The covenant framework
A city-wide covenant is coming — but not from us. A real covenant is written by the organizations that will sign it, and that writing happens in public over the coming weeks. What this page offers is the framework: a tested starting frame, built to be argued with, marked up, and made yours. Print the framework draft (PDF)
Offered, not proposed
There is a difference between proposing a covenant and offering one, and it is the whole difference. A proposed covenant asks you to accept someone else’s terms. An offered framework is a gift left on the table: take it, cut it, rewrite it — the version that matters is the one its signers finish together.
The frame below grows out of the project’s regenerative-systems research (Permanent Culture 3.0), and it shows: start where life already is, never convene without an invitation from inside; keep every loop visible — work shown as it happens, failures published in the same typeface as wins; extract nothing — no dues, no data, no membership; and build in the leaving — a commitment an organization cannot exit honestly is a trap, not a covenant. A covenant designed like a living system survives its designers. That is the intent.
The frame — the page a real covenant would be
A one-year commitment, made organization by organization, side by side.
Our city’s missing ingredient was never knowledge, or people, or money, or will. It was coordination — thousands of organizations and a million people pointing at the same goals at the same time. And coordination is not a resource you wait for. It is a choice. This page is how an organization makes it.
We, the undersigned organization, commit — in our own name, for one year from the day we sign:
1. Same goals, same time. We will point what we have — our rooms, our people, our craft — at the shared goals the city’s own conversations name, at the same time as every other signer.
2. Own names. We will say in public, in our own words, what we will carry through the year — work we choose, fitted to our own gifts, done in our own rooms, at our own pace, under our own name.
3. Shown work. We will show our work as we go, and when the year closes we will publish what we did — naming what failed, with reasons, in the same typeface as what worked.
4. Open doors. Nobody pays to take part in anything we carry under this covenant, and we will defend the dignity of every person we meet while carrying it — the dignity rule knows no sides.
5. Invitation first. We will convene nothing in any community without an invitation from inside it. The clock can bend; this rule doesn’t.
And we understand exactly what this covenant is, because it says so plainly:
It joins nothing. There is no membership, no governance, no one above us. Signing makes us a signer — nothing more. Each organization remains entirely its own.
It costs nothing. No dues, no donations, nothing for sale. Money never changes hands here.
It is civic, not electoral. It endorses no candidate and no party, and it asks nothing electoral of us or of anyone.
It counts in aggregate. The public count of signers is a number, never a list. Our name appears only if we choose to say so ourselves.
It includes rest. Rest is a legitimate rung nobody has to justify, and a year that never breathes is not the year we are signing up for.
It lets go honestly. We may leave at any time by saying so — one sentence, no penalty, no shame. The count changes by one, and the door stays open.
Signed —
Organization: ______________________________
What we will carry this year, in our own words: ______________________________
Name and role of the person signing: ______________________________
Date: ______________________________
Same goals, same time, own names, shown work. That is the whole frame.
How the real one gets written
Over the coming weeks this framework circulates — to organizations, to rooms, to anyone who would ever be asked to sign it. Bring your redlines: the clause you would cut, the one that is missing, the word your community would never say. Send a redline — every one is read, and the revisions happen in the open. The covenant is finished when its signers say it is — and version one bears their marks, not ours.
Plain answers
A. What signing does
It adds one to the public count of organizations committed to sprinting the year together — one more number the city watches itself grow.
It puts what you chose to carry on the public record, in your words, wherever you choose to publish it — your site, your newsletter, a page taped to your door. The receipt is yours to hold.
And nothing else — by design. The conversation kits, the library, the question bank were free before you signed and stay free if you never do; they serve signer and non-signer identically. Signing unlocks no privileges, because there are none to unlock.
B. What signing does not do
It does not make you a member of anything, and no one may speak in your organization’s name — not the coalition, not another signer, not anyone.
It does not cost or commit money, yours or anyone’s.
It does not commit you electorally, and it does not restrict what your organization does elsewhere in its own name — a union local that endorses candidates as it always has and a congregation that never would sign the same page, because the page asks neither.
It does not bind you legally. It is a public promise, not a contract; no lawyer wrote it, and none is needed to sign it or to keep it.
C. How the count publishes
As a number, in aggregate, and nothing else: how many organizations have signed, updated as it changes.
No organization is ranked, graded, scored, or compared — no leaderboards, no tiers, no “top signers.” A covenant between equals keeps no standings.
An organization’s name appears publicly only where that organization has said so itself — the same rule the map’s pins have always followed.
The coalition’s published goal is 1,000+ signing organizations. That is a target, labeled a target, and it will never be asserted as a count: if the counter says forty, the page says forty.
D. How an organization leaves
One sentence, said to anyone or said in public — “we are stepping back from the covenant” — and it is done, effective immediately.
No penalty, no fee, no exit process, no explanation owed, no shame: leaving honestly is part of keeping the covenant honest, and the count simply changes by one.
The door works in both directions; an organization that left may sign again whenever it chooses.
E. The ladder beneath this rung
The covenant is the top rung of a ladder every organization climbs at its own pace — each rung one ask with one receipt, and no rung required for any other.
- PIN — put your organization on the city’s map: presence, zero cost, your name public only because you put it there.
- HOST — hold one conversation in your own room, under your own name, with a ready-made conversation kit.
- QUEST — adopt one citywide quest with a public scoreboard — offered, never assigned.
- SPRINT COVENANT — this page: the year, whole.
An organization may sign the covenant having never pinned, or pin forever and climb no further; both are honored, and nobody is hurried.
The year is your own: it runs from your signature. The scenario’s telling runs September to September, and an organization that signs in November still signs a full year.
F. Where this text comes from
The narrative twin: ONE YEAR, ALL-OUT — the year, told month by month. The scenario is the story of the year; the covenant is the signature under it — the same document seen from two sides. The ladder and the goals live on the plan page; the theory of change beneath both is the vision.