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Catalyze

Traditional media campaigns, influencers, viral content, and word of mouth marketing can be used to spread simple ideas, but on their own, they do not lead to behavior change.

Social change happens through trusted relationships and social networks. We can catalyze change by communicating with the people around us, forming support groups for collective learning and problem solving, partnering and trading with each other, creating connections across traditional divides, and joining together for collective action.

Good Market was designed to support social networks. This includes communities of place that focus on a local geographical area and communities of practice that come together around a common purpose or a shared structure, service, or practical challenge.

Amplify and Collaborate

Good Market approved enterprises that support other enterprises are able to create a free network page to highlight and connect their community. There are network pages for informal support groups, member organizations, certifiers, retailers, enterprise service providers, coworking spaces, online platforms, and more.

If you are already part of a network, you can use the Good Market platform to amplify your work and collaborate with others.

Visibility: Create a network page with your own logo, story, and community. Attract new members, partners, or supporters. Direct traffic to your own site or platform

Directory: Showcase your network. Reduce administrative costs through user-generated content and easy maintenance. Automatically generate a searchable map and list of members.

Marketplace: Highlight products, services, events, campaigns, investment opportunities, vacancies, and other opportunities from your network members. Generate revenue through a white label marketplace on your domain or by providing additional services to network members.

Curation: Use the online application and crowdsourced monitoring system as free primary curation for your own services.

Communication: Facilitate communication with your network members. (under development)

Networks that already have their own platforms, directories, marketplaces, and community spaces are welcome to link to those.

Engage and Build

If you’re not part of a network yet, you can use the community platform to find and connect with groups in your region or international networks working on issues you care about. Many existing networks are open to starting new local chapters or issue based groups. If you can’t find a good fit, join together with others and build your own community. 😊

Here are some examples of initiatives that support the development of trust, relationships, and social networks and can help catalyze behavior change.

Groups

Informal online groups and local groups are easy to start and can provide valuable peer support. They help build relationships, create a sense of community, and make it easier to share information and coordinate short-term campaigns and events. Most of these groups are sustained through voluntary action. More structured membership organizations and networks tend to provide additional services. They can mobilize resources, increase political voice, and support sustained collective action. Self-sustaining strategies may include member fees, events, and freemium services. In some regions, these networks may be dependent on government support, international aid, or other forms of project funding.

Gatherings

Regular events and gatherings can support new connections and relationships, increase visibility, provide inspiration, spread ideas and innovations, and strengthen shared identity. Examples include regular local meetups, forums, summits, unconferences, festivals, and retreats. Local meetups are often organized at free public venues and can be sustained through voluntary action. Larger gatherings are often sustained through entrance fees, ticket sales, or sponsorship from mission-aligned partners.

Marketplaces

Marketplaces are gatherings that support the exchange of goods and services. They can serve as a valuable incubator by enabling enterprises to test or launch new products, share their stories, raise awareness, and build trust and relationships with customers and trading partners. They also support connection between enterprises and make it easier to identify market opportunities. Frequency usually depends on the mission. Markets focused on local food systems may be daily or weekly, markets focused on zero waste goods or creative industries may be monthly or seasonal, and trade shows focused on wholesale buyers are usually annual. Self-sustaining strategies include space rental, trade margins, member fees, entrance fees, or ticket sales.

Shared Spaces

Shared spaces include coworking offices, commercial kitchens, makerspaces, community gardens, collective retail outlets, and other common facilities. In addition to reducing startup costs and environmental impact, they can help build relationships between enterprises and make it easier to share information and start new collaborative initiatives. Launching a shared space may require more time and upfront investment than a group, gathering, or marketplace event, but they are often easier to sustain. The most common strategy is space rental by area or time. Other strategies include member fees, service fees, ticket sales for events, and trade margins for retail.

Guarantee Systems

Participatory guarantee systems are most well known in organic agriculture, but they can be used by any group that wants to develop community owned standards, a verification process, and a label. For example, the World Fair Trade Organization has a guarantee system for fair trade social enterpries. All participants in a guarantee system have an incentive to maintain transparent standards and demonstrate the credibility of the process. This builds trust with buyers, but it also builds trust between participating producers and enterprises. Guarantee systems tend to be most viable when they are linked to market access. They are usually sustained through visit fees and certificate fees with prices set to cover actual costs.

Enterprise Services

Enterprise service providers may offer generalized services like coaching, consulting, training, and accelerator programs or more specialized services like social procurement, ecommerce, retail, distribution, or third-party certification. Most service providers start out by providing direct services with little interactions between clients, but because they work with multiple enterprises, there is potential for a broader ecosystem role. This could include matchmaking, facilitated information exchange, online community spaces, support groups, alumni networks, and collective action around shared challenges. This is usually sustained through sliding scale service fees, membership, or subscriptions.

Community Finance

Access to financial services is often a critical constraint in the new economy movement. Some networks come together to specifically address this challenge through initiatives like community currencies, mutual credit, credit unions, cooperative insurance, revolving loan funds, crowdfunding platforms, and community investment networks. This approach builds relationships and also helps ensure that resources circulate within the new economy movement. Small-scale mutual organizations are often sustained through voluntary action. Larger initiatives may be sustained through membership, interest payments, service fees, or margins.

Good Market started in Sri Lanka through weekly marketplace events, an organic participatory guarantee system, and shared retail spaces. Resources from these initiatives are freely available here. If you’re interested in starting something similar in your region, get in touch.