Onboarding cooperatives into the world of DAOs (and vice versa)

Impactopia believes that both cooperatives and DAOs are the kernels for a more fair, inclusive, and resilient society. Our goal is to find synergies between the models, and mend partnerships. We want to live in a world where human and planetary well-being are prioritized over profit maximization.

Our north star: organizing a three-day in-person event in Brussels where cooperators, DAO workers, commoners, and their sympathizers can mingle, learn from each other, and follow workshops. This can be the start of a growing network of relations between two surprisingly similar worlds that, to date, barely interact with each other.

Impactopia: A place (topia) where regenerative projects are nurtured and collaboration is celebrated.

What have we done so far?

July 2022: The idea was born during a lunch, inspired by an iconic vacancy in the center of Brussels (see below) (https://twitter.com/daobrussels/status/1543231109210800128)

December 2022: The idea becomes a plan, and the team begins forming. It is also the start of a long learning journey into the problem space. (Like our audience, some of us have more experience with coops than DAOs, and vice versa.)

January 2023: In parallel, we set up our back office in Notion and we start applying sociocracy. We find it important to make decisions together, to care for each other, and to be welcoming to volunteers.

February 2023: With our newfound experience (and teammates) we start working on a podcast to inform people about the similarities of DAOs and coops, and reel them in around our cause: bridging the world between DAOs and cooperatives…

March 2023: Our first episode launches! Sarah De Heusch, from the cooperative world, and Xavier Damman, from the Silicon Valley and DAO worlds, bring listeners up to speed about coops and DAOs and find synergies between the systems during their conversation.

• You can listen to a 6-minute excerpt here: https://youtu.be/puf0korZwPU
• You can listen to the full episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4vJ9LGvF2QL0DLcyMlvZJ5?si=449e4e4f09464cd9 or https://youtu.be/gYGF4Z9MBrw

All of the above was done with zero funding.

Where are we going?

In the coming months, we want to release several more podcast episodes that explore the perspectives of cooperatives and DAOs. Some of the themes we have in mind are social impact, community land trusts, DeFi, and credit unions.

The podcast is part of a wider plan to help people “discover the other side." If you are a DAO worker, you may not know that cooperatives have a long history of several centuries, are firmly rooted in many jurisdictions, and (usually) have sustainable business models while their members retain full ownership and democratic control. If you are a cooperator, terms like “blockchain technology”, “web3”, “DAOs”, etc. may stun you, which means that you might miss out on rapid innovation, avenues for digitizing your cooperative, incredibly bright technical talent, and allies. On top of that, there exists an entire body of knowledge and practices that we want to make more available to contributors of both cooperatives and DAOs. Examples include Ostrom’s principles, liberating structures, sociocracy, microsolidarity, non-violent communication, etc. We believe this will enable more people to “walk the talk” of self-organized, member-owned, member-controlled, and, above all, caring organizations.

We want to inform a wide audience and bring interested parties together in online spaces for mutual learning and networking. This all leads us to our north star…

Impactopia - the event

We will organize a three-day event in September in Brussels, with up to 500 participants per day. Our location of choice is the former money printing facility of the National Bank of Belgium, which is now a temporary occupation. Together with our partners, we will co-create a pop-up town square (solarpunk style), optimized for conversation, serendipity, and mutual learning. Keynotes will be limited in favor of smaller parallel workshops with experts and facilitators.

Rough Estimates

The estimated cost for hosting 500 people per day, for three days is 250 000 EUR, which covers the following expenses:

• 40 000 EUR for the venue
• 75 000 EUR main logistics
• 30 000 EUR secondary logistics (food court, co-working, 5G, rooms e.g. for resting, meditation, cinema…)
• 35 000 EUR promotion & communication
• 50 000 EUR event management
• 10% risk management

We will fund the event through a combination of grants, partnerships and ticket sales. We want to keep ticket prices low so a diverse audience can attend.

We will put the proceeds of this grant towards the deposit, to lock in the venue and dates. Then we will concentrate on improving the release schedule and production quality of our podcast and website.

Now what?

If you like to see more collaboration and mutual learning between DAOs and cooperatives, please donate to this grant. If you’re feeling extra generous, let us know on Twitter too! We appreciate all your support, and even a small amount can make a huge difference! (QF 😎)

Thank you! ~ Kelly, Sinouhé, Sarah, Pia, William and Bruno

P.S. We’ve made some tweet templates that you can use to support us: https://impactopia.earth/gitcoin

P.P.S. If you are part of an organization that could benefit from this event, we’d like to hear your story! Please send us a DM on Twitter: https://twitter.com/IMPACTOPIAearth