A mission-locked institution, on purpose

Benefit corporation vs. nonprofit

Town Works facilitates ordinary economic transactions — payments, contracts, eventually financing — that fit comfortably inside a mission-locked commercial corporation. A California benefit corporation carries expanded obligations around pursuing and reporting public benefit, which is the direction we currently lean for the operating entity. A companion nonprofit foundation, funding access and community reserves through philanthropy rather than transaction fees, is a plausible later addition — not a day-one requirement.

The extraction-rate KPI

We intend to publish, monthly, what share of neighborhood commerce facilitated through Town Works stayed with participants and their community versus what was absorbed by payment rails, protection reserves, and our own operations. That number — not growth or take rate — is the one we're organized around. See the cost model for how it's calculated.

What this is — and isn’t

Being precise about what Town Works doesn’t do is as important as what it does.

No employment

Town Works doesn't employ anyone who uses it, and doesn't treat any participant as its employee or independent contractor. Whatever work happens, happens directly between neighbors.

No 1099s or tax filing, on our part

Town Works doesn't prepare, file, or manage 1099s. Once real payments are live, our payment processor (Stripe) will — as any payment processor does — independently issue 1099-Ks to providers who cross IRS thresholds. That's their regulatory obligation, not a Town Works service, and not something either of us can opt out of.

No TIN/EIN collection

Town Works doesn't ask for or store Social Security numbers, TINs, or EINs. If you enable paid transactions, Stripe collects what it needs directly, for its own account-verification requirements — never passed through us.

No legal advice

The work agreement is a standard form provided for convenience, not advice customized to your situation. For anything high-value or complicated, get your own counsel before you sign.

Protection is a form agreement

Community protection terms are published once and apply the same way to everyone who opts in — not negotiated case by case. See /protection for what it covers.

How the operating fee is used

The 1.5% target is sized to cover core infrastructure and the near-term roadmap without needing to climb again — not to fund everything on the long-term list by itself. Bigger bets, like seeding platforms in other communities, are meant to be grant- or investment-funded on top of this, the same way the protection reserve is separate from Town Works’ own revenue.

Member decision-making

Any authenticated member who has completed at least one transaction gets one vote on how fee revenue is prioritized across the categories above — including proposing new ones. Votes happen quarterly and results are published the same way cost and community data already are.

For Town Works’ first three months of operation, these votes are advisory — we’ll act on them in good faith but retain final say while the mechanism is new. After that, they become binding on the platform.

We’re publishing this timeline as the intended policy, not as a settled legal mechanism — like the protection reserve on /protection, what “binding” actually means for a young company needs real legal structure behind it before it’s load-bearing, not just a page saying so.