Community Exchange has been designed to help independent organisations work together without requiring them to give up their own identity, governance or existing systems.

Unlike many online platforms that seek to bring everyone into a single application, Community Exchange provides a shared framework that enables organisations to discover one another, build trusted relationships and collaborate whilst remaining independent.

At the heart of Community Exchange is a simple idea:

People, organisations, activities and resources become more valuable when meaningful connections between them can be discovered.

A Shared Community Framework

Community Exchange brings together information about people, organisations, activities, places and shared interests into a common framework.

Rather than replacing existing websites and software, Community Exchange helps connect them through a common information model that allows relationships to be discovered across organisational boundaries.

This enables organisations to collaborate whilst continuing to manage their own affairs independently.

Building Communities Around Common Interests

The foundation of Community Exchange is the Common Bond Group.

A Common Bond Group brings together people and organisations that share a particular interest, activity, purpose or objective. A person or organisation may belong to many Common Bond Groups, allowing knowledge and opportunities to flow naturally between different communities.

Examples might include:

• Gardening
• Local history
• Community cafés
• Sports clubs
• Environmental projects
• Arts and culture
• Business networking

Many different organisations may participate in the same Common Bond Group whilst continuing to retain their own identity.

Organisations Remain Independent

Community Exchange has been designed as an open ecosystem.

Participating organisations remain free to:

• use their existing websites;
• choose Agoria or other software;
• manage their own information;
• decide what they wish to share;
• participate in one or many community networks.

Community Exchange connects organisations—it does not own them.

Agoria – An Optional Community Management Platform

Agoria is one software platform designed to work naturally within the Community Exchange ecosystem.

It provides practical tools for:

• Websites
• Membership management
• Events
• Communications
• Role-based administration
• Community information

Organisations are free to use Agoria where it meets their needs or continue using their own systems whilst participating fully in Community Exchange.

Growing Community Capital

Every new relationship strengthens the Community Exchange ecosystem.

As organisations discover one another, share resources, exchange knowledge and develop trusted partnerships, they create Community Capital—the collective knowledge, experience and relationships that enable communities to become more resilient, innovative and connected.

Community Exchange has been designed to help those connections develop naturally, creating lasting Community Capital for organisations, communities and the people they serve.