Cooperation >
competition.
We are a non-profit foundation supporting research, open standards, and education in the service of cooperative economies — the conviction that, done well, one and one make more than two.
Markets reward extraction. We fund the alternative.
The commons need stewards
Open knowledge, shared infrastructure, and cooperative tools rarely emerge from competitive incentives. Someone has to plant trees they will not sit under.
Trust is infrastructure
Trust between people, organizations, and across borders is the substrate every cooperative outcome rests on. We treat it as a real resource — measurable, fragile, worth tending.
Research before product
Before tools and standards comes careful study. We publish, in the open, what we learn — including the experiments that did not work.
Patient over urgent
Quarterly thinking has done enough damage. We work on decade-long questions and we are willing to be slow about them.
Four areas. One thesis.
Each area feeds the others. Research informs standards; standards enable tools; tools shape education; education renews the field.
Research
Studies on cooperative economies, trust networks, and the conditions under which open systems outperform closed ones.
Learn moreOpen standards
Specifications and protocols for interoperability — released under permissive licenses, governed in public.
Learn moreEducation
Workshops, fellowships, and freely-available curricula for practitioners building cooperative software, finance, and governance.
Learn morePublic infrastructure
Operating tools and registries that the field needs but no single company should own.
Learn moreActive work, in the open.
Filter by area. Everything we publish is licensed for reuse; everything we fund is reported on a public ledger.
The Trust Graph
A multi-year study mapping how trust forms, transfers, and breaks across cooperative networks of small producers.
OpenCoop Protocol
Interoperability specification for cooperative-to-cooperative trade, payment, and governance signaling.
Stewards Fellowship
A 9-month program for practitioners stewarding cooperative infrastructure in their region.
Common Ledger
A public registry of cooperative organizations, mutual commitments, and shared infrastructure across Central Europe.
Cooperation Primer
A freely-licensed introduction to cooperative economies — translated into eight languages so far.
Patient Grants Circle
Multi-year, low-bureaucracy grants for early-stage research on commons-based production.
Interop Working Group
A standing working group authoring open specifications with members from twelve cooperatives.
A foundation, and the work it makes possible.
WebTree Foundation is the steward. MakeLocal and 0cad are the operating sister entities — independent organizations, aligned charters. The split is deliberate: research and infrastructure stay non-profit; product and trade can move at their own pace.
WebTree Foundation
Holds the mission. Funds research, standards, and education. Publishes findings in the open.
- Patient capital for cooperative research
- Open standards & protocol stewardship
- Fellowships and freely-licensed curricula
- Public reporting on every grant
MakeLocal
An operating cooperative connecting small producers and conscious buyers — putting the standards into practice.
- Cooperative-to-cooperative marketplace
- Fair pricing & transparent margins
- Implements OpenCoop Protocol
- Shared profits, shared governance
0cad
An open-tools studio building software the field needs but cannot reasonably buy. Public benefit, source-available.
- Public-benefit software studio
- Source-available; permissive licenses
- Tooling for cooperative governance
- Maintained for the long term
How we work.
Open by default
Research, standards, code, financial reports — the default is public, with rare and well-justified exceptions.
Patient over performative
We measure success in years and decades. Press releases are not deliverables.
Trust as infrastructure
We invest in long relationships before transactions. Transactions follow trust, not the other way around.
Practitioner-led
Programs are designed with — not for — the people doing the work. Fellows shape the next cohort's curriculum.
Local before global
We start in Central Europe because that is where we are. Solutions earn the right to scale by working at home first.