Multiply Your Impact
By seeding Commitment Pools you create an environment where local, community resource commitments can stay in circulation longer — multiplying the impact of every contribution.
Grassroots Economics helps communities design and deploy their own economic systems. These aren't experiments — they're 14 years of proven, on-chain evidence that community currencies reduce poverty, build resilience, and regenerate ecosystems.
Whether you bring capital, code, research, or commitment — joining forces multiplies what's possible for the communities we serve.
Evaluate Cosmo-Local Credit DAO
Grassroots Economics operates at the protocol layer of community finance. Our open-source infrastructure — Sarafu.Network — is a live, operating surface for commitment pooling. It is backed by 14 years of longitudinal, on-chain evidence reviewed in Nature, World Development, and IMF Finance & Development.
Protocol Thesis
Commitment Pooling creates a new asset class: community credit backed by real productive capacity. The protocol is permissionless, composable, and auditable — designed for institutional evaluation.
Live Operating Surface
Sarafu.Network is not a prototype — it has processed over 500,000 transactions across 290+ community programs in Kenya and beyond. Real communities, real data, real impact.
Evidence Layer
Every transaction is on-chain and publicly verifiable. Our Harvard Dataverse dataset and peer-reviewed publications provide the most transparent impact evidence in community finance.
Information shared is for ecosystem education only; not financial advice.
Start a Commitment Pool in Your Community
Create your own Commitment Pool and Community Asset Voucher on Sarafu.Network. Whether you're an informal settlement, a rural farming cooperative, or an urban network — we can help you design and launch your own currency.
Pool Stewards
Pool Stewards are community leaders who manage commitment pools, onboard local producers and traders, and ensure the currency circulates within the community economy.
- Free consultation and feasibility assessment
- Training for community organizers and administrators
- Access to Sarafu.Network platform at no cost
- Ongoing technical and program support
Grow the Network
Help expand the network by connecting with other communities, sharing knowledge, and joining our growing ecosystem of 290+ active community programs.
- Connection to a network of 290+ communities
- Peer learning and co-design workshops
- Regional network building support
- Co-branded impact reporting
Build the Infrastructure of Community Economies
All our code is open-source. We welcome contributors to our Sarafu Network platform, Commitment Pooling Protocol, and data pipelines — React, Go, Solidity, Python — multiple contribution paths. Join a growing community of developers building financial infrastructure for underserved communities.
The Most Open Dataset in Community Finance
We actively seek research partnerships. Our datasets and communities are available for rigorous academic study.
- Published 300K+ transaction dataset on Harvard Dataverse
- Field embedding opportunities in Kenya
- Co-authorship on papers emerging from our data
- Grant support for aligned research projects
- Community introductions for qualitative research
What Researchers Are Saying
"Grassroots Economics' work represents one of the most innovative applications of blockchain technology for social impact. Their data quality and longitudinal approach is unmatched in the field."
Ester Barinaga
Professor, Copenhagen Business School
"Working with the GE dataset opened entirely new research directions for me. The combination of rigorous documentation and genuine community embeddedness makes this an extraordinary resource."
Marion Cauvet
Researcher, Economic Anthropology
"The Sarafu network data gave us insight into informal economic resilience that we simply could not have obtained any other way. An invaluable contribution to development economics."
AbdulHakim Maina
Economist, University of Nairobi
"I was struck by the depth of community buy-in and the integrity of the data collection. Grassroots Economics is doing real science in service of real communities."
Thibaud Dezyn
Complexity Researcher
Your Support Directly Funds Community Programs
We're a non-profit. Every donation funds real programs, open-source development, and the communities that need it most. Choose the pathway that works for you.
Endow a Pool
Support community pools on Sarafu.Network directly with a credit card. Your contribution seeds real commitment pools in active communities.
Intern, Volunteer & Explore
From remote contributions to immersive on-the-ground experiences — we have a place for everyone who wants to get their hands dirty.
Intern
We welcome interns from universities and coding boot camps. Work on real problems in community economics, data analysis, or software development. Internships run 3–6 months remotely or in-country.
- Data analysis and visualization
- Software development
- Community program support
- Research and documentation
Volunteer
Contribute your skills on a part-time or project basis. We especially need help in translation, graphic design, content creation, and community outreach. All volunteering is done remotely at your own pace.
- Translation and localization
- Graphic design
- Content creation and editing
- Community outreach
Stay 1+ Month
For those wanting a deeper immersion — come to Kenya and work directly with our communities. We host researchers, journalists, documentary makers, and practitioners who want to experience community currencies first-hand.
- Accommodation support in Kilifi
- Community introductions
- Field visits to active programs
- Co-creation opportunities