Consulting Services for Collective Land Projects 

Land in Common is excited to support the wider community of collective land projects by offering sliding-scale, hourly consulting services. 

Whether you’re part of a newer project, a longstanding land-based community, or a group of people dreaming about building a future together on land, we offer tools, knowledge, and practices we’ve honed over the last 15 years supporting cooperative, land-based communities. 

Our technical support covers:  

Cooperative Structures

  • Exploring a variety of land ownership and community models, and choosing one that best suits your community 
  • Understanding the mechanics of community land trusts (ground leases, separation of buildings and land, equity limitations on housing, etc…) 
  • Planning for the next generation: building durable structures to keep the land in community holdership for the long-term 

Land Justice 

  • Working through pathways towards Indigenous land return 
  • Land sharing and redistributing land to BIPOC frontline communities
  • Enacting equitable and effective sliding-scale payment structures 

Funding

  • Setting up community financing  
  • Buying out bank loans with community-based lending

Relationships

  • Deepening practices for engaging the emotional and interpersonal dynamics of cooperative and collective land projects
  • Developing community restorative justice processes

Qualifications:

Since 2008, we’ve been learning by doing – experimenting with models for cooperative land tenure, making many mistakes and discoveries along the way. Wild Mountain Cooperative, an intentional community in Greene, Maine has been our “living laboratory” for honing structures and practices that support thriving and equitable collective land projects. We’re community organizers, activists, farmers, and land stewards. We’re not lawyers or accountants, and our advice shouldn’t be considered a substitute for consulting with a lawyer or accountant. 

Payment: 

The first hour of consulting is free for everyone. 

For subsequent hours, we ask for a sliding scale payment of $0 to $200 per hour, based on the amount of class privilege that folks in your project have (see this helpful resource if you’re not sure what your class identity/experience is). 

Land in Common staff members make $37.21 per hour. People with privilege paying more than this supports our ability to offer this same service at no charge for those directly impacted by land injustice. We’re grateful for your solidarity! 

We offer consulting and support at no charge to any project that is: 

  • led by majority BIPOC or poor people, or
  • on a serious pathway toward a landback project, with an identified Wabanaki entity that is interested in the land, or
  • unambiguously committed to decommodifying the land

We encourage people who are decommodifying their land who have a lot of class privilege to still consider making a donation. It’s not expected, but it helps us offer this service for free to more people!