Joining Community Exchange

Participation in Community Exchange is free. 

Community Exchange has been designed to strengthen independent organisations by helping them discover opportunities, build trusted relationships and achieve more together whilst remaining completely independent.

Rather than asking organisations to complete lengthy registration forms, Community Exchange begins by helping communities establish the foundations of a shared ecosystem.

Starting with a Common Bond Group

Every Community Exchange network begins with a Common Bond Group—a shared interest or purpose around which people and organisations naturally come together.

Examples include:

• Gardening

• Racquet Sports

• Local History

• Community Cafés

• Walking Groups

• Arts and Culture

• Environmental Projects

Each Common Bond Group becomes a place where organisations, people, events and resources with shared interests can discover one another and collaborate.

Growing the Community

Community Exchange is designed to grow by cultivating communities rather than administering them.

The process is straightforward.

Existing organisations within a Common Bond Group are identified and a simple introductory profile is created using publicly available information such as:

• Organisation name

• Brief description

• Website

• Contact details

• Location

Each organisation is then invited to review its information and decide whether it wishes to participate.

Participation is entirely voluntary.

By creating an initial community before inviting organisations to participate, Community Exchange demonstrates immediate value whilst keeping the effort required from each organisation to a minimum.

Organisations Remain in Control

Community Exchange does not seek to own or control participating organisations.

Each organisation decides:

• what information it wishes to share;

• who represents it;

• which systems and websites it wishes to use;

• how actively it participates within the wider ecosystem.

Community Exchange exists to help organisations leverage their own strengths, discover new opportunities and build trusted relationships—not to change how they are governed.

A Community that Manages Itself

As participation grows, responsibility naturally moves closer to the communities themselves.

Organisations maintain their own information.

Common Bond Groups elect trusted administrators from within their own communities.

Networks elect administrators to help coordinate activity across wider geographical or specialist areas.

This distributed approach gradually transfers responsibility from the founders of the network to the communities themselves, avoiding dependence upon any single individual or organisation and enabling Community Exchange to become increasingly resilient as it grows.

Designed for Resilience

Community Exchange has been designed so that organisations remain independent even if Community Exchange itself is unavailable.

Participating organisations continue to own their websites, management systems, communications and governance.

Community Exchange provides the shared discovery and collaboration framework that connects independent organisations—it does not become a dependency for their continued operation.

Growing Community Capital

Every new organisation adds knowledge.

Every new relationship creates opportunity.

Every successful collaboration strengthens Community Capital—the collective experience, trust and connections that help communities become more resilient, innovative and supportive.

As the ecosystem grows, so does its ability to help people and organisations discover new ways of working together.

Optional Management Tools

Participation in Community Exchange does not require organisations to adopt any particular software.

For organisations wishing to make fuller use of the ecosystem, Agoria provides an optional website and management platform designed specifically to support Community Exchange.

This ClubHub website has been built using Agoria and demonstrates one way in which organisations can manage their websites, membership and community activities whilst participating in the wider Community Exchange ecosystem.

If your organisation is considering a new website or would like to discuss how Agoria could support your community, we would be pleased to hear from you.