Support the work
Two quiet doors
Not everyone is at the same place in life, and not everyone wants the same relationship with a body of work. One door puts your name in the record permanently. The other keeps the research arriving — told out loud, and published to be taken and used. Neither requires the other, and no tier is ever closed. The transaction is not the point. The relationship is.
Two registers
One puts you in the record. One puts the research in your ears.
A register is a book of record, and a register is a range of a voice. This page holds both, standing on the same ground: a benchmark that is set once and does not move, and a line that keeps going past the edge of the sheet. Select either to read what it is.
01 · The record · One time
Enter the Founding Archive
One entry, and your name is in the record for as long as the record stands.
A benchmark is the fixed mark a survey measures everything else from. It is set once, and it does not move. That is what an entry to the archive is: not a subscription to be kept up, not a level to be maintained, but a point in the record with a date on it.
Twelve profiles follow, entry at $10, and every one of them carries a Community Vote. No caps, no expiration, no closing date. The archive does not belong more to those who give more.
The twelve profiles are below, each with Support Now on it.
02 · Listen · Ongoing
The research, told out loud
Stories built from the same maps, counts, and community knowledge the archive holds — made to be heard, not opened.
A spreadsheet asks you to sit down at a desk and already care. A story does not. It reaches someone on a commute, in a kitchen, in a car, in the twenty minutes between one thing and the next — which is where most people actually are when they change their mind about something.
So the research is written to be listened to. The displacement data, the food-system work, the policy history: each becomes an account somebody can follow by ear, with the evidence underneath it rather than in place of it.
03 · Take · Ongoing
Materials made to be used somewhere
What sits beneath each story — the data, the sources, the drawings — published to be downloaded and taken into a room.
Research that stays on the site it was published on has not travelled. The material here is made to leave: a map you can put on a wall at a community meeting, a brief you can hand to a board, a worksheet a teacher can run on Monday without asking anyone for permission.
This is the same commitment the archive makes about knowledge — that it is a right extended to whoever asks for it, not a reward for capacity — carried into a format you can take with you.
04 · What it sustains · The ground
The support is a consequence, not the ask
Membership keeps the stories being made. That is the second reason to join, and it is meant to stay second.
Both registers stand on one ground: the research, and the people doing it. A membership does fund that — sixty percent of every dollar into community-controlled programs, the rest keeping the work standing, no profit distributed. Those are the same terms every dollar on this site is held to.
But an organization that asks you to pay for its existence is asking you to take its word for the value. We would rather hand you the thing itself. If the stories and the materials are worth your time, the support follows from that, in that order.
The split is fixed by policy, and published. The policy that fixes the split
The Founding Archive Collection
Come as you are
8 individual tiers and 4 organizational tiers — open supply, no caps, no expiration. Entry begins at $10, and every tier carries a Community Vote (how that works, and where it stands). The archive does not belong more to those who give more — it belongs equally to everyone who shows up.
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A door in plan, standing open, its swing dashed.
You are the reason the door stays open.
$10 Community VoiceThe archive begins with you.
Community VoteLot 1 of 8 · one holder, one voice -
A sprout in section; the seed, a dot beneath the ground line.
The seed does not need permission to grow. Neither do you.
$25 SeedlingYou came back.
Community VoteLot 2 of 8 · one holder, one voice -
An open book standing on the ground like a gable roof.
The classroom is wherever you decide to teach.
$50 ScholarYou learn in order to act.
Community VoteLot 3 of 8 · one holder, one voice -
A raking shore, holding a wall up, footed on the ground.
To take responsibility for the survival of a story.
$150 StewardYou have decided to tend something beyond yourself.
Community VoteLot 4 of 8 · one holder, one voice -
An arcade: two arches carrying a deck.
You believe that culture is infrastructure.
$500 PatronYou believe that culture is infrastructure.
Community VoteLot 5 of 8 · one holder, one voice -
The section-cut marker: cut in to see what holds a thing up.
Keep questioning it.
$2,000 RIP StewardYou have been thinking about this longer than you have had words for it.
Community + Deliberative VoteLot 6 of 8 · one holder, one voice -
A survey benchmark, the fixed mark everything is measured from.
The reckoning is permanent. So is your name in it.
$4,000 Reckoning PartnerYou understand that reckoning is not a moment. It is a practice.
Community + Deliberative VoteLot 7 of 8 · one holder, one voice -
An arch with its keystone, the piece that lets the structure stand without its maker.
You build things that outlast you. So does this archive.
$7,500 – $8,500 ArchitectYou build things that outlast you. So does this archive.
Community + Deliberative VoteLot 8 of 8 · one holder, one voice
Organizational track
Built for collectives, not corporations
Four tiers priced for the realities of small organizations — budgets built on grants that arrive late, on community dues, on the goodwill of people who could be paid more elsewhere and stay anyway.
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Roots in section, spreading beneath the ground line.
Holding community knowledge long before any archive came to document it.
$75 Grassroots PartnerYour organization was built because the existing systems were not built for you.
Community VoteLot 1 of 4 · one holder, one voice -
Two rooms sharing a party wall, with a door through it.
The work lands differently when it comes from inside the community.
$300 Ally OrganizationYour organization does not just believe in this work. It uses this work.
Community VoteLot 2 of 4 · one holder, one voice -
A portico, pediment and columns, its door standing open.
The institution that learns to follow community voice.
$1,000 Institutional AllyYour institution has learned, through its own history, that neutrality is not possible.
Community + Deliberative VoteLot 3 of 4 · one holder, one voice -
A truss: members joined to carry a load across a span.
Built in the gap between what institutions promise and what communities actually receive.
$2,500 – $3,000 Design Justice AllianceYou have been doing this work long before you found Deconstructing Design.
Community + Deliberative VoteLot 4 of 4 · one holder, one voice
Where your gift goes
From Guardian to Garden
Support is not extraction. It is a loop. What comes in through a Food Guardian or a Founding Archive tier is reinvested — by policy — back into community-controlled programs. Select each stage to follow the money.
Sixty percent of every dollar goes directly into programs and community initiatives; the rest keeps the work standing. No profit is distributed.
1 · Give
A supporter acquires a Food Guardian or enters the Founding Archive at any tier. The transaction is an entry point, not the point — “these are not solicitations, they are mirrors.”
2 · Fund
Proceeds follow the policy-mandated split: 60% directly reinvested into programs and community initiatives, 20% project upkeep, 10% future work, 10% compliance. No profit is distributed.
3 · Participate
Funds activate hyper-localized farming, public art, and education — community-controlled, not merely community-consulted. Neighbors shape what gets planted and built.
4 · Belong
Every tier carries a Community Vote. Growers, cooks, and neighbors become co-authors of the archive. Belonging loops back into the next Guardian — the garden feeds the story.
No profit is distributed — the work funds the work. Sixty percent of every dollar goes directly into community-controlled programs.