For everyone who wants to build cooperative ecosystems

Contribute to the engine for systemic shifts.

SundRoot is an approach to seed self-growing cooperative economies that fund the needs of local societies. It is an approach to shift more and more of our world into such thriving communities. Philanthropists, foundations and catalytic capital — together with everyone who contributes with work, knowledge, skill, capacity and potential. Here, 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.

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

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

The model

How the capital flows — and flows back.

Diagram of the SundRoot Fund: how capital is pooled, invested in cooperative enterprises, and how surplus and societal savings flow 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.

Implementation

The implementation of systemic solutions has begun its journey in the Malmö region.

See what has happened so far and what's in motion. Explore the lively cooperative ecosystem in Skåne. Get on the train!

Implementation in the Malmö region →