Thriving Networks is an 8-week immersive online course that will help you take your collective, community, or distributed organization to the next level and find support from peers to address common challenges around money, value and resource flow.
The complex and interconnected challenges our world faces today demand collective action. But to create meaningful change, we must change how we organize. Many working on the forefront of systems change are are exploring new ways of organizing that align with their values: place-based communities, self-organized collectives, impact networks or DAOs. But to reach their full potential, these networks and communities must face difficult questions around money, power and the flow of value. This is no easy task, but they don't have to navigate it alone.
As experienced community builders and network practitioners, we have seen recurring challenges in these groups: power and workload imbalances, tensions between volunteer and paid roles, burnout of core members, difficulties in developing healthy and effective leadership, struggling to speak about money openly.
We have created this course to help you navigate these challenges. It will support you take your network to the next level and create a space for you to safely explore these uncomfortable topics with a cohort of peers.
Get an overview of the course content and a taste of it here.
8 Weeks
Up to 30
2 hours per week
4-6 hours per week (incl. live sessions)
Flexible pricing: 0€-1400€+ (Contribution within capacity)
You are starting or part of a nascent network that is facing questions of value and money flow for the first time.
You are a network leader or highly active member of a mature network and want to take it to the next level.
You are a curious explorer who wants to learn about this topic in a concrete, applied way.
You are starting or part of a nascent network that is facing questions of value and money flow for the first time.
You are a network leader or highly active member of a mature network and want to take it to the next level.
You are starting or part of a nascent network that is facing questions of value and money flow for the first time.
Francesca is an ecosystem builder, organizational explorer and founding partner of Greaterthan. Everything she knows about growing healthy networks and communities stems from over a decade of practice and experimentation. She was a core member of the self-organized communities Ouishare and Enspiral, and has supported dozens of organizations with shared leadership, network governance and community building. She is co-author of Better Work Together and Fellow at Edmund Hillary Fellowship.
David is a collaboration catalyst with a passion for supporting transformation journeys, participatory processes, systems practice. He has been part of the self-organized Ouishare community form its early days and co-led its conscious closing process, and brings a broad toolkit with him: systems practice, appreciative inquiry and sociocracy. David teaches on management tools for networked organizations and digital transformation at Munich University.
Each week we dive into a different topic starting from the hosts lived experience in networks. You will apply what you are learning in your own network projects. To learn more about the context and why of this course, check out this article.
A great curation of resources on networks, communities and collectives on the topics of value, money and leadership. This is a course about the intersection of systems and personal development. In our experience with networks and collectives, relationships are at the center. We will engage in experiences that will lead you to personal reflection and, if done in a group, these experiences will help you deepen your relationships. We think this is key to sustaining thriving networks.
Networks are complex systems. Please do not expect a linear roadmap or a magic formula. Instead, this will be like a writing course. There are many different approaches to writing. We will share tools, our experiences and reflections. But you have to get to practice and write, write, write. You don’t get better at writing by theorizing about it (end of analogy 🙂). If you want to make the most out of this course it’s necessary for you to experiment with your networks by trying the practices we introduce.
This course is for what we call "Purpose Networks" and "Impact Communities". This ranges from professional to livelihood-focused networks, online to locally rooted communities, communities of practice or interest, to DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), "neo-guilds" and movements. What they all share is that they have a larger purpose and intention to catalyze action, beyond connecting people and organizations.
We use the terms network and community interchangeably, since the difference between them is often blurry.
Zebras Unite is a founder-led, cooperatively owned global movement creating the culture, capital & community for the next economy.
ConsciousU: creating conscious tribes. ConsciousU delivers scalable personal development programmes that facilitate collective transformation in organisations.
Open Collective is a legal and financial toolbox for grassroots groups. It’s a fundraising + legal status + money management platform for your community. What do you want to do?
The course contains 8 x 2 hour participatory live sessions, featuring a combination of content, reflection and practice.
Week 1 | What is a thriving network? Introductory session to connect with your cohort and dive into what it means for a network to be thriving.
Week 2 | Crafting Roles & Contribution Pathways
Creating a system where network membership, different levels of engagement and types of contributions are in balance.
The Money Game
An experience to deepen your reflections and learning about your personal relationship to money. Learn more about the Money Game.
Week 3 | Reclaiming Money
Surface and explore your personal stories and myths about money.
Week 4 | Collective Money Practices
Discover how to work with personal money patterns in the collective context. Learn about innovative models for accounting value.
Week 5 | Making Decisions Around Money
Explore the challenges of collective budgeting and financial decision-making, as well tools and practices to address them.
Week 6 | Unlocking your network challenges
Reflect, digest and apply what you have learned so far to your network
Week 7 | Redefining Leadership and recognizing 'Source'
Discover Peter Koenig's Money and Source work, and how to apply it in networks to unlock collective leadership capacity.
Week 8 | Integration & Closing
Walk away with tangible insights, practices and experiments to try in your network
Our next cohort starts February 6th and runs until March 27th. Live sessions take place weekly, every Thursday at:
4pm-6pm Paris │ 10am-12pm NY │ 11am-1pm Buenos Aires │ 7-9am Los Angeles │
Can't make this time? Learn about asynchronous learning options.
Or let us know about your timezone so that we can register your interest and let you know when a suitable cohort for you will be available.
We have decided to take a needs based approach* to pricing, because we want this course to be both accessible to all participants and sustainable for us to run as facilitators.
Below you can find several price suggestions to help you choose how much to pay, but you may modify the amounts as you see fit. As Miki Kashtan says “we ask that you give the most that you can do without overstretching or resentment”.
It's great to take this course with fellow network members! If you're participating with one or more members of your network, you can reflect this is the pricing of the ticket by subtracting 20/25% of the sustainability option or reflect together what contribution would feel right.
*This needs based approach registration model is based on Miki Kashtan (& NGL) and her course Responding to the Call of our Times.
A deeply empowering and transformative experience—a true treasure box for every network nerd. I'm still impressed by the co-creative and safe space created by the hosts.
Thanks to this course, I now have the foundation to help take my networks to the next phase and am excited to start working with the tools this course provided!
Highly recommend for anyone starting and scaling a network that wants to clarify how to collaborate, exchange value and honour the principles of cooperation. A practical space to learn with peers, access real case studies, and put the learnings into action during the course timeline.
A brilliant way to meet other people, share experiences with organisational structure and decision making models, and think through collective solutions to common problems
I've been in leadership in many different kinds of organizational structures for over 4 decades. I have a master's degree in organizational leadership. I've been involved in the field of networks and 'self-organizing systems' for well over a decade, and all my clients for the past decade have been struggling with leadership in flatter systems.
And yet I found much to value in this training.
The trainers are well-grounded in long experience with networks and the content addresses real and serious challenges networks face. There's a lot of hype and fluff about networks out there, but real insight based in lived experience is still relatively rare. This course fits that description and is well worth taking.
The Thriving Networks Course skilfully locates the balance between personal exploration and practical application. The course is beautifully held, with excellent facilitation, clear structure, and collaborative tools that are accessible and intuitive. In just 8 weeks our group of disparate and diverse participants formed deep collaborative bonds and have cultivated a rich collective sense of support and learning. I would sincerely recommend this course to others, regardless of the scale or scope of their network(s).
Our courses are practice-based, intimate and participatory. It's your entry point into the emergent knowledge and practices that Greaterthan has developed and tested over the past decade.
Our courses are practice-based, intimate and participatory. It's your entry point into the emergent knowledge and practices that Greaterthan has developed and tested over the past decade.
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