What if We All Got Together and Shared Some Money?

Comingle is an app that unites people who want to make sure no one goes a week without income. 

For a quick introduction, watch the video above!

We all need some extra money sometimes. Other times, we have a little extra to give. By connecting our finances using today’s technology, we can form a secure, anonymous network of generosity that automatically pools money and moves it to where it’s needed the most.

 

Welcome to the Crowdfund

This is your chance to become a founding member of a community that crowdfunds itself, all the time!

 

It’s Time to Address Some Big Problems

To address these crises, we hope to have over 100,000 people living with a small basic income of $50 a week by 2026, and we hope to share the stories with the greatest potential impact to inspire a national movement.

 

How Does it Work?

This video goes a little more in-depth…

If you’re still curious, visit our website, where you can find answers to frequently asked questions. 

 

Where We’re at Now

We’ve been working on Comingle since 2019, pausing occasionally to raise funds and work other jobs to pay the bills.

By partnering with a team of talented coders at Twenty Ideas (working at a discounted rate to support our mission) we’ve completed the first phase of development and bootstrapped Comingle to the point that a small group of alpha testers are able to create memberships, connect their banks, preview their impact, pool a share of their income, and transfer simulated money to or from the rest of the community. We’ve built the tools necessary to distinguish between income-related deposits and other bank credits, prevent overdrafts, resolve account interruptions, and allow for proper handling of joint accounts.

What You’re Funding

Every penny from the first $75,000 we raise here will cover the development costs required to boost Comingle to the next phase, which will allow us to verify user identities, detect fraud, address security concerns, and begin transferring real money on a weekly basis. 

This amount will also put the project on track to launch in 2024 as the central component of a national impact campaign we’ve been quietly developing for 7 years to build and test the first permanent and scalable universal basic income (UBI) community. That’s what Comingle really is: a UBI we can build ourselves without waiting for the government (e.g. a DIY UBI!).

We’re excited to share with you the broader vision of Comingle and the national campaign once we meet our initial goal of $75K.

If you’re interested in other ways to support our efforts, please get in touch.

 

How Long Will it Take?

 

About Us

Our small but dedicated team has decades of expertise in interface design, software engineering, and financial empowerment. We’re excited by the ways in which technology can connect us and solve problems. We’ve studied the complex economics of Universal Basic Income and have witnessed first-hand how direct cash assistance and a heartbeat of economic security can change lives. We’re also just curious people who like to experiment with new possibilities.

 

Josh Worth Co-founder / design

Josh is an interface designer, digital artist and media strategist who’s worked for a wide range of clients like Marvel, PBS, The Max Planck Institute for Physics, and The Planetary Society. In 2015, he won a Webby Award for his scale map of the solar system at 1pixelmoon.com and began pursuing more visualization projects, including a game to explore time perception and a tool for mapping biological neural activity.

 

Conrad Shaw Co-founder / strategy

An engineer turned filmmaker / Universal Basic Income proponent, Conrad created a UBIcalculator to communicate the impacts of various UBI proposals, and co-founded (with Scott Santens) a nonprofit foundation to accelerate practical implementations of UBI. Also, as the co-creator (with Deia Schlosberg) for the upcoming Bootstraps docuseries, he designed and ran a 2.5 year UBI pilot program for 11 households across ten states. He also writes extensively about the ins and outs of UBI.

 

Paul Barros Co-founder / technology

Paul is a veteran technologist and entrepreneur living in Santa Monica, CA. Paul has a BS from Caltech in Physics and over 30 years of engineering leadership experience, having spent the last 20 years bootstrapping startup teams and products, with the last 5 years specifically in the fintech space. He’s a published author in the field of artificial intelligence, including machine learning and human-machine collaboration, and has served as a Principal Investigator and individual contributor on several DARPA projects.

 

Twenty Ideas Development Partner

Stacey Rutland Advisor

Ryan Harrison Advisor

Scott Santens Advisor

 

See more info about our team at comingle.us/about-us.

 

What Kind of Company is Comingle?

Comingle is a company founded on trust and transparency. Here are some key things to know about how we intend to build and maintain that trust:

1. Comingle is structured to be a revenue-generating business so that it will never have to rely on outside support to continue to exist. Comingle will take a penny from every dollar that flows through in order to fund operations.
2. To ensure that Comingle always puts public benefit before anything else, we are taking these important steps to eliminate profit motive entirely:

• Since Comingle’s revenue is built in as a 1% utility fee, we will never show ads, sell user data, or create algorithms to heighten engagement.
• All staff salaries and compensation (including founders) will be public, transparent, and capped.
• Setting up our legal structure to stipulate that all revenue beyond our operational needs be spent on mission-aligned initiatives.

Comingle’s business structure allows for tax-deductible donations, recoupable grants, and mission-aligned investments, while keeping the focus on peer-to-peer support.

 

Wait, Everybody Gets the Same Perks?

Because Comingle is about each of us chipping in what we can in exchange for an equal share of what’s collected, all backers will receive the same set of perks regardless of how much they’re able to contribute. Whatever your circumstances, your participation is invaluable. 

We suggest that you donate based on what Comingle is worth to you and what you can afford to give. 

Here’s what you’ll get…

Early Access

We’ll reserve your spot at the front of the waitlist to join Comingle when it launches (in the order donations come in).

Credit

Your name will appear on Comingle’s Backer Page (in the order donations come in) in case you or anyone else ever desires proof that you helped build Comingle.

Community Membership

An open invitation to our quarterly meetings and other live events, in which we’ll share updates and get everyone’s ideas about the direction of Comingle. This is more of a reward for us, to be honest. We want your input.

 

If You Want to Give More Than Money

First off, sharing Comingle and this campaign widely is a great way to help spread the word.

And if you’re looking for something a bit more tangible…

The Comingle Cup 

(optional add-on item – $60)

Hopefully it’s clear by this point that we’re talking about more than just a tech startup. We’re building a movement. 

Movements don’t just live in the digital world. They’re made up of real human beings connecting, sharing, and organizing. They’re conversations. They’re community. Comingle will connect people’s income streams, yes, but more importantly, Comingle will connect people.

So if you’re someone who is eager to take this movement off the screen and into your community well before we launch the platform, the Comingle Cup can serve as a great conversation starter.

It’s high quality, stainless steel, 1 pint (16 oz), durable, eco-friendly, limited-edition, and has a lovely design. It’s great for cheersing, camping, concerts, cookouts, and, well, commingling. But also, it’s just a cup. It’s what you do with it that matters.

 

Risks and challenges

1. BUILDING THE PLATFORM

So far, Comingle’s design and development have progressed smoothly with the budgets we’ve raised, but unforeseen technical challenges are sure to arise as we continue to make Comingle fast, smart, and secure.

And any system involving money invites new methods of exploitation. Fraudsters are inventive, and the challenges they pose are ever-evolving.

Our project roadmap includes time and resources to address the methods of exploitation and other technical challenges we’ve considered, as well as some padding to address those we have yet to encounter.

2. BUILDING THE COMMUNITY

Once Comingle is launched, the main challenge will be to grow the community in a way that’s reflective of the population at large. We will need a diverse range of incomes in order to make sure enough money is flowing that those who are truly struggling come out ahead. The last thing we want is for people in poverty to be sending money to people in deeper poverty.

To ensure this, as the membership grows, we’ll be using a waitlist as a throttle to ensure that the average annual income of the group remains at or above a minimum threshold. And in order to grow the community, we’ll need to continue attracting a portion of members who will be putting in more money than they’ll receive as a payout. So the question arises whether people with higher incomes will be interested in joining the platform to knowingly support others.

Americans give $500 Billion through charity each year, and we believe that the radical impact and empowerment Comingle will demonstrate through direct-cash giving and a solidarity-based mutual aid model will be enough to attract a sufficient percentage of that mountain of goodwill into the Comingle community.

However, we’re venturing into uncharted waters with this concept, and this crowdfund is acting as our first large-scale market test of the demand for this idea. We can’t be exactly sure how much marketing will be required to make it happen – or on the flip side, how organically or quickly this community could develop – until we try it out.

 

How Else Can I Help or Follow Along?

Here’s how you can stay in touch with Comingle, our team members, and our nonprofit partner (ITSA Foundation):

Sign up for Newsletters/Waitlists

Comingle
ITSA Foundation   (scroll to the bottom for newsletter sign-up)

Follow on Social Media

​X (Twitter)
Comingle – @comingler1
ITSA Foundation – @ITSAfoundation
Conrad – @theUBIguy
Josh – @misterjoshworth
Scott – @scottsantens
Pro tip: stay tuned for some exciting X (Twitter) Spaces and join the conversation!

Facebook
Conrad – @theUBIguy

And, of course, SHARE WIDELY!

For Larger Donations and Foundational Grants – Please contact our nonprofit fiscal sponsor, the Income to Support All Foundation, at info@itsafoundation.org.