The Buy Nothing Academy
A self-paced online course to help you become a Community Builder!
We’re honored to have you join us here to learn more about how to build and also participate in a strong Buy Nothing gift economy.
This course is for anyone who would like to be a better gift economist, or participant in a sharing community, whether it’s online or in person. We’ve written this course as a means to provide you with background on what flourishing gift economies can look and feel like, and how you can help to build and sustain an equitable and inclusive gift economy in your community. We’ll provide you with tools to use, like posts you’re welcome to use in your giving communities, and ideas for sharing creatively, like in-person events, so you and your neighbors can weave even tighter connections with one another, all in celebration of sharing the abundance mindset that is possible in every community.
These lessons were written by Rebecca Rockefeller, Liesl Clark and Jennifer Lansdowne.
This course is for anyone who would like to be a better gift economist, or participant in a sharing community, whether it’s online or in person. We’ve written this course as a means to provide you with background on what flourishing gift economies can look and feel like, and how you can help to build and sustain an equitable and inclusive gift economy in your community. We’ll provide you with tools to use, like posts you’re welcome to use in your giving communities, and ideas for sharing creatively, like in-person events, so you and your neighbors can weave even tighter connections with one another, all in celebration of sharing the abundance mindset that is possible in every community.
These lessons were written by Rebecca Rockefeller, Liesl Clark and Jennifer Lansdowne.
How to Use this Course
Each lesson will include the lesson itself, links to outside resources, a roundup of links at the end of each lesson, and most lessons will have an activity, too. Any links embedded in a lesson will also be in the links list at the end of the lesson for you to click through after you’ve finished reading, if that’s easier for you to do. The activities are all optional. If you wish to listen instead of read, check your smartphone or tablet for the built-in Accessibility settings. Many laptops and mobile devices provide a Text-to-Speech feature to have your device read to you.
Expectations & Communication
There are volunteers available to answer your questions in the comments of this online course. If you’re looking for something you can’t find in this course, you can head to our Help Center with your question. There are two binding contracts provided for all interactions among our community participants. The Community Commitment is specifically for the BuyNothing app. The Community Agreement, which was created by the Equity Team, is for all other Buy Nothing communities. We recommend you read both of them, but please be sure to familiarize yourself with at least one of them to guide your connections during this course. And finally, for fun, have a listen to our podcast, where we bring you stories from exceptional Community Builders, Admins and participants of Buy Nothing neighborhoods. It'll give you a window into the real magic that happens there.
7 Self-Paced Lessons
In this lesson you will learn about the Buy Nothing Project Mission Statement, Community Commitment, and Community Agreement.
In this lesson you will learn what a Gift Economy looks like.
In this lesson you will learn how to build your local gift economy.
In this lesson you will learn that stuff comes and goes, but people are forever.
In this lesson we get real about diversity.
In this lesson you will learn about a more equitable and accessible sharing experience.
In this lesson you will learn it's time to just start the sharing.