Founding membership
Thirty-seven courses are written. The backend that turns them into a platform is quoted at $10,500, and I am putting in $5,000 of what I have left. I am asking 37 people to pay for a year up front to cover the rest. The build happens either way — what your pledge decides is whether I go into debt to make it happen.
Where it stands
Twenty-four pledges in — $5,000 of $5,500. Nothing has been charged; pledges are authorised, not taken.
What pledgers are saying
“I've stepped through a portal and landed on a trail that I couldn't have known was mine to travel. Thanks to your stacks, I have a compass and a wise council of fellow travelers.”
Founding practitioner
“I believe in what you're building, and am excited to participate.”
Founding member
“It matters that you have put this much into this and are holding a line on integrity.”
Founding member
“Thank you for doing such important work and taking so much care.”
Founding member
“I have been reading your work, recognizing much and appreciating all. I believe you have something here of great value.”
Founding practitioner
“Pretty much excited about anything you are manifesting into practice to share. I am a decades-long professional facilitator, therapist, workshop leader, group gatherer, and space holder.”
Founding practitioner
“Your writing really resonates with my life experiences and my great interest in learning about cognitive science and human behaviour.”
Founding member
“Some of what you have shared has helped me get to the point I am now, which is finding my wings after years of trying in ways that backfired.”
Founding member
“Some of your thoughts made me weep, some made me angry, many made me think.”
Founding member
“I'm grateful this comes with a scholarship membership, as I have a gifted autistic friend who is struggling financially but would benefit from access to this community.”
Founding member
Updated by hand, because I am one person and I would rather it be accurate than automatic.
A real quote from a named engineer, broken into four milestones. Not a runway, not a salary, not marketing.
| Accounts and accessSign up, log in, keep your place. Three account types, free included. | $1,800 |
| Payments and entitlementsMemberships, single courses, circle seats, and the scholarship split. | $2,200 |
| The CommonsA members' community, with the restorative moderation ladder built as code. | $2,500 |
| Operator tools and handoverSo I can add a course or publish an essay without paying a developer to do it. | $2,500 |
| Three months of monitoring, plus card fees | $1,500 |
| Total | $10,500 |
| What I am putting inEverything left after the infrastructure I have already bought. | − $5,000 |
| What I am asking for | $5,500 |
Any mix reaching $5,500 works. Thirty-seven at $150, or eleven at $500, or something in between — twenty-five and four gets there.
I want to be completely clear about this, because it is the thing most campaigns leave vague. The build is going ahead regardless of whether this reaches its number. the engineer has a signed agreement and four fixed milestones, and he will be paid in full for every one of them.
If the campaign falls short, I cover the difference myself — with money I do not currently have. That is a real risk and I am taking it deliberately, because I am not willing to make a disabled contractor carry the uncertainty of my funding, and because after three years I am not waiting any longer to find out whether this works.
So what are you actually funding? Not whether it gets built. Whether it gets built without putting me into debt to do it. Every pledge is one less month of that debt, and reaching the number means I start solvent instead of behind.
And the courses exist either way. Thirty-seven of them, written, on a static site right now. This is not a pitch for something imaginary — it is the plumbing for something already built.
The courses are the entry point, not the product. What is designed behind them is a coalition — people who learn here, then facilitate here, then shape what gets built. Four things already have written plans rather than intentions.
Participants become certified facilitators running their own paid practice groups. Revenue-shared, with reciprocity built in — so the work scales beyond me and the scholarship fund keeps growing.
Five families of roles beyond founder, each with a written test for when it is genuinely needed. Grown from within, paid fairly, added only when the need is real — never a founder bottleneck.
The LLC is the runway. The destination is a social enterprise with a nonprofit foundation beside it — the enterprise earns, the foundation holds the scholarship fund, the library, and the frameworks.
Consent-based decisions, written domains, an accountability process drafted in peacetime, and a power audit I have published on myself. Named honestly as consultation until the power actually moves.
Every one of those is a design decision against single-point failure. The courses do not need me to teach them. The moderation ladder is a named sequence rather than my judgement. The scholarship split is a percentage rather than my generosity. And the journal never touches my server, so I could not become the person who holds it even if I wanted to.
I built it so that it will outgrow me. That was the requirement, not the consolation.
The engineer is neurodivergent, like the people this platform is for. Twenty-five years of system integrity work, federal contracts rescued, and accessibility credentials nobody else who wrote to me even mentioned. He is overqualified for this job.
He is also in financial hardship — which is precisely the gap this whole project exists to describe. Skilled neurodivergent people who cannot get paid what they are worth is not an abstraction to me.
His quote came in above what I have, and I am not negotiating it down. A project about that gap does not get to open by underpaying someone standing in it. That is why the ask exists at all.
He will sign a contractor agreement before any money moves — fixed fee per milestone, billed on delivery, with every account and credential in my name from day one. I am not naming him publicly until that is signed and he has agreed to be named.
A subscription model does not have to price out the people who need this most — but it will, unless you build against that deliberately. So here is what is built against it.
Founding members are the reason that fund exists at all. Paying up front does not just build the platform — it seeds the thing that keeps it open to people who cannot do what you just did.
I could take investment. I have chosen not to, because an investor would want returns, and returns would mean pricing this for people who can pay rather than people who need it. The scholarship fund, the three permanently free courses, the journal that stays on your device — those are the first things an investor would ask me to reconsider.
I could also take a loan. I have been unemployed for close to three years and I have already banked my future on the education that produced this. Another debt against an unlaunched platform is not a risk I can responsibly take.
So I am asking the people this is for. It costs you nothing extra — a year up front is cheaper than a year monthly. What it buys is a platform owned by the people using it rather than by someone waiting to be paid back.
People have asked, fairly, and the page has not been answering. Let me be honest about what exists and what does not.
The practitioner tier is a training path, not a schedule of events. Nobody is trained yet. So there are no circles running, no dates, no seats — the tier is the process by which people become the facilitators who will eventually run them.
Holding the Circle is six modules on facilitation: taking the seat, trauma-aware pacing, holding a room with mixed processing styles, when to intervene and when not to, repair when something goes wrong, and what to do with your own reactions while you are the one holding it.
Plus the anti-rank instrument for auditing whatever space you already hold. That part is useful immediately, whether or not you ever facilitate.
Certification, and then a paid path — you design and run your own small facilitated groups and keep most of the revenue. The point is a route to being paid for this work, and to the practice growing beyond me.
The shape of those groups — how long, how often, how many people — gets worked out with the first cohort rather than decided by me in advance. That is deliberate.
Circles are held around a specific course. So a facilitator will have taken that course themselves before they hold a circle in it — you cannot facilitate a room through material you have not been through.
There are prerequisites, and at the practitioner level they are free. The courses you need in order to hold a circle responsibly are included in the tier rather than sold to you on top of it.
Why any of this exists: a great many minds learn relationally. Not all — plenty of people do best alone with a text, and this catalogue is built for them too. But for a lot of people a live, held, relational space is not a nice addition, it is the difference between material landing and material bouncing off. Text-only is an accessibility gap, and circles are how it gets closed.
And it is an earning model for members. Certified facilitators get paid for holding circles. That is the point of the tier: not a badge, a way for people in this community to be paid for work they are good at.
You do not have to decide now. Pledge as a founding member at $150, go through the courses, and see whether facilitating is something you want. Upgrading later costs the difference and nothing more — no window closes on you.
And on scholarships into the practitioner tier: yes, they will exist, funded by the ten per cent. Asking is one sentence and it is not means-tested — no proof of income, no explaining yourself. You do not need to understand the whole thing before you are allowed to put your hand up.
Anyone can pledge. If you read the essays free, if you found this last week, if you have never given me a penny — you are as welcome in the founding round as anyone who has been paying for years.
A founding year, the founding rate held for as long as you stay, a year of recognition however you want it, and priority when the doors open — founding members go in first.
All of that, plus the second seat to give away. You have already been carrying this, so what you get is the ability to bring someone with you.
And if you cannot pledge at all: nothing here is closed to you. Three courses stay free permanently, the essays keep coming, and the scholarship seats exist precisely so that money is not the thing that decides.
When you pledge, you get a second founding year to give away — to a friend, to someone in your group who cannot pay, or back to me to hand out. Two people, one pledge.
This is deliberate rather than a promotion. Paid subscribers are, by definition, the people who can pay — and a campaign that only reaches them builds a platform for people who already have money. The second seat is how the founding round reaches past that.
These are the first scholarships. Before the 10% fund has taken a single dollar, before there is a ledger to publish — thirty-seven pledges means seventy-four people in the room on day one, and half of them did not pay to be there.
No means test on the second seat, and no explaining. Give it to whoever you want, or hand it back and I will place it. If you would rather not decide, that is a completely fine answer.
Founding members are credited on the site for twelve months from launch. Not a logo wall you scroll past — a named list on its own page, linked from the footer, and you choose what it says.
However you want it written. Chosen name, initials, a handle — whatever is actually yours.
Named and linked. If you run something, this is a year of a real backlink from a site about your field.
Linked, with a line of your own words about what you write. Readers here are readers.
Therapist, coach, facilitator, advocate — named and linked, in front of exactly the people looking.
In honour of a person, a kid, a teacher, someone who is gone. Several people will want this.
Anonymous is a real option and always will be. Counted in the number, named nowhere.
Practitioners get more than a line. A short profile — what you do, who you work with, how to reach you — on the practitioner page, for the year. This platform will be found by people looking for exactly that.
You can change how you are listed at any time, and you can ask to be removed without explaining why. It stays up for twelve months from the day the doors open, not from the day you pledge — so nobody loses months to my build schedule.
Pledge
This is a pledge, not a payment. When the campaign closes on 30 September I will email you a single link to complete it — whether or not we hit the target, because the build is happening either way and I would rather have you than not.
No payment now. No obligation until you click the link.
Cannot pledge but want to help? Sharing this with one person who would use it is worth as much as a pledge, and costs nothing. Or write to me.