For everyone who wants to build cooperative ecosystems
Contribute to the engine for systemic shifts.
SundRoot directs resources to a cooperative economy. Philanthropists, foundations and catalytic capital — together with everyone who contributes with work, time, energy, knowledge, skill, capacity and potential. Your contribution isn’t consumed by one project — it activates ecosystems that make a difference and that, with every turn, strengthen themselves, reinvest and support wave after wave of enterprises and initiatives. Already in motion in Malmö.
Live
A cooperative network in Malmö meeting every month around shared solutions.
3–5
Cooperative initiatives per year is the target — startups and conversions.
100%
Transparent finances — every krona tracked openly on Open Collective.
Systemic change
We pour billions into saving those who fall. No one fixes the bridge.
We’re stuck managing crises our own structures produce. Immense resources go into rescuing people who fall from a broken bridge. Some are saved. But the bridge stays broken — and so we keep falling.
SundRoot rebuilds the bridge. By seeding networks of locally anchored SMEs and cooperatives, we create social economies that feed common funds — which reinvest into more social economy, education and infrastructure. Structure instead of band-aids.
Project funding runs out. Ecosystems grow by themselves.
Traditional funding — grants, projects, charity — must be refilled from zero every time. NGOs and non-profits are dependent on an inherently extractive economy that does more damage from its structural injustices than any charity can then recoup and fix. What if we built a nicer economic engine that funds our needs? SundRoot strives to build a structure where capital circulates, multiplies and stays in society.
The project logic
Fund → consume → start over
- Every initiative seeks money separately, over and over
- When the project ends, the capacity disappears
- Effects are rarely measured — and never rewarded
- Administration is duplicated in every isolated org
- Profits are extracted out of the local community
The ecosystem logic
Invest → reflow → multiply
- One pooled capital serves the whole network of enterprises
- Surplus is reinvested — every success funds the next
- Verified societal effects count toward the return
- Shared services: bookkeeping, IT, legal — once for all
- Value stays and grows where it was created
The engine
A chain reaction.
Click the steps. Each turn of the wheel makes the next one stronger — that’s what separates an engine from a fundraiser.
Already real
This isn’t a vision on paper. It’s already running.
SundRoot builds concretely, enterprise by enterprise, in the Malmö region. Here’s what’s already rolling — and what starts next.
Cooperative network in Malmö
Meets monthly around food, mingling and a theme. Has already driven shared solutions — bookkeeping, IT and a common platform for marketing and resource sharing.
Technology cooperative
Building the ecosystem’s shared digital presence, exploring co-op needs like bookkeeping software, delivering open source and exploring procurement opportunities.
Women’s cooperative in Lindängen
The startup process is already underway: foreign-born women give themselves fair jobs and lift themselves, their families and their neighborhoods.
Händiga Laget
A trades cooperative — a shared platform for electricians, plumbers, carpenters and technicians, where part of the profit goes to the common fund.
Delstuga & the housing fund
Shared nature cottages generate income to the fund, which matches the next group’s starting capital. A chain reaction toward affordable rents and community land trusts.
Local funds & mutual aid
A network of local companies contributing to local funds to lift neighborhoods together — a chain reaction where the next area gets its help.
Education & incubation
Continuous dialogue with folk high schools, popular education, vocational colleges and academia to realize cooperative ideas as part of the ecosystem.
Impact measurement & investment platform
Impact-oriented SROI and an investment platform. Preparatory talks with partners are underway; full focus once more enterprises are part of the ecosystem.
The path forward
From the near future to the far future.
Now — in motion
Laying the foundation
- Cooperative network, monthly
- Tech cooperative building the backbone
- Women’s cooperative in Lindängen
- Common shared services
2026-2027
More enterprises
- Händiga Laget this autumn
- Delstuga & housing fund this spring
- Target: 3–5 cooperatives per year. Our ecosystem is lively and new initiatives pop-up all the time which our fund wants to support
- Courses & incubation with popular education
2027–29
The engine scales
- Local funds & community land trusts
- A city-wide fund for all of Malmö
- Impact measurement & SROI with effektfullt.org
- Investment platform
Horizon
A self-sustaining ecosystem
- A regional economic engine that drives itself
- An impact token currency that keeps score of societal benefits
- A model that can be replicated across regions
A living ecosystem
New initiatives are popping up all the time.
It's a lively ecosystem where new initiatives pop up all the time across different areas. The money helps start many enterprises that in turn help the next ones when they're viable. This is more exciting than the shark tank and traditional startup scene — things are happening here. Every month you can listen to social entrepreneurs making a difference and invest in societal returns. You're welcome!
Read the documentation on Bloom Network ↗Dual return
Societal return: prevention becomes an investment, not a cost.
When a cooperative provides livelihoods, prevents ill health or lifts a neighborhood, real savings arise for municipality, healthcare and insurance. With independent impact measurement — which we want to explore with effektfullt.org — the actors who actually saved money can pay back a share to the fund and its investors.
Verified societal effect
Independent impact measurement
Societal actor saves
Municipality, region, insurance
The ecosystem fund
A share of the saving flows back
Grounded in reality
Every part of the model is already proven — somewhere.
The model invents nothing from zero. It brings together mechanisms that have each already worked for decades, at scale, on different continents.
The reinvestment engine
Mondragón, Basque Country
80,000 worker-owners, over 100 cooperatives. Its own bank pools savings and finances the next cooperative. Nearly 70 years of proof.
Since 1956
Ordinary people’s capital
Community Shares, UK
Over 500 businesses funded by thousands of small savers. 92% still operating. One vote per member, not per pound.
Co-operatives UK
Saving as return
Outcome contracts, health
Preventive asthma care in Fresno: fewer ER visits, thousands saved per child — and the saving repays the investors.
Social impact bonds
Effects as currency
Grassroots Economics, Kenya
Community currencies backed by real local production — not debt. Over a decade in operation. The model SundRoot is now adapting to Malmö.
grassecon.org
Anchor institutions
Evergreen, Cleveland
Hospitals and universities direct their procurement to local worker cooperatives. Purchasing power that used to leave the city — stays and builds it.
Cleveland Model
Incentives that work
Employee Ownership Trusts, UK
From zero to 2,500 employee-owned firms in ten years. The right incentives at ownership transitions move whole companies into common ownership.
UK Finance Act 2014
The model
How the capital flows — and flows back.
Capital circulates: surplus and societal savings flow back and feed the ecosystem again. Built for blended finance — philanthropy takes the first risk, institutions scale, public actors harvest the savings.
Who is behind SundRoot?
A societal entrepreneur and a growing network.
Azamat Azi Salakhov
Initiator of SundRoot
Initiator of SundRoot. Building holistic, bottom-up socioeconomic systems. Azi weaves together cooperative development, systems thinking and hands-on grassroots work in the Malmö region. More on background, skills and network on the personal site.
With support from experienced people within cooperative development and the cooperative network itself — all the people and enterprises who want to see this ecosystem grow. SundRoot is empowering shared force, not a single actor.
Follow every krona — in the open.
The SundRoot Fund lives on Open Collective so contributions and finances can be followed openly and transparently. Massvis.se is the fiscal host and handles administration.
Become part of the engine
The engine is being built now. The question is what role you take.
We’re open to collaboration with philanthropists, foundations, companies and the public sector who want to contribute to effective, lasting societal change. Reach out and we’ll explore what it could become together.
Philanthropist or foundation? Learn more about philanthropic capital →