People often ask us two questions. How much does hum cost? And what is your business model?
The short answer to the first is: nothing. hum is free for community groups, partners and funders. The longer answer is about how we keep it that way, and where we want to get to.
There are two parts to that answer: how things work now, and where we want to be in future.
Who we are
The Wellbeing Protocol, the organisation behind hum, is a not-for-profit social enterprise. We are led by our values, and we are building civic infrastructure: the shared systems that let communities decide how money is spent on their own wellbeing.
That does not mean money doesn't matter. Communities, partners and funders rely on hum working every day. They need it to be secure, to be supported when something goes wrong, and to keep improving. That takes an organisation that can pay its people and plan more than a few months ahead.
So we need a business model. Not to make a profit, but to keep showing up for the people who use hum, and to keep growing.
One commitment sits underneath everything else: the software will always be free for community groups and partners working to make the world a better place.
Now: free for everyone
Today, hum costs nothing to use. Community groups, partners and funders all use it for free. Three things make that possible.
Grants and donations. Foundations, government agencies and individuals who believe in what we are building have backed us with generous grants. That support has carried us this far, and we are grateful for it.
Building software now costs far less. The biggest change in the last 12 months has been AI. Tools that help write, test and maintain code have cut the cost of building software dramatically. We can now build and run software that is secure, robust and available anywhere in the world for a fraction of what it would have cost even a year ago. For a small team, that changes what is possible.
Paid set-up work. Some funders and partners pay us to help them set up pilots: designing the fund, training stewards, configuring the app and supporting the first few months. That consulting income helps cover some costs. It also keeps us close to how hum works in real communities.
The future: standing on our own feet
This mix works today, but it has limits. Grants are short-term and hard to win. Consulting is valuable, but it ties our growth to how many projects our team can run at once. Neither lets us grow at the pace the need demands.
We want to reach a point where we no longer rely on grants and consulting. Where hum pays for itself, so we can support our users reliably and reach many more communities around the world.
At scale, several sustainable models open up. Two stand out.
A small fee from larger funders. The most likely model is a small percentage, perhaps 1 to 2%, from larger funders (e.g. foundations or government agencies) who put money through hum.
Here is why we think that is fair. Getting money to the communities that need it most is expensive. Funders spend heavily on finding groups, assessing applications, managing grants and chasing reports. Communities carry a lot of that cost too. hum puts decisions with the people closest to them and keeps a live record of where every dollar goes. That saves funders time and money, and it reaches groups they struggle to reach. We believe that is real value, and that larger funders will see a small share of it as a fair price.
Community groups and partners will not pay for the software.
Insight, with permission. Over time, hum will build a picture of what communities choose to fund and what happens as a result. Combined and anonymised, that picture could help funders and policymakers make better strategy and investment decisions. We would only ever do this with the permission of the communities and partners involved.
Our promise on data
We want to be very clear about this. We will never sell a community's information to a third party without that community's express permission.
A community's record of what it decided, funded and valued belongs to that community. It is not a product for us to sell.
Guarding against our own power
We know something uncomfortable. If hum succeeds, the organisation behind it becomes powerful. A lot of money and a lot of community knowledge would pass through systems we control. Good intentions today are no guarantee of good behaviour in future years, under different leadership or different pressures.
So our goal is to give that power away. We want hum to run on fully decentralised web3 infrastructure, so that it becomes a protocol: a set of open, shared rules that no single organisation controls, including us. Once that happens, nobody can quietly change the rules, lock communities in or sell them out. It cannot be corrupted.
For a number of reasons, it is too early to do that now. That is a story for a separate post.
How you can help
Funding for social good infrastructure is hard to find. Most funders back projects and programmes. Far fewer back the plumbing that makes many projects possible.
If you are a funder who wants to help us reach a sustainable future and grow our impact faster, we would love to talk. Get in touch at info@hum.community