{"id":3513191,"date":"2025-05-28T11:33:36","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T11:33:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3513191"},"modified":"2025-05-28T11:33:36","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T11:33:36","slug":"the-many-innovative-spheres-of-organized-sharing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2025-05-28\/the-many-innovative-spheres-of-organized-sharing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Many Innovative Spheres of Organized Sharing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifteen years ago, the American group\u00a0Shareable\u00a0<\/a>filled a huge void in public consciousness when it began reporting about creative forms of sharing. Its web magazine introduced people to tool libraries, mutual aid networks, food-sharing systems, \u201csharing cities,\u201d social co-operatives, tiny houses, and other neglected forms of collaboration.<\/p>\n

Based in the Bay Area, Shareable is a worker-directed \u201cnews and action hub\u201d that, in its words, \u201cpromotes people-powered solutions for the common good.\u201d Despite a fairly small staff, the nonprofit has been a catalytic force nationally in promoting commoning and progressive change.<\/p>\n

Around 2018, however, Shareable became a victim of its own success in its reporting on commoning. Commercial news outlets stepped up their coverage of Shareable\u2019s themes, expanding social awareness of organized cooperation (hooray) \u2013 but that mainstream attention also began to eclipse Shareable\u2019s visibility as a changemaker (boo). Meanwhile, Google and Facebook revamped their digital algorithms to steer Internet users interested in sharing to more popular, mainstream websites, siphoning away a big chunk of Shareable\u2019s followers.<\/p>\n

These circumstances pushed Neal Gorenflo, Shareable\u2019s then-executive director, Tom Llewellyn, then-partnerships director, and several staff and board members to realize:\u00a0Maybe the most urgent priority should be\u00a0to organize people.<\/em><\/p>\n

Shareable decided to develop an organizing strategy with vanguard players in various fields \u2013 urban commons, tool-sharing, cooperatives, mutual aid networks \u2013 while remaining a storyteller to make sense of emerging trends. Its organizing has significantly deepened its impact.<\/p>\n

In the latest episode of my\u00a0Frontiers of Commoning\u00a0<\/em>podcast (Episode #62)<\/a>, I talk with Tom Llewellyn, now Shareable\u2019s executive director, about the group\u2019s pivot to organizing and the partnerships that are expanding organized sharing.<\/p>\n

One of Shareable\u2019s most successful gambits has to help amplify and support the work of mutual aid networks. These self-organized, homegrown systems have been indispensable during the pandemic, disasters, and precarious everyday life in distributing food and medical supplies, and hosting timebanking service exchanges.<\/p>\n

When Shareable found that a prominent mutual aid fund,\u00a0Solidarity Economy St. Louis<\/a>, didn\u2019t have a ready tool to help others build their own mutual aid projects, Shareable worked with leading players to develop a comprehensive how-to guide. Advised by author\u00a0Dean Spade<\/a>, Stephanie Rearick of\u00a0Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks<\/a>, Julian Rose of\u00a0New Economy Coalition<\/a>, and others, Shareable also hosted an online, four-week learning series,\u00a0Mutual Aid 101<\/a>, \u00a0that drew more than 2,300 online participants.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to be showing up for each other right now,\u201d said Llewellyn. \u201cLife has been rough for a lot of people. There are a lot of unseen social disasters out there, some massive, destructive othering going on.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tool-sharing\u00a0<\/a>is another area that Shareable has helped expand. \u201cSomeone once did use-case research on electric power drills,\u201d said Llewellyn, \u201cand found that the average drill got used for only about fifteen minutes in its entire lifetime. He noted that tools that are shared will be used for hours and hours, but that takes some initiative and organization.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Tools at the Oakland Tool Lending Library, in Temescal, Oakland, California. Photo by\u00a0Mx. Granger via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Again, through its how-to guides and journalism, Shareable has given fresh visibility to a little-known social innovation, \u201clibraries of things.\u201d Around the world, there are over 2,000 libraries of things, most of them volunteer-run and with annual budgets of less than $10,000. However, some tool libraries have thousands of members and thousands of items, with paid staff.<\/p>\n

Shareable is now working with a housing developer to bring the Libraries of Things concept to an affordable housing development in Houston, Texas. Residents will be able to participate in deciding what sorts of tools they want, and the Library itself will be built into a community-facing commercial space.<\/p>\n

Shareable\u2019s how-to guides<\/a>\u00a0are almost a genre unto themselves. It has produced more than 300 guidebooks to help communities thrive through sharing. They include guidebooks on seed-sharing, \u201cfreeing the soil by depaving,\u201d starting a peer-to-peer lending group, launching a repair caf\u00e9, hosting \u201cvalet bike parking\u201d at public events, and starting a hackerspace, DIY bike lanes in a city, and organizing a \u201cPermablitz\u201d (a few dozen volunteers who, in the tradition of a barn-raising, transform a suburban backyard into a micro-farm for vegetables in one day).<\/p>\n

One especially enterprising how-to guide advises people how to set up an \u201cemergency battery network\u201d so that people can share electricity when there is a blackout, natural disaster, or some other catastrophe. Solar panels and backup generators are expensive for individuals and therefore not so helpful in addressing collective needs in a time of crisis. So Shareable partnered with the self-organized, mutual aid group\u00a0People Power Battery Collective<\/a>\u00a0in Oakland, California, to demonstrate how a neighborhood can build an emergency battery network. The co-lab has led to fifteen other groups launching their own emergency battery networks.<\/p>\n

In its many projects, Shareable has shown just how diverse, creative, and consequential organized sharing can be. The power of bottom-up collaboration focused on specific needs is powerful. When modest infrastructures are created to empower people to contribute their talents, some amazing things happen.<\/p>\n

You can listen to my full interview with Tom Llewellyn\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In its many projects, Shareable has shown just how diverse, creative, and consequential organized sharing can be. The power of bottom-up collaboration focused on specific needs is powerful. When modest infrastructures are created to empower people to contribute their talents, some amazing things happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3513224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79717,213528,79720],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3513191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-economy-featured","category-society"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3513191"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3513226,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513191\/revisions\/3513226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3513224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3513191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3513191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3513191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}