Looking back on the last 13 years since launching Shareable in 2009, we’ve been incredibly fortunate to have accomplished much of our initial goal of bringing the transformative power of sharing to the mainstream. 

In partnership with this global community, we’ve produced more than 4,500 stories, 300 ‘how-to’ guides, 12 books, 2 podcast series, and an award-winning film. We’ve advised city leaders, community organizers, and startups from around the world. We’ve also led or partnered on dozens of campaigns that have mapped out community resources in over 100 cities, moved billions of dollars to support the cooperative sector, and demonstrated how sharing can lead to lasting change.

Through all these initiatives, we’ve been able to establish a consistent track record of making a significant impact with a small core team and a modest budget.

Over the past few months, our staff and board have been reimagining Shareable’s role in the world and are coalescing around a renewed direction for the organization.

Up until now, much of our work has focused on publishing stories about the projects, policies, and initiatives that are working in the world. While we still think this is important work, we want to focus more on the next step of supporting readers to move from inspiration to action.

We’ve landed on what we want to offer but are still figuring out how to do it most effectively.

With an underlying intention to prioritize working with high-potential (historically marginalized) areas, we plan to offer direct support to local organizers and communities attempting to adapt and replicate proven initiatives. One pathway to accomplish this is to expand upon our extensive archive of How-To articles and supplemental resources as both a starting ground and launching pad. At the moment, these are the programs we’re considering:

• 3-6 month Learning and Action Cohorts: Facilitated courses with toolkits, expert advice, and peer support to enable individuals and groups to start or expand initiatives not requiring a large amount of capital or infrastructure. These could include things like community composting, intersection repair, community pantries, or mutual aid funds.

• 12-18 month Project Fellowships: Paid fellowships and expert advice to start capital (social, financial, and/or political) or infrastructure-intensive projects like a Library of Things (LoT), bike kitchens, community internet, or free stores.

• Facilitated Peer Support Network: This platform would operate as an action and support network, connecting team members and community practitioners with others who are developing similar projects at the same time.

In order to make this transition successful, we’re asking for your participation in our comprehensive field review. We’re tapping into this incredible knowledge base to get a better idea about how our resources have supported the community, what other programs and methodologies are out there, who we should consider partnering with, and how to most appropriately offer our support to community members.

We have ambitious goals and believe we can reach them with the support of the Shareable community. Your continued support and engagement are the reason we’ve accomplished as much as we have in our short time — and we’re excited to do more together!

It’d mean a lot to us if you would participate in this brief survey (it should take less than 10 minutes) and share your opinion on what Shareable means to you, and where you see us going in the future. We’ll be collecting and reviewing community members’ responses until Friday, September 30.

In solidarity,

Team Shareable