ToGather

Living Library

An evolving collection of books, frameworks, constitutions, and resources connected to fieldwork and research on intentional communities. This knowledge layer grows alongside our interviews and field notes, offering pathways for slow exploration and return visits.

Curated Collections

On How Groups Decide

6 resources

On Hosting Conversations

9 resources

Books that Reframe the Field

4 resources

On Co-Living Agreements

7 resources

Indigenous and Stateless Governance

4 resources

On Money and Common Ownership

23 resources

Federation as a Constitutional Choice

10 resources

On Conflict Resolution

11 resources

The Five Cornerstones

5 resources

Resources (150)

Twelve Design Principles of Permaculture

Frameworks
Culture & Vision
Governance
high

A design system for sustainable human settlement and agriculture, grounded in three ethics and twelve operational principles. Practiced directly by communities in the ToGather archive across Portugal and India.

2002

The Mietshaeuser Syndikat: A Network Against Selling

Frameworks
Economy
Governance
deep

A German network of 170-plus collectively owned housing projects that can never be sold. Founded in Freiburg in 1992 by housing activists from the autonomous left and squatter movements. Each house is a GmbH with two shareholders: the residents' association and the Syndikat, which holds one share carrying a permanent veto over any decision to sell. Financing comes from Direktkredite, direct loans from solidarity lenders at below-market rates, typically 0.5 to 2.5 percent.

Steward-Ownership: Separating Profit Rights from Voting Rights

Frameworks
Economy
Governance
deep

A legal structure in which a company's voting rights and profit rights are permanently separated. Stewards hold the voting shares and cannot sell them; profits above a capped return are reinvested in the mission or donated. The structure dates to Ernst Abbe's 1889 transfer of Carl Zeiss in Jena; the Purpose Foundation named and systematized it around 2015. Patagonia completed the most visible contemporary transfer in September 2022, directing roughly $100 million per year in profits to the Holdfast Collective.

Les Pas-Sages: The Cooperative of Uses Model

Frameworks
Economy
Governance
deep

A non-speculative housing cooperative in Lyon, France, legally constituted in 2016, housing 36 households on the Presqu'ile peninsula. Members hold usage rights rather than property titles, pay a monthly charge d'usage instead of rent or a mortgage, and cannot capture any appreciation in the building's value when they leave. One of the first documented instances of the French cooperative d'habitants form created by the 2014 loi ESS.

Community Land Trust: Non-Speculative Land Ownership

Frameworks
Economy
Governance
deep

A land trust model in which a nonprofit holds land permanently and leases it to residents who own the buildings above it. When a resident sells, a formula limits what they can take out, keeping the home affordable for the next buyer. New Communities Inc. in Georgia launched the first CLT in 1969; the Champlain Housing Trust in Burlington, Vermont, is the most documented case with more than 650 homes held permanently affordable.

The Communitarian Economy: Trust-Based Donation Funding at Tamera

Frameworks
Economy
Governance
Belonging
deep

The financial model that has sustained Tamera, a peace research village of around 100 people in southern Portugal, since 1995: no membership fees, no salaries, no ownership of the land. The community runs on donations and on income from week-long seminars on love, water, and peace research. Diogo Serras Lopes and Vera describe it as a political will-based economy: the funding exists because people who share the vision choose to sustain it.

Pay Solidarity: Wage Ratios in Worker Cooperatives

Frameworks
Economy
Governance
deep

The practice of capping the ratio between the lowest and highest paid workers in a cooperative, most famously established at Mondragon in 1956 at 3:1 by Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta. The ratio has since drifted to 9:1 at Mondragon following international expansion; other cooperatives hold ratios from 1:1 (Suma Wholefoods) to 8:1 (Organic Valley). Documented across the worker cooperative movement as the primary mechanism for institutionalizing economic solidarity.

Labor Credit Systems: The Twin Oaks Model

Frameworks
Economy
Governance
deep

The contribution-tracking system developed at Twin Oaks, Virginia, in 1967, in which every approved task carries a credit value and members sign up for roughly 42 hours of credited work per week. Credit balances determine standing; no cash changes hands between members. Documented in Kat Kinkade's A Walden Two Experiment and still in use at Twin Oaks after more than five decades.

Pooled Income and Needs-Based Maintenance: The Commune Economy

Frameworks
Economy
Governance
Belonging
deep

The income-sharing model used by Twin Oaks, Acorn, and the Federation of Egalitarian Communities: all earned income goes into a common fund, all needs are met from it equally, and no member holds personal savings. Documented in Kat Kinkade's 1973 account and practiced at Twin Oaks for more than fifty years. Kibbutz Samar in Israel's Arava desert ran an open-money variant for its first decade before partially privatizing.

Restorative Justice and Transformative Justice (1990 onward)

Frameworks
high

Three overlapping frameworks for addressing harm without incarceration. Restorative Justice (Howard Zehr, 1990, Mennonite tradition) asks what harm was done, who is responsible, and how it can be repaired. Restorative Circles (Dominic Barter, mid-1990s, Brazilian favelas) adds a three-stage community facilitation structure. Transformative Justice (INCITE! and Generation FIVE, 2000s, abolitionist feminist) adds the question of what conditions produced the harm and how to change them. Used in schools, criminal justice, and intentional communities navigating consent and accountability.

Holacracy (Brian Robertson, 2007; Constitution v5.0, 2021)

Frameworks
high

A full-scale governance operating system built around a published Constitution now at version 5.0 (2021). Brian Robertson developed it at Ternary Software in Philadelphia from 2001 and co-founded HolacracyOne in 2007 to implement and license it. All authority flows through explicitly defined roles nested in circles; two meeting cadences, governance and tactical, are kept strictly separate. Zappos adopted it in 2013 for 1,500 employees; roughly 260 employees took a buyout rather than comply, and the company had quietly modified the system by 2019.

Sociocracy For Communities (SoFA + FIC, 2016 onward)

Courses
Governance
Culture & Vision
Belonging
high

A 10-hour pre-recorded course on sociocracy governance, taught by Ted Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez of Sociocracy For All (SoFA) and hosted by the Foundation for Intentional Community (FIC). Five classes covering linked circles, consent decision-making, feedback design, meetings, and implementation strategies. Built for residential and forming communities. $79-$129 USD sliding scale.

The Tyranny of Structurelessness (Jo Freeman, 1970/1972)

Articles
Governance
Conflict
Culture & Vision
Belonging
high

Jo Freeman's foundational 1970 essay (delivered as a talk in Beulah, Mississippi; published in The Second Wave 1972, Berkeley Journal of Sociology 1972-73, Ms. magazine 1973) that delivered the structural critique of leaderless organizing from inside the women's liberation movement. The argument: there is no such thing as a structureless group, and the rhetoric of structurelessness becomes a way of masking power. The seven principles of democratic structuring that close the essay are the operational ancestor of every contemporary participatory governance framework.

Liberating Structures (Lipmanowicz & McCandless, 2014)

Toolkits
Governance
Culture & Vision
Belonging
high

An open Creative Commons library of 33 named facilitation methods developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless and incubated at the Plexus Institute. Each method is defined by the same five design elements (Structuring Invitation, Space and Materials, Participation Distribution, Group Configuration, Sequence and Time) and is designed to be picked up and used by anyone, not only by trained facilitators. The motto: including and unleashing everyone.

Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987)

Toolkits
Governance
Culture & Vision
Belonging
high

A strengths-based method for group inquiry and organizational change developed by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva at Case Western Reserve University in the 1980s. The 4D cycle (Discover, Dream, Design, Destiny) is built around the premise that organizations evolve in the direction of the questions they most persistently ask. Now one of the foundational practices in dialogic organizational development and the Art of Hosting facilitation family.

Theory U (Otto Scharmer, 2007)

Books
Governance
Culture & Vision
Belonging
high

Otto Scharmer's 2007 book introduces presencing, an awareness-based approach to leading deep change drawn from 150 interviews with innovators and thought leaders. The U-process moves a group from downloading past patterns, through seeing and sensing, to presencing at the bottom of the U, then up through crystallizing, prototyping, and performing. The line at the heart of the book, from the late Bill O'Brien: the success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervenor.

Circle / The Way of Council

Toolkits
Governance
Conflict
Culture & Vision
Belonging
high

An ancient meeting form gathered into modern shape by two parallel lineages: the Way of Council (Ojai Foundation, Zimmerman & Coyle, 1980 onward, codified 1996) and The Circle Way (Christina Baldwin & Ann Linnea, PeerSpirit, 1994 onward, codified 2010). A center, a rim, a talking piece, a guardian, and three principles plus three practices that make a different kind of speech possible.

ProAction Café

Frameworks
Governance
Culture & Vision
Belonging
high

A small-group facilitation method that turns a roomful of personal projects into structured peer coaching, in three rounds of twenty-five minutes each. Designed in Brussels around 2005 by Rainer von Leoprechting and Ria Baeck as a blend of Open Space Technology and World Café, now a core method in the Art of Hosting network worldwide.

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