Civic infrastructure, built so it can't be sold.
Steppe is a fiscally sponsored civic project building community-governed digital infrastructure for Central Oregon. The first test is capped at 50 people. It advances to a 250-member launch, free for six months, only if 25 or more people participate and local-organization collaboration produces current, real-time local information.
Community life moved onto platforms that can be sold.
The places neighbors gather online are owned by companies that monetize attention and can be acquired, shut down, or quietly degraded whenever it suits the owner. Steppe is built so none of that can happen here.
The problem
Local connection now runs through extractive, ad-driven platforms with no accountability to the people who use them. They sell attention, harvest data, and can be sold out from under a community overnight.
The approach
A fiscally sponsored beta building toward a member-governed public benefit nonprofit, with no equity to sell and its core promises carried into the founding documents for member ratification.
What changes
Durable local civic infrastructure that belongs to the community itself. Always ad-free, privacy-respecting, and impossible to acquire or enshittify. All towns can adopt the same model and govern it themselves.
Designed for the founding documents, then tested in beta.
No owner. Nothing to sell.
- ✓Planned Oregon public benefit nonprofit. No shareholders, investors, or equity exit.
- ✓Mission and dissolution protections drafted for the articles of incorporation.
- ✓No acquisition path in the planned structure. There is no equity to buy.
Five promises, entrenched.
- ✓No advertising, ever
- ✓Temporary residency proof, verified before beta
- ✓Community-controlled governance
- ✓Member data with tested export and deletion controls
- ✓Decisions are reversible by vote
How the members decide.
- 15%Quorum for any binding vote
- 60%To pass a major policy
- 75%To amend a foundational rule, with 30-day notice
- 60%To recall a board member
Money flows back to the commons.
- ✓Any surplus goes to a Community Fund, not to an owner.
- ✓Members allocate it yearly by ranked-choice vote.
- ✓Compensation is capped and published.
How Steppe plans to pay its bills.
Ignite administers sponsor-routed grants, donations, and other sponsored responsibilities. Gregory Chism will administer member subscriptions directly; the planned model keeps subscriptions as the long-term operating anchor.
What we're looking for.
Capacity & board pipeline
Ignite is helping with the director search; additional introductions and independent governance expertise remain welcome.
Grants & foundation partners
Project funding for rural connectivity and digital-equity programs across Central Oregon.
Program partners
Broadband-equity, education, and economic-development organizations building local digital capacity.
Other communities
Towns that want civic infrastructure of their own and intend to govern it themselves.