How an Integrative Community Ventures business is organized—how its Human Capacity Development Professionals work together, and how the team connects with local universities, local businesses, and local government.
Imagine where you live right now. It might be a big city or a small town, but mostly you live in a neighborhood. Say it’s the Richmond, Virginia, area: you could live in Brandermill, the West End, Manchester, or Church Hill. An Integrative Community Venture can start in any of them—and each one is its own unique grouping, shaped by the people who live there.
Each ICV starts with twenty Human Capacity Development Professionals (HCDPs) who live within a one-mile walking radius of one another.
They work from their own homes but can easily gather in each other’s homes, local parks, or small businesses. A team can span neighborhood lines—Manchester and downtown Richmond, for example.
A small management team handles the business side, helps train the team, and connects it with universities, businesses, and local government.
We envision each Integrative Community Venture having a three-person management team. These three handle the administrative work of running a business. They help train HCDPs to work with the three distinct groups in their care—children, children and adults with disabilities, and seniors. And they network with the local universities, businesses, and governments that will be a big part of ensuring the success of ICVs and of the local community.
We envision every ICV team working with one or more local universities, including community colleges. Each ICV is its own business, but because there are likely to be many ICV teams in a community, there will be some coordination among them and the local universities. This is the integrative part: tapping local resources and creating work for all.
Traditional teaching will continue, but as an Integrative Economy rises, universities will broaden their work into the surrounding community—helping ICVs and HCDPs maximize the value of their work with children, people with disabilities, and seniors. Each ICV and its university decide together which colleges to work with, when, and how:
Expanding wealth accumulation options is a cornerstone of an Integrative Economy, so everyone in the community has multiple ways to exchange wealth: local currency, time dollars, universal basic income, and more. Many small businesses will accept local currency from ICV members, because they can use it with other small businesses in turn.
ICV members might accept one-third of their salary in local currency. A piano teacher who gives lessons to some of the children might take one-third in local currency, one-third in time dollars—say, in exchange for an ICV member’s help with the plumbing at the piano teacher’s home—and one-third in federal dollars. Local landlords could accept part of the rent in local currency, because they can spend it locally too.
Some businesses may also be original funders of ICVs in the start-up phase. A national grocery chain might build relationships with several ICVs and fund them to get started. Once established, those ICVs return the favor by shopping at that store, and in time the grocery might accept part of its payment in local currency—and pay some of its employees, who are also local, the same way.
The key is that local currency is meant to be spent within the community to foster a high quality of life for all. Some federal dollars for saving and investing will still be necessary, but a local economy can run on local dollars more and more over time.
We envision the community coming together to create the new structure of an Integrative Economy. A key idea is that each community determines what it requires in quality-of-life funding. Local government decides whether one Local Community Board (LCB) is enough or whether a larger city needs several. At first, an LCB’s focus may simply be deciding how many ICV teams are needed and how they will be funded.
ICVs needed to meet the neighborhood’s requirements, according to its LCB—which might start with just ten, funded through expanded wealth options, to build the network and communication across the community.
ICVs needed, because Brandermill contains many neighborhoods—yet its LCB, too, might start with ten, using the first year to build more community discussion before expanding.
An Integrative Economy starts with a quantum leap: accepting that a quality-of-life economy—built on a Local Community Capacity work sector and funded through expanded wealth accumulation options—opens the way to the most vibrant economy ever imagined. It is grounded in wholeness, where full human capacity development ensures we can all work together to create the solutions these changing times demand.
We have the knowledge and the technical capacity, and we can rise to the challenges that climate change and AI will force on us. If an economy is the management of life, then an integrated whole—whole humans, families, and communities, joined with the entire community of life, plant, animal, and planet—sets the stage for managing life in a way that brings out the best for all.
Next: A Day in the Life of an ICV Team
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