Steppe is a member-governed public benefit nonprofit building community-owned digital infrastructure for Central Oregon. It carries no advertising, confirms that members are local, and is structurally protected from acquisition and enshittification.
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.
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.
A member-owned commons: a public benefit nonprofit with no owner and nothing to sell, governed by its residents, with its core promises written into the founding documents where only members can change them.
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.
Steppe is funded so that no single source can dictate its direction. Member dues are the anchor, and no one funder is allowed past a hard ceiling.
Introductions, governance expertise, and connections to people who'll help steer a member-led organization.
Project funding for rural connectivity and digital-equity programs across Central Oregon.
Broadband-equity, education, and economic-development organizations building local digital capacity.
Towns that want civic infrastructure of their own and intend to govern it themselves.