Community Coordinators

Complete the contact form below and we’ll schedule a call to chat. If we’re aligned we’ll enter a partnership agreement.

Tasks include i) hosting Community Gatherings and/or Business Development and Media Workshops, and; ii) developing awareness through leaflets, SMS and noticeboards.

Being a Community Coordinator involves:

1. Collecting and distributing funds awarded to business Funding Opportunities.
2. Creating a Community Page – tells people about the community and links to all its members and their content. Admin rights can be shared. To learn more, see Platform Pages (downloadable PDF).
3. Verification of Community Members.
4. Maintaining accountability of businesses and funding requests, which includes auditing community content and activities within the CM Coin™ Marketplace.
5. Coordinating development and voting around a Community Empowerment Plan.

To ensure inclusivity, Community Coordinators are encouraged to overcome literacy and language barriers, which could involve supporting community members in developing, recording and/or translating content. Community Coordinators can employ Media Facilitators to assist.

Funds donated to businesses on CM are received by a payment platform called Stripe, and sent to the Community Coordinators’ bank account, who then distributes the funds in accordance with details noted in Funding Opportunities. Note: the ability of international nonprofits to receive funds locally across multiple currencies, reduces merchant banking fees so that more money goes directly to the projects themselves.

To earn funds for a local business and/or CM Coins™, Community Members must be verified as living in a community that has a Community Coordinator assigned. Note: a Community Coordinator can be either a nonprofit or an investment coop that the community manages themselves.

How It Works

As part of the process for creating a Community Page, Community Coordinators must provide information about how its Community Members get verified. This must be an in-person process, whereby the Community Coordinator is able to confirm they are who they claim to be through their CM account. Participating members must renew their verified status on an annual basis.

To get verified, a Community Member must first create a CM account. When logged in – if they have a coordinator assigned – they will see a link to “Get Verified” on their profile page, and any other page requiring this step.

Note: If a user lives in a community that doesn’t yet have a Community Coordinator, their attempt to “Get Verified” in a particular community will be noted and used to help identify where Coordinators are most in demand.

The “Get Verified” link:

1. Presents the user with the message provided by their Community Coordinator, which gives them instructions about what to do next.
2. Sends a notification to the Community Coordinator letting them know that someone new in their community has signed up. The Community Member’s name is added to the “unverified” list of members on their Community’s Page. Note: their name will not appear in public view until they have been verified.
3. Once a Community Coordinator has verified the Community Member, they can login to their CM account and verify the member directly from the Community Page.

Community Coordinators can support a Community Member by linking their account with a Media Facilitator. As with member verification, this is done by accessing member accounts on the Community Page. If a Media Facilitator has been added to an account, a link to their profile will appear on content posted through its login.

How Media Facilitators are rewarded is up to the Community Coordinator. CM can provide data relating to how much funding and conversation their efforts helped to attract.

The Community Empowerment Plan identifies how a local demand and supply chain might work and evolve within a particular community. It incorporates both products from local businesses and critical ‘public’ services. Note: We can assist by connecting you with currency exchange gaming tools to help out.

The Community Empowerment Fund is a similar concept to tax. It generates revenues for critical community services identified in the Community Empowerment Plan, such as access to water, medical services, sanitation and school fees. The fund is collected as a percentage that gets added to the community’s Funding Opportunities. It can be supplemented through external funding.

The percent collected – and what it will be spent on – is determined collectively by local discussion and voting between members. Only verified Community Members can vote. Community Coordinators are responsible for coordinating the voting process and managing subsequent expenditures.

Content auditing involves reviewing, assisting, approving and releasing of Business Pages and Funding Opportunities submitted by Community Members before they go live. Marketplace auditing involves: (a) reviewing of fiat values given to products in both Commitment Pools as well as local products which may be added to the Marketplace over time, and; (b) ensuring any products added to the Marketplace were/are locally and sustainably produced. To learn more, see Community Exchange (downloadable PDF).

1. To be promoted through CM, businesses and their Funding Opportunities must be community based and work to serve both people and the environment.
2. Auditing is assisted peer to peer by giving Community Members the ability to flag content and activity which they believe to be inaccurate and/or misleading. This works because the actions of an individual impacts their neighbours too.
3. Community Coordinators can opt to moderate other content, such as blogs, comments and forum entries.

Common responses received from members of communities we’ve asked include:

1. I want to help my community to be seen and heard.
2. I would love the opportunity to be a part of something that helps my community and the environment too. Things aren’t affordable and I am worried about the climate.
3. Earning things I need by telling others about our local businesses in a way that helps them too is an awesome idea!
4. I can’t afford (or get) a loan but without investment my business will collapse.
5. Getting support, connecting and sharing with others to develop a plan and access finance, could help me to start and grow my own business.
6. I do not have a bank account, which restricts my ability to get what I need.
7. I want to use my voice to build connection and understanding in helping our world be a more equitable place.
8. We live in uncertain times and need to learn how we can meet our needs locally. We cannot risk leaving our future to AI and billionaires.

CM’s initial target demographic is people living in underserved communities – notably Global South and Indigenous – aged 18-35.

In addition to giving our partners necessary access within CM’s platform, we give you the option of voting rights within the organization itself. Becoming a Community Coordinator isn’t just about using our services, it’s a partnership meant so we can focus on what we do best. This is why we believe you need a say in how The Citizens Media^® and its platform develops and evolves.

As part of our partnership, we will work with you in using content and data collected on the platform to produce Impact & Data Analysis Reports. Although content created on the platform belongs to the person who created it, we reserve the rights to analyse its data to help identify and overcome challenges their conversations help bring to the surface.

Community Coordinators can choose to add a percent service fee to their Community’s Funding Opportunities. This fee would be in addition to the 5% service fee that’s due to CM. Money collected by Community Coordinator service fees can be used to offset administration costs – such as merchant banking fees – and costs related to inclusivity, such as the hiring of Media Facilitators.

Aside from adding service fees, finance for Community Coordinator activities will be sourced through philanthropic donations directed at you: our nonprofit and cooperative partners. The Citizens Media^® will support your funding efforts by delivering podcasts that attract attention and awareness around why we are collaborating, what’s happening and what we need. These podcasts invite engagement between the communities you work with and the wider world. Any excess funding received in this way will be distributed to participating community Funding Opportunities.

In some instances – and at such a time they become available – activities such as Media Facilitation may be supported through CM grants.