with Hats Protocol. Four core team members actively use these systems. ICS launched London’s first local nodes implementation as a Green Pill Network chapter and achieved top 10% ranking in Gitcoin Grants Round 23.
Key learnings include the 6-18 month timeline required for meaningful Web3 adoption at community level, the importance of making tools enjoyable and accessible, and the value of responding to opportunities rather than forcing predetermined plans. The experiment continues with plans for public demonstrations and expanded education programs in fall 2025.
Background and Context
The Organization
The Institute for Community Sustainability (ICS) is a federal not-for-profit organization headquartered in London, Ontario. The organization operates three main programs that embody its mission of helping Londoners lead more sustainable and connected lives:
- Repair Café: Volunteer-led repair events that divert waste from landfills while building community connection and skills
- Thing Library: Tool and equipment lending program that reduces consumption by enabling shared access to items like power tools, camping gear, and specialty equipment. Members save money while reducing the environmental impact of individual ownership.
- Community Workshops: Skills training in repair, mending, and sustainability…
The Challenge
ICS faced several systemic challenges that prompted exploration of Web3 governance. These challenges threatened both operational efficiency and the organization’s ability to scale its impact:
Governance Bottlenecks: Centralized decision-making concentrated in a small core team created delays and limited organizational responsiveness. While effective for day-to-day operations, this structure constrained growth and innovation.
Limited Volunteer Agency: Despite a motivated volunteer base, contributors lacked meaningful participation in organizational direction and strategic decisions.
Funding Sustainability: Traditional grant-based funding created uncertainty and limited ICS’s ability to plan long-term initiatives.
Scaling Constraints: The centralized model placed unsustainable pressure on core team members while limiting the organization’s ability to expand programs or reach.
The Journey Begins
ICS’s participation in SuperBenefit’s Reimagining Power Project provided the opportunity to explore decentralized governance approaches. The RPP offered technical expertise, facilitation support, and connections to the Web3 ecosystem that enabled ICS to experiment with new organizational models.
These resources allowed ICS to explore whether Web3 tools could address governance challenges while connecting the organization to the global regenerative finance movement.
Approach
From Discovery to Strategy
Initial discovery revealed that ICS’s centralized structure, while enabling program delivery, created systemic barriers to growth and community ownership. Stakeholder input emphasized desires for greater participation in decision-making and more distributed leadership. These insights shaped a strategy focused on building technical infrastructure while cultivating the social foundations for decentralized governance.
The team made strategic choices to start small with committed participants rather than attempting broad adoption immediately. This approach acknowledged both the organization’s capacity constraints and the significant conceptual gap between Web3 tools and mainstream understanding.
Patterns and Interventions
ICS implemented four interventions between January and July 2025, each designed to test different aspects of decentralized governance and community engagement:
Selected Patterns:
- Token-based governance: Voting systems for collective decision-making
- Multi-stakeholder governance: Structures to include diverse participant voices
- DAOs: Overall decentralized autonomous organization framework
- Roles: Hats Protocol implementation for clear governance responsibilities
- Impact Attestations: Blockchain-based recording of social and environmental contributions to enable transparency and future funding
- Local nodes: Green Pill Network chapter to connect local regenerative initiatives with global movement
- Opportunistic Adoption: Emergent pattern of flexible response to ecosystem opportunities
Resource Mobilization
The experiment employed an adaptive methodology, adjusting plans based on emerging opportunities and community feedback. Rather than following a rigid timeline, the team prioritized responding to real-world feedback and ecosystem opportunities. Resources included volunteer time (hundreds of hours), RPP facilitation support, and existing ICS relationships and infrastructure.
Transformation Story
Phase 1: Infrastructure Development (January – March 2025)
The initial phase focused on establishing the technical foundation for decentralized governance through multiple Web3 patterns and systems.
Technical Achievements:
- Established multisignature wallet with 4 signers (implementing token-based governance)
- Secured ENS domain (theics.eth)
- Configured Hats Protocol tree implementing roles pattern
- Created CharmVerse and Snapshot spaces for multistakeholder governance
- Integrated with SuperBenefit DAOs infrastructure
Key Outcomes:
- Four core team members actively using systems (exceeding goal of 3)
- All technical infrastructure operational
- Local nodes application submitted and approved (Green Pill Network)
Challenges:
- Limited interest from broader volunteer base
- Technical complexity deterred casual participation
Phase 2: Adaptation and Discovery (March-July 2025)
This phase marked a shift from infrastructure building to active experimentation and strategic evolution based on real-world feedback and opportunities.
Activities and Adaptations:
- Held four local nodes meetings as Green Pill London (March 23, March 30, April 10, June 9)
- Team member attended ETHDenver and Consensus Toronto conferences
- Launched Gitcoin Grants Round 23 campaign achieving top 10% ranking
- Pivoted from hypercerts to Karma GAP for Impact Attestations implementation
- Applied Opportunistic Adoption pattern throughout
Key Discoveries:
- Community members wanted practical participation, not theoretical education
- Web3 adoption timeline reality: 6-18 months, not weeks
- Conference connections accelerated ecosystem integration
- External validation (GG23) built internal confidence
- Flexibility yielded better results than rigid planning
The shift from a planned single workshop to a cohort model exemplified the Opportunistic Adoption pattern – responding to community readiness rather than forcing predetermined approaches.
Outcomes and Reflections
What Changed
The experiment produced measurable outcomes across multiple dimensions:
| Metric | Target | Achieved | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active governance users | 3+ | 4 | ✓ Exceeded |
| Infrastructure components | 5 | 7 | ✓ Exceeded |
| Impact documentation | 1 | 1 (via Karma GAP) | ✓ Adapted |
| Local nodes meetings | 1 | 4 | ✓ Exceeded |
| Education workshop | 1 | 0 (redesigned) | ⟲ Pivoted |
| GG23 ranking | N/A | Top 10% | ✓ Bonus |
Qualitative Changes:
- Developed shared vocabulary for Web3 governance within core team
- Strategic shift from “acquiring resources” to “enabling participation”
- Recognition that enjoyment is essential for adoption
- Acceptance of extended transformation timelines
- Established DAO State through shared context and decision-making processes
Stakeholder Experiences: Different stakeholder groups experienced the experiment in distinct ways, reflecting varying levels of engagement and different relationships to the Web3 tools and concepts being introduced.
- Core Team: Deep engagement with all tools (token-based governance, multistakeholder governance, DAOs infrastructure), regular participation in governance decisions through roles pattern, strong sense of ownership and agency
- ICS Volunteers: Minimal engagement with new systems, benefits not yet extended to broader base
- Local nodes Participants: Consistent attendance by small group, preference for practical over theoretical learning
- External Community: GG23 donors validated work through contributions, conference connections opened opportunities
What We Learned
Several key principles emerged for successfully engaging communities with Web3 tools and concepts:
Fun is Fundamental: Complex tools require enjoyable experiences to overcome learning barriers. Community events, gamification, and social elements proved more effective than technical training.
Participation Over Resources: Communities showed greater interest in having voice and agency in decisions (through multistakeholder governance) than in accessing new funding sources. This insight fundamentally reoriented the experiment’s approach.
Small Teams as Foundation: Four committed individuals successfully established comprehensive infrastructure including DAOs structure, roles implementation, and token-based governance. While this doesn’t constitute broad adoption, it creates necessary foundation for future growth.
Flexibility Enables Opportunity: The Opportunistic Adoption pattern – responding to emergent opportunities (GG23, conferences) – yielded better outcomes than following rigid plans. Organizations should maintain readiness to pivot while keeping core objectives clear.
Communication Challenges Persist: The gap between Web3 concepts and mainstream understanding proved wider than anticipated. Despite multiple approaches, effectively translating technical concepts for general audiences remains an ongoing challenge.
Critical Reflections
The experiment revealed several areas where reality diverged from expectations:
- Only 4 of many volunteers engaged with new systems, highlighting the gap between technical readiness and social adoption
- The planned workshop wasn’t delivered as designed, indicating misalignment with community readiness (leading to Opportunistic Adoption approach)
- All core team members experienced personal transitions during implementation, affecting available time and focus
- The conceptual gap between Web3 thinking and mainstream understanding was consistently wider than anticipated
- Technical implementation (multisig, ENS, Hats) proved easier than social adoption
These challenges don’t represent failures but rather valuable learnings about the reality of Web3 adoption at community level.
Assessment & Evolution
Pattern/Approach Performance
Through implementation, several replicable patterns emerged that other organizations might adapt:
Token-based governance via Multisig
- Setup: 2-of-4 signature requirement for financial decisions
- Tools: Gnosis Safe, integrated with ENS
- Result: Operational but limited to core team
- Lesson: Social protocols more important than technical setup
Local nodes (Web3 Chapters)
- Process: Apply to global network, establish local governance, hold regular meetings
- Frequency: Monthly gatherings with consistent small group
- Focus: Building relationships over formal structure
- Outcome: Sustained engagement from committed participants
Impact Attestations Evolution
- Original: Organization-specific hypercerts
- Adapted: Ecosystem-standard tools (Karma GAP)
- Benefit: Enabled participation in funding rounds
- Learning: Compatibility trumps customization
Emergent Pattern: Opportunistic Adoption A new pattern emerged for community organizations entering Web3:
- Build technical readiness with small team (DAOs, roles, token-based governance)
- Maintain flexibility to respond to opportunities
- Prioritize ecosystem compatibility over unique solutions
- Use external validation to build internal momentum
- Accept extended timelines while celebrating progress
Sustainability and Continuation
Building on the foundation established during the experiment, ICS has identified immediate priorities for fall 2025:
- Launch 8-week education cohort combining learning with practical application
- Conduct public quadratic funding demonstration at local event
- Implement “stealth” Web3 integration through familiar tools
- Document and share cohort curriculum openly
Looking beyond immediate next steps, ICS has established goals for sustainable Web3 integration over the next year including achieving 10+ active participants in governance systems, expanding cells structure if volunteer teams emerge, integrating governance tools into regular operations, and expanding local node activities.
While blockchain creates possibility, social adoption requires integration with existing community rhythms, clear value propositions tied to felt needs, and patient cultivation of new practices alongside familiar ones.
Transferable Insights
Core principles that transcend context:
- Technical infrastructure (DAOs, token-based governance, roles) can be built quickly, but social adoption requires 6-18 month timelines
- Start with committed core teams before attempting broader adoption
- Make experiences enjoyable to overcome complexity barriers
- Flexibility and opportunism (Opportunistic Adoption pattern) yield better results than rigid planning
- External validation accelerates internal confidence and adoption
- DAO State emerges through practice, not just technical implementation
Knowledge Contribution
This experiment validates existing understanding about the challenges of Web3 adoption while contributing new insights about community motivations. The discovery that communities primarily seek participation (through multistakeholder governance) rather than resources reframes how organizations might approach Web3 integration. The “Opportunistic Adoption” pattern offers a pragmatic approach for resource-constrained organizations in conservative communities.
The successful implementation of multiple governance patterns (token-based governance, multistakeholder governance, DAOs, roles) demonstrates that comprehensive infrastructure is achievable even with limited resources. However, the gap between technical implementation and social adoption remains a critical challenge requiring patient, sustained effort.
Conclusion
The ICS Web3 governance experiment demonstrated both the potential and challenges of implementing decentralized tools in community organizations. While adoption remained limited to four core users, the experiment established functional infrastructure using token-based governance, multistakeholder governance patterns within a DAOs framework, all coordinated through roles implementation. The achievement of unexpected successes like top 10% GG23 ranking validated the Opportunistic Adoption approach.
The key discovery – that communities seek participation over resources – reframes how organizations might approach Web3 integration. Rather than focusing primarily on funding mechanisms, successful adoption requires addressing fundamental desires for agency and voice in decision-making through patterns like multistakeholder governance.
For practitioners, ICS’s experience offers practical guidance: start small with committed teams, prioritize enjoyment and accessibility, maintain flexibility for opportunities (Opportunistic Adoption), and prepare for 6-18 month adoption timelines. The path to decentralized governance requires patience and persistence, but early experiments like ICS’s provide essential learning for the broader movement toward participatory, regenerative organizational models.
About This Case Study
Documentation Period: January 1, 2025 to July 31, 2025
Primary Authors: SuperBenefit Reimagining Power Project facilitators and ICS Core Team
Contributing Voices: ICS volunteers, Green Pill London participants, RPP stakeholders
Acknowledgments: Ontario Trillium Foundation for funding the Reimagining Power Project, SuperBenefit for facilitation and technical support, Green Pill Network for ecosystem connections
Contact: [email protected]
License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
This case study contributes to growing knowledge about practical adoption of decentralized coordination patterns for social benefit. We invite readers to adapt these insights for their own contexts and share their experiences to further collective learning.