F A Q

What is the difference between Members Features and the public site?

Only members and vetted subscribers can post on Bloom. When you become join Bloom, you gain access to loads of resources for members: templates to grow your project at each stage of development, search skills, needs and offers to find collaborators, and feature your products and services to help grow a cooperative, regenerative economy. And lots more! The purpose of our membership platform is to maintain a functional, focused place where we can support one another's efforts.

The landing page is curated in order to maintain a high quality public resource for people looking for inspiration and action templates they can do. Unless you set your post to be "members only", it will show in the main public posts feed at https://bloomnetwork.earth/posts. Non-members do not receive dividends from Bloom cooperative, and they cannot post or create a profile on the site.

The members network is designed to support:

• Deep conversations
• Incubate in progress work in a values-aligned space
• When you write a post, you have an option to make it "members only". Use that for posts you might not want publicly available, such as sharing about your healing journey, or a plant medicine experience you had, or a challenging race or social dynamic in your community that you have insights on or need help with but don’t want to invite online abuse.

The public site is curated in order to maintain a high quality public resource for people looking for inspiration and action templates they can do. Non-members do not receive dividends from Bloom cooperative, and they cannot post or create a profile on the site.

Why does Bloom charge a membership fee?

We don't charge a membership fee for members of active Local Bloom chapters, but we are in the process of making the platform be a member-owned cooperative by 2025. We do charge a monthly subscriber fee for at-large members, entrepreneurs who want to leverage our marketing services, and strategic partners.


• Members receive peer development support, payment for regenerative actions, and further media reach than many of us would be able to achieve on our own.
• Bloom makes it easier to find a team and build a local project. You have access to templates from other projects that are further along, to help you have an easier time and move faster to address the local issues you care about.
• Another reason we use a membership fee is to reduce trolls and noise. People are here because they want to be in a values aligned community doing practical action. We invest in each other and divest from extractive corporations.

Once we formalize the coop, members will co-own the platform and govern its development! (Functionally you do now, but it's pure anarchy, so please speak up if you'd like to see anything be different!).

Monthly membership fees will be low, like the cost of a subscription to Spotify. Your membership fee will go mostly to your Local Bloom treasury for local projects! and some to Bloom International which maintains Bloom Platform and provides some staff sharing with Local Blooms, so we can all support one another. This is like if you had shared ownership and governance of Facebook, and your subscription fee goes into rad stuff that makes your community a better place!

Roadmap of Bloom Platform development

What revenue streams does Bloom have?

• Subscriptions
• Affiliate marketing & sponsorships
• Investing alongside communities in local businesses and shared supply chains that generate real revenue

In the future, we'll likely implement online workshops.

Revenue will be shared between members and people maintaining the platform. Our goal is to get as much money as possible into the hands of the people on the ground doing the most important community labor in areas such as climate adaptation, better social structures, cooperative housing - you get the idea. Our operations should support a culture of mutual support.

Right now, Bloom Network is a nonprofit. The people volunteering on operations listen deeply to Local Bloom leaders to respond to their requests and needs as much as we can. There are three board members who are themselves Local Bloom organizers, and they handle administrative paperwork and financial decisions about the small amount of donations we have coming in each year.

For governance in the forthcoming cooperative, including voting rights and asset ownership, see the Bloom Network Whitepaper, Governance Section. Rights will activate upon formation of Bloom Network Limited Cooperative Association. However, please do speak up now and email community@bloomnetwork.earth if you want to see anything be different!

Bloom Network is currently nonprofit. We worked with an all-female team at Jason Weiner to design the governance and ownership of our Limited Cooperative Association / DAO hybrid. When we activate the coop, each Local Bloom hub will be a member of the DAO/cooperative, so we truly own it peer-to-peer. Each individual member will also have specific rights. The nonprofit will remain to support Local Bloom Chapters with technical assistance such as grantwriting, marketing/communications, and other support.

We have the coop governance designed, we just need to raise $20,000 or pro bono support to formally write the member agreement contracts and bylaws, and to facilitate a yearly voting cycle and cover admin costs. Once that is complete, you will receive your member agreements!