Transformative Change Master Resource List: Scaling Wellbeing Economies
Growing list of vital links to help us go from problem-focused to solution-focused action at scale
[Last updated: 7th March 2025]
Note: while I strive to make this as comprehensive as possible, this movement goes by so many different names (127+ and counting), it is by no means complete. Please add your suggestions in the comments and we will continue to expand the resource.
Whether you are a socialist or a philanthrocapitalist, or however you're going about changing the world and inspiring others to change the world into one that works for everyone, here’s a list of resources, things you might want to know, organisations, and links to practical steps for scaling collective action where it’s most leveraged: through the economy and inspiring a critical mass of people to action.
Primer
We prioritise alignment over agreement for the most effective solutions. There are many different movements, all attempting to achieve the same collective goals. Going by different names, we often remain siloed off from one another, but partnership and collaboration are key.
The people at the top collaborate and coordinate, and that’s part of why they’re so effective at maintaining control. Much like what the Powell memo did to organise corporations against the interests of the people, we are creating action guides to reverse this at scale, a #BelieveDifferent / #Wellbeing economy #metoo-like movement, followed up with onboarding and practical next steps for anyone to take action, that transforms their lives, while also fractally contributing to the collective movements locally and globally — and probably most importantly, pointing people to the resources and movements already happening all around them, rather than trying to be one top-down platform, through a Connection Engine.
Part of collaborating is being able to align even if we don’t agree. Yasuhiko Genku Kimura’s Alignment Beyond Agreement is essential reading for this work. It’s dense, but it’s only 16 pages. Other important primers are Donnella Meadows’ Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System (another short read) and for a deeper dive into the systems theory and why simply changing the purpose of a system fundamentally changes its behavior (business for purpose over profit), see her book Thinking in Systems (230ish pages).
Businesses are just systems. We currently rely on extractive businesses to get our needs met, but what if we created regenerative ones as alternatives to start moving to? We already are. And leveraging these frameworks leverages our collective power.
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Here are some more theory-based frameworks that are essential if you want to be as informed and effective as possible while inspiring others to take action:
Asset-Based Community Development (Done to us / for us / with us / by us model)
MAYA Principle / Four letter code to selling anything (Meet people where they are at, one step away from their current “normal” in order to inspire change in them)
Game Theory - Cooperation will take over when small pockets of cooperation start to scale
The Law of Diffusion of Innovation - How great leaders inspire action - Simon Sinek - Essential watch for organising at scale.
Damon Centola on Virality (how the #metoo movement actually worked)
The Value of Tribes & Tribulations - This will be difficult — but that’s a good thing.
The surprising truth about what motivates us - Dan Pink - Simon Sinek also talks about this, both are essential for understanding how to get people to take action, especially without being able to offer financial incentives
Becoming famous in your industry - Daniel Priestley - Practical steps to leverage social influence in your niche, Priestley also has loads of content centered around creating demand and crafting influence at scale.
Here are the keywords (each linking to an associated organisation, though there are typically several orgs associated with each label) for known movements that align even if they don’t agree.
Please add yours to the comments if I’ve missed any (which I’m sure I have!).
Keywords
I have so far discovered 249+ terms, movemements, frameworks, etc. for the better world we are all trying to create. These are all different ways of creating solutions for the same problem. Here is a partial list. What if we had a unified messaging that was broadcast over all our diverse networks that inspired people to start taking small actions that improved their own lives and scaled to create communities and economies based on our wellbeing?
regenerative economy, community wealth building, solidarity economy, sharing economy (mutual aid focused), collaborative economy, social economy / social enterprise, new economy, doughnut economics, philanthrocapitalism, gift economy, degrowth, circular economy, zeitgeist movement, open source, anticapitalism, socialism (UK), communism (UK), economy for the common good, democratising work, postgrowth, beyond growth, regenerative capitalism, cooperative movement (UK, International), reconomy, open source & p2p, circle economy, the commons, global commons, community capitalism, compassionate capitalism, conscious capitalism, …
Full list and more on the unified messaging strategy here.
Any I’m missing anything here? Please let me know in the comments!
Why Wellbeing Economy / Community Wealth?
We believe these are the most effective terms, but terms may need abandoning altogether. Let me explain.
From a marketing perspective, psychologically people only ever act on their own wellbeing in the areas of health, wealth, relationships (community), happiness, and relatability. Content also needs to be entertaining, educational, inspiring, or relatable to gain their attention. They tend to shy away from anything framed in the negative (degrowth/anticapitalism) or anything that’s been politicised, unless they are personally motivated for other reasons, which means we only capture outliers using siloed terms.
It’s effective to use these terms with your ingroup, and to find your ingroup, hwoever anything directed at the general public can be far more effective when framed in terms of how it helps with ones personal wellbeing, politics and ideology aside.
It is often most effective to simply offer solutions without framing them as part of any one movement or ism, but in terms of simply how they will benefit the person directly.
In marketing, we call this selling the sizzle, not the steak. It’s also framed as selling the benefit of the product, rather than the product itself.
So we can actually bypass these terms altogether, share stories of people and communities building this for themselves (a la Antidote Live’s work), ask people to #BelieveDifferent (I have a whole nother article coming on how we can utilise Apple’s techniques to catalyse change btw, so subscribe for that!), and demystify the practical steps toward pursuing that for themselves.
Another quick principle I’ll throw in here is: make the language accessible. A very small percentage of the population understand or be interest in siloed terms like regeneration and permaculture, and you’ll fry their brains with terms like “multi stakeholder value.”
Keep it simple, expand your audience.
Please see my pinned Tiktok on why I am focusing here on business for purpose, social enterprises, and actions that shape economics in general. For this reason, you won’t see any protest, unionising, or reform-oriented action strategies here and we’ll keep the focus on creating new systems vs resisting old.
3,000 people a DAY try to start a business in the UK. Most don’t make it. But there is a way to make it, and create social and economic change at the same time. What could we achieve if we directed the flow of that collective power and combined it with the power activists are already using to resist the old systems?
At the core is the principle that small acts really do shape the world. Solving a problem for one person that also solves systemic problems is often more effective than top-down attempting to solve a system problem. But you can solve systemic problems with the correct strategies at the individual level, and the most effective way to start a business? Solve a problem for one person.
Other Substacks to Follow in this Space
I am highlighting here other Substack publications that focus on practical solutions, especially when driven by ordinary people, and strategies we can employ as changemakers. Anyone I missed? Please drop their link in the comments.
That Better World - J. Thomas Dunn
Greedbane - Links directly to Resource Hub (Which does have some resist-oriented orgs if interested)
What can we do? - Grace Blakeley
Planet: Coordinate - Rachel Donald (Planet Critical also)
Who did I miss? Let me know in the comments.
Alright, let’s get down to the resources and links.
Media Orgs & Influencers
AntidoteLive - UK based, Sharing stories of people creating their own solutions. Rachel Donald a related contact, she’s off making a film currently.
HelpBnk (Simon Squibb) - Just direct links to his sites, I have yet to find an article that dives into his community wealth strategies, but here’s a Tiktok I did pointing it out. I spoke with him recently and he’s doing this on intuition to “free humanity,” and doesn’t understand the systems theory behind the effectiveness of waking people up to following their passions. What most people aren’t aware of is he’s also building white label platforms and brick and mortar businesses where all the profits go back to funding people’s dreams. He used to call himself Robinhood a lot. I’ll let you intuit from that what you will.
Codie Sanchez, buying boring Mainstreet / High Street businesses, boomers are retiring and their farms and businesses are being sold out to major corporations with no one to take them over, funneling more and more money out of communities. Codie inspires people to buy these “boring businesses”
Michael Mezzatesta - Using social media to spread ideas for a better future, association with Wellbeing Economy Alliance
Freewater.io - Isn’t an influencer or media company per se, but shows the power of virality and how we can use creative economics at scale. Website here.
Pioneers Post - UK based. The Social Enterprise Magazine.
Who did I miss? Let me know in the comments.
Global Orgs
Wellbeing Economy Alliance - collab of changemakers working together to transform the economic system
IPBES Transformative Change Assessment (PDF) (Contact: Karen O’Brien, Substack Article)
Bioregional Weaving - The Design School for Regerating Earth, Video Intro/2025 Vision
BioFi - Connects finances to organisations leading transformational change.
Philanthrocapitalism (See Third Sector’s End of Charity podcast, Mr Beast episode) The problem with this model is what ABCD solves, have yet to see them combined.
Common Wealth - Reimagining ownership, deep research into long term prosperity models
Local Futures - Pioneering worldwide localisation movement
Ashoka - Everyone a changemaker, community for individual social entrepreneurs
Collective Action Network - Network of initiatives to join
DEAL - Doughnut Economics Action Lab
Funding the Commons - Get involved in creating the global commons.
Who did I miss? Let me know in the comments.
National (UK)
Union of Stewards of Employee Ownership — this is an important one as, people in the business world will tend to sell out to larger corporations, however they can actually reap a greater return in many cases by selling to the employees.
Power to Change - Bringing back the High Street
CLES - Center for Local Economic Strategies - National organisation for local economies (Neil McInroy, not sure what org he works for now, known for saying community wealth building “fundamentally rewires wealth and power”)
Asset-Based Community Development (Contact: Cormac Russell, Highlight: Done to you / for you / with you / by you model of social and economic change)
Citizens Collective (Contact: Jon Alexander, Discord Community link in article)
Social Change Nest - Access funding, infrastructure, admin support
National (US)
James Seriph / Frequency - James has tonne of contact with people who will invest in large social change tech / platforms / projects
New Economy Coalition - Core of the Solidarity Economy movement in the US.
Local Scale Playbook - Creating local projects that scale (Bioregional / Regenerative)
The US list is a real work in progress, stay tuned, and please add your suggestions in the comments.
National (Other)
Mondragon - link is to article with more info. Most successful cooperative ecosystem – this is the best article I’ve found on it) Direct link to their website here.
Organisations Leading Local Change
Kindred - UK, Creating a social economy in Liverpool City Region
Cooperation Hull - Hull UK, early stage, tonnes of momentum, and killer Youtube videos
Drivers Cooperative Colorado - Colorado US, (Early stages, preceded by Holoholo rideshare in Hawaii), could go national
Who else? Let me know in the comments about movements going on locally with some traction.
Practical Steps & Guides
The Democracy Collab’s Action Guide for Advancing Community Wealth Building in the US.
For UK, see this guide from Economic Development Association Scotland.
Michael Muyot’s blueprint for building regnerative economic zones. (Book)
Radical Help by Hilary Cottam: How we can remake the relationships between us and revolutionise the welfare state. (Book)
Local Action Guide from Local Futures - Guide for leading local change, whether starting a business or other measures.
Shareable - Toolkits for building Libraries of Things, mutual aid)
If you are in the UK and want to get started of a business of your own, please join us on our weekly webinars at Startup Assist UK for practical steps and to cut through the chaff to practical advice and support. I am looking for a US company that does this as well.
How to build an Open Source Company.
Some of the orgs listed under previous headings may have practical steps and guides as well, will add them here as I can.
Generally, you can take any business advice or frameworks and adapt them to organising, force amplifying your efforts.
Global Platforms, Platform Cooperatives, P2P, Open Source
Hylo (lots of bioregional groups organising here, free community platform)
Simbi (US based, 200k users, mutual aid facilitator, potential for global use)
Barterchain (Soon to be Barterfolk, bartering facilitator internationally, early stage, potential for global use)
Time4Good (Cornwall based, focused on microvolunteering for charities, potential for global use)
P2P Networks Global - Wiki with links to P2P and Open Cooperativism orgs & platforms
Comingle - An app for collectively sharing funds
Sharebay (like eBay, but free!)
There is a growing movement of startup people-owned social media sites, platforms to network based on decentralisation and AT protocol.
Books & Further Reading
For those looking to do a deeper dive, here is a list of recommended reads, suggest purchasing from Bookshop.org.
Less is More: How Degrowth Saves the World - Jason Hickel
Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer
Let This Radicalise You - Kelly Hayes & Marianne Kaba
Onward at Last - Kevin Howard
Emergent Strategy - Adrienne Maree Brown
Thinking in Systems - Donnella Meadows
Beloved Economics - Jess Rimington, Joanna L. Cea
Solidarity - Leah Hunt-Hendrix & Astra Taylor
Zero Marginal Cost Society - Jeremy Rifkin
Viral Justice - Ruha Benjamin
Team of Teams - General Stanley McChrystal
Citizens - Jon Alexander with Ariane Conrad
The Connected Community - Cormac Russell
Change: How to Make Big Things Happen - Damon Centola
Plurality: The future of collaborative technology and democracy
Doughnut Economics - Kate Raworth
We Do This Until We Free Us - Mariame Kaba
Leaders Eat Last - Simon Sinek
Image credit: Think. Innovate. Educate., Wanda Hopkins Mclure
I hope this resource list has been helpful. Please comment and share below if you have anything to add to the list!
Excellent list! I know how long it takes to not only put together, but to find these initiatives in the first place and then cohere them into some sort of meaningful framework—well done!
If I may comment on one angle that seems to be missing. For that I need a bit of an analogy. All religions have their artifacts. Artifacts from one religion are meaningless in another. Religions are a belief system. Capitalism is a belief system. Capitalism has artifacts (markets, money, material goods and a supply chain).
The list you have compiled represents an alternative belief system to Capitalism. Many of them still rely on the artifacts of Capitalism. In other words, they are still dependent on the belief system they claim to transcend. At best they can be more effective. At worst they are hypocritical.
This is part of the lack of coherence we've discussed elsewhere. It's a tricky one to resolve, and I'm not suggesting there is a 'right' or 'wrong' way here. All I can do is point out the incoherence, and since you have a marketing slant, you'll understand why this is important. It's part of what I'm trying to address in my own Substack.
Let's tackle this thorny challenge in unison!
Thank you for sharing this list. I’m a nomad myself, and community has been feeling rather elusive lately.