TechnoEthos C3

“In the end the winners and the losers will not be divided by their bytes and RAMs. The winners will be the organizations with smart and creative leaders who know how to communicate and motivate effectively - inside the organization and out.”

TechnoEthos C3 is a Community Contribution Company incorporated in British Columbia whose mission is to advance human flourishing, dignity, and collective capacity in the design, development, governance, and use of digital technologies. It recognizes Vancouver as its initial home and aims to create and allocate resources that support local nonprofit organizations, educational initiatives, cultural workers, and community-based projects that advance social inclusion, economic resilience, and public benefit in the region.

TechnoEthos C3 is pursuing this through its pioneering of the Community Tech Charity model.

What is a Community Tech Charity?

Community Tech Charities build technologies for communities, with communities. They ground “for-profit” not in the accumulation of wealth for a small group of individuals, but in shared prosperity for the city where their workers call home.

Community Tech Charities are defined by the following characteristics:

1. Legally Grounded: They operate under a dual-layer public benefit structure: for-profit incorporation (PBCs, C3s) that caps shareholder returns, and charity registration that legally binds them to deep community integration and support.
2. Open and Focused on Data Sovereignty: Their tools and frameworks are open source, explicitly built to promote an accessible and community-driven web.
3. Expertise in Service: Rather than only donating money, employees spend most of their workweek volunteering with local organizations in the sectors their products directly impact, applying technical skills to build custom tools and provide research services for qualified community projects.
4. Surplus for Community: Profits are capped at the cost of operations; any surplus is reinvested directly into local community projects and creatives addressing the needs of the city where the entity resides.

Community Tech Charities expand redistribution by providing not only money, but also the time of highly skilled, well-compensated workers, a resource made more abundant by the productivity gains of today's AI tools.

Three-Stage Funding Lifecycle

1. Stage 1: Founding Community Round. Funding is secured through a mix of SAFEs, CAREs (philanthropic equivalents of SAFEs), and grants. This capital enables the founding team to register the entity as a charity, establish partnerships with nonprofits seeking highly skilled volunteers, refine the MVP of the first product, and prepare for the next growth phase.
2. Stage 2: Co-Development Phase. This phase raises enough capital to hire a full team dedicated to developing a specific product while simultaneously contributing to local organizations for two years. This creates job security and allows deep, stable relationships with community centers to inform the product.
3. Stage 3: Circulation Phase. Operations are sustained through a blend of remaining philanthropic partnerships, R&D grants, and product revenue. Any cash flow exceeding operating costs is legally mandated to be redistributed to local, community-driven organizations in the city where the company's workers call home.

The Product: TEED

TechnoEthos C3 is developing the TechnoEthos Ethics Engine and Dashboard (TEED), a platform for evaluating, guiding, and aligning digital systems with legal and ethical standards for human-centered technology development and adoption.

TEED evaluates configurations and policies to surface misalignment between a product and legal, regulatory, and ethical frameworks, providing actionable guidance that culminates in an alignment score. Users can opt to publish their score publicly. Rather than applying a binary “good” or “bad” label, the score provides transparent context so community members can make informed decisions about the technology they use.

Current Raise

TechnoEthos C3 is currently in Stage 1. We are kickstarting our Founding Community Round by inviting lead donors who want to see the Community Tech Charity model tested in practice to help fund a foundational $200,000 tranche.

Your support will allow TechnoEthos C3 to bring the two Vancouver-based co-founders, McKim Jean-Pierre and Andy Vivash, on full-time to prepare for Web Summit Vancouver (accepted), refine TEED's MVP, register the entity as a charity, forge partnerships with nonprofits, and secure capital for Stage 2.

How You Can Support

• Financially support us via our Open Collective page. SAFEs and CAREs are available for contributors seeking equity or additional assurance of our commitment to charitable registration.
• Sign our Community Interest Survey to demonstrate to future funders that there is genuine community interest in a corporate model that routes tech profits toward community-centered projects.