ETC is a Private Members Association. The platform is what we use to organise — but what members are working towards is a community that holds things in common: land and organic food, knowledge, wellbeing, and a place to meet. None of it is built yet. This page is about what it is for, and how it gets decided.
A Private Members Association is a structure built on the principle of free assembly. Men and women voluntarily join, govern the association democratically, and benefit from it collectively. There are no shareholders to satisfy and no outside investors demanding growth at any cost.
When you join most platforms you are a user. You accept their terms, you generate their data, and you have no meaningful say in how any of it is run. You are a customer — and customers are not communities, they are revenue sources.
Joining ETC means becoming a member of an association, with the rights, responsibilities and standing that membership carries. Nobody arrives anonymously — every member comes in through another member. Disputes are settled by a jury of fellow members at Full Member level, rather than by a faceless complaints process. The association exists to serve its members.
That distinction is not decoration. It is what makes everything below possible: an association can hold things in common on behalf of its members. A software company can only sell things to its customers.
"Most communities rent their infrastructure from corporations that profit from them. We are building our own — piece by piece, vote by vote, member by member. The platform is the start. What comes next is up to us."
As a Private Members Association, ETC is a community of real men and women deciding together what to build — in the digital world and the physical one. These are not features being delivered to you. They are things we build together, as the community grows and members vote for them.
ETC is not only a screen. Members gather face-to-face, run by members, marking the turning of the year — by season, not by a fixed date. We celebrate what has been built, set the next quarter's priorities, and shape the direction of the community. Think AGM, but one you will actually want to attend.
The governance framework is built in from the start. A founding membership reserves your place in it from the moment you join — and the vote itself, along with a place on a jury, is exercised at Full Member level. That standing is earned through trust in the community, not bought: no tier, at any price, lets a man or woman buy their way past it. Governance does not switch on overnight. It becomes the active engine of how ETC evolves as members grow into it.
The Association does not grow through advertising. It grows through the trust of its members — man to man, woman to woman. There are three ways in, and they carry different weight.
Value generated within a community should stay in it. Members trade with each other in Unity Pounds and LETS credits with zero extraction on community-currency trades, so what changes hands reaches another member or a local provider rather than a distant shareholder.
The same principle funds everything on this page. Membership contributions pay for what the Association builds — and a member-owned community fund, seeded by the founding campaign, is how members intend to pay for the bigger things without going outside for money.
Founding memberships are never an investment — no shares, no equity, no financial return. They are a membership in a Private Members Association, bought once and held for life. A 14-day cooling-off period applies to every payment. Founding members are not Founding Elders.
What exists today: the Association, its membership and vouching system, its governance framework, and the platform itself — in closed beta, with members using it now. The community economy is built and running.
What does not exist yet: the farm, the library, the postbox service, the insurance scheme, and the permanent place to gather. None of these have been bought, built, or leased. They are what the membership has said it wants to build, and they get built in the order members vote for — funded by memberships rather than by investors.
We would rather tell you that plainly than dress an intention up as an achievement. The question is not what features we will add to the app. The question is what kind of community we want to build — and what infrastructure that community needs to thrive.
Back the build now to become a founding member, or join monthly and cancel any time. Either way you are joining an association — not subscribing to a product.