The HAPPI Pledge
Sign the HAPPI Pledge to add your name to the people who believe a cooperative, non-extractive economy is not a future aspiration — it is long overdue.
Not ready to sign yet? Register your interest first →
I watched us build an economy that extracts from communities, the planet, and the future. The future I choose looks nothing like it. The systems people need to thrive should be stewarded for them — not used against them. I will fight for that world. And I will hold all those building it to the integrity it demands — including HAPPI.
Read this. If it is true for you — sign below.
The infrastructure people rely on to thrive should serve everyone who relies on it — stewarded for them, not used to extract from them.
Banking, capital, and financial rails are infrastructure in the same way roads and water are infrastructure. Their ownership and governance determine who they serve.
Extraction from communities and extraction from the natural world are the same choice, made twice. One impoverishes people. One impoverishes the planet. We are opposed to both — not as separate causes, but as a single one.
The economic logic that concentrates wealth away from communities is the same logic that treats natural systems as resources to be drawn down. Addressing one without the other is not a solution.
Finance that circulates wealth within communities builds them. Finance that extracts wealth from communities depletes them. I know the difference, and I know it comes down to the choices we make.
When capital flows into member-owned institutions, it doesn't just get deployed — it circulates. Deposits fund local lending. Lending strengthens the institution. The cycle compounds for communities, not for absentee shareholders.
The institutions that serve communities best are the ones owned by the communities they serve. This is not ideology. It is evident.
A 2023 Lancet Public Health study of community wealth building in Preston found a 3% decline in antidepressant prescribing and an 11% increase in median wages relative to expected trends. Peer-reviewed. Controlled.
The cooperative economy is not a future aspiration. It is a present reality — one billion members, three million cooperatives. It needs shared infrastructure to reach its potential.
88,000 member-owned financial institutions serving 400 million people across 118 countries — alongside three million cooperatives with one billion members globally. The infrastructure exists. It has never had the shared coordination layer to operate as a system. That is what HAPPI is building.
We are a human alliance. Artificial intelligence is infrastructure. Like every infrastructure before it, it will either serve the many or be captured by the few. We know which side we are on.
The same forces that captured financial infrastructure are now shaping AI. The governance model matters — and the time to build the alternative is before the architecture is set, not after.
To this work and this world — and to holding everyone building it, including HAPPI, to the integrity and honesty the work demands.
Movements that are honest about difficulty attract serious people. This pledge is not a declaration of perfection. It is a commitment to accountability — including the accountability of the movement itself.
Your name joins the founding cohort. We will send you updates on HAPPI's progress — and hold ourselves to the standard you've just signed.
We will be in touch — not with noise, but with a conversation relevant to you. This is the beginning.
Responses shared anonymously from those who have signed the HAPPI Pledge. With permission, names will be added over time.
"The first voice will appear here. Sign the pledge — yours could be next."
The founding record opens now.
Every name below has signed the HAPPI Pledge. Credentials and location are displayed with permission. Contact details are never shown.
Names are added manually as signatories give permission to be named. Signing the pledge does not automatically display your name.
HAPPI announced. Core team secured. The founding sprint will begin in the coming months.
Updated April 2026
HAPPI announced
The Human Alliance for People and Planetary Infrastructure introduced to the world.
Core team secured
Founding team in place across technology, operations, and strategic architecture.
Capital raise open
Seed round open to wholesale and sophisticated investors to fund the founding sprint.
Founding sprint begins
Formal institutional conversations open. Target: 30–40 founding nodes across multiple jurisdictions.
Founding cohort named
All founding nodes announced together — as a cohort, not a sequence.
Declarations matter. The cooperative movement has operated on the principle of formal commitment since the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844. A pledge is not a legal contract — it is a public alignment of values, a permanent record of who was willing to say this out loud, and a mechanism for holding the movement to account.
The founding record begins the moment the first name is added. As the movement grows, that record becomes the public account of who stood here first. The seventh principle — holding HAPPI to the integrity and honesty the work demands — is signed by the people who expect it kept.
Learn more about HAPPI →Never to be sold.
Never to be used to extract from humanity.
Never to serve any one organisation more than all of them.
HAPPI is established as a foundation. All infrastructure is held in perpetuity — for humanity, not for any shareholder, state, or institution.