One Project builds technology and coordinates resources to advance economic democracy, a governance model where communities directly control budgets, land, labor, and investment decisions. Its platform, Common, is live across six regions and four languages, enabling participants to direct hundreds of thousands of dollars toward community-identified needs. The organization combines digital tools, advocacy, and resource allocation to scale participatory budgeting, worker cooperatives, and community investment funds.
Funding
Funding not disclosed
Founders
Product
Problem
Traditional economic systems allocate resources based on profitability rather than community well-being, leading to outcomes like environmental destruction, public health crises, and the underfunding of essential services. Philanthropy and conventional governance have proven insufficient to correct these incentive misalignments, leaving communities without meaningful control over the decisions that shape their lives.
Solution
One Project builds the infrastructure to scale economic democracy—a model where the people most affected by economic decisions make them. Through its platform Common, the organization provides technology that enables participatory budgeting, worker cooperatives, community land trusts, and community investment funds to operate at scale. The platform is live across six regions and four languages, and participants have already directed hundreds of thousands of dollars toward their actual priorities. One Project combines digital infrastructure with advocacy and resource deployment to help communities gain control over budgets, land, labor, and investment decisions.
Target Audience
Primary users include community organizations, municipal governments, worker cooperatives, and civic groups seeking to implement participatory budgeting, community land trusts, and other economic democracy mechanisms.
Features
- Common platform supports participatory budgeting, enabling residents to directly allocate public funds to community-selected projects
- Multi-region, multi-language deployment supporting economic democracy initiatives across six regions and four languages
- Tools for establishing and managing community land trusts and community investment funds
- Technology stack designed to coordinate worker cooperatives and participatory governance structures
- Resource-directing mechanisms that channel funding toward community-identified needs rather than profit-driven outcomes
- Advocacy infrastructure that makes the case for incentive redesign across economic systems