1. What a Hearth is

A Hearth is a place a group holds together, that the group uses, and that nobody lives in as their own home. A steward looks after it. The group decides it. Everyone who pitched in has access to it.

The reason to get one is that a community with a place can do things a community without one cannot. Gatherings have somewhere to happen. Food arrives somewhere. Speakers come to somewhere. A Hearth is the community center, and it is the step that turns a group of people who know each other into a community with a life of its own.

2. Buying and renting are two different paths, and a group picks one on purpose

Renting is the faster path and it carries less. A lease, a deposit, a monthly cost the group covers between them, and a clear answer to what happens when the lease ends. Nobody holds an asset at the end of it, and that is the trade.

Buying is the slower path and it holds. It takes real money at the start, it needs an entity that can hold title, and it needs written answers to questions renting never asks: who the place belongs to, what happens when somebody leaves, and how a person gets their money back out.

Most groups should rent first. A year of running a rented place tells a group whether it can do this at all, and it does that for a fraction of what buying costs to find out.

3. What each person puts in, and what it buys

Pitching in buys access, and it does not buy ownership. That sentence is the whole of the model and it goes in writing before any money moves.

The default is equal. Everyone puts in the same and everyone has the same access, because unequal shares turn a community center into a property deal and nobody can quite say when it happened.

Where people cannot put in equally, The Base's four ways apply: money in, a loan of something, time, and use of something. A group that wants to count unequal contributions has to say up front what the difference entitles anyone to, and the honest answer is usually nothing, because the place is for everybody who helped.

4. How the place is held

One person holding it is the failure this template exists to prevent. The entity holds it, more than one person signs, and the terms are written before anything is bought.

The questions a group answers in writing, in this order:

1. What entity holds it. Legal/Lawful advises; the template does not choose.
2. Who signs, and how many signatures move money or change the arrangement.
3. What happens when somebody leaves. Repaid over what period, out of what, in what order.
4. What happens if the group ends. Who decides, what gets sold, where the money goes.
5. What happens if the group splits. The hardest one, and the one nobody writes until it is too late.

Write all five before the first payment. A group that writes them afterwards is negotiating with people who already have money in.

5. Running it

A steward keeps the place and the group decides it. The steward is a role, with hours and a scope, and it is paid or it is counted as contribution, never assumed.

A booking rule beats goodwill. Who uses it, when, for what, and who says yes. It can be loose, and it has to exist, because the alternative is that the most confident person uses it most.

House agreements come out of the Nexus work. What the place is for, what it is not for, noise, guests, children, animals, drink, cleaning, and what happens when somebody breaks one. A Hearth with no written agreements is a share house with extra people.

6. What it costs to run, and what comes back

The ongoing cost is rent or the loan, plus insurance, plus power and water, plus upkeep, plus a reserve. The reserve is the line groups skip and the one that ends Hearths, because a boiler goes and there is nothing behind it.

What comes back is the reason people stay. Food drops land here every two weeks, which takes real money off a household's grocery bill each month. Shared tools and equipment live here instead of in six garages. Events that used to cost a venue now cost nothing. For most members the monthly contribution is already paid for before anything else is counted.

7. What it unlocks

Once there is a Hearth, everything else has somewhere to be. Out of town speakers. Healing and wellbeing events. Classes. Workshops. Gatherings of every size. Depending on what the building allows, public events of the Experience Tribe kind, which bring money in rather than take it out.

It is also where the next thing starts. A group that has run a place together for a year can run almost anything together, and the Hearth is the proof it has.

8. What this template does not do

It does not choose a group's entity, and nothing in it is legal, tax or mortgage advice. It does not find a building, value one, or negotiate a lease. It does not promise anyone a return, a share, or a piece of the property, because pitching in buys access. It does not hold the money. What it does is give a group the questions that have to be answered before the first payment, in the order they have to be answered.