The commons sold to cover the shortfall
Every sale funds another year, every sale is defensible, and the thing being sold is what made the community possible.
What it looks like
- An operating shortfall has been closed by a sale more than once.
- Nobody can say how many saleable assets are left.
- The agreements say nothing about which resources may not be sold.
- A sale is described as releasing a non-core asset, and nobody defines core.
Why it is hard to see
Because no individual sale is the mistake. Each one is a reasonable answer to a real problem: the roof needs doing, the programme is running at a loss, and there is a field nobody uses. Selling it is prudent. It is prudent again three years later.
The pattern is the failure, and a pattern is not something that appears on an agenda. Nobody proposes let us fund operations from capital for three decades. They propose selling a field, once, and then the situation recurs.
Because the alternative is worse this year. A community that refuses to sell has to cut something visible — a programme, a role, a subsidy somebody depends on — in front of the people affected. The community that sells has a slightly smaller commons and an unchanged year. Anyone who has sat in both meetings knows which is harder.
And because it is usually disclosed. This is not embezzlement or concealment. The Findhorn Foundation’s audited accounts state it plainly: “We have for over 30 years sold non-core assets to enable the Foundation’s work to continue in spite of financial deficits.” The information was public the entire time. What was missing was not disclosure. It was anybody reading thirty separate defensible decisions as one trajectory.
What to check
Calculate the run rate once. Of last year’s costs, how much was covered by something that will not recur — a sale, a legacy, a grant, a draw on reserves? That single figure is the diagnosis, and most communities have never produced it.
Then count what is left, and price it. A community closing a €40,000 annual gap by selling assets, holding perhaps €120,000 of saleable land, has at most three years — fewer once the cost of selling comes out, and fewer again if any of it is restricted. The count of parcels is not the number, because they are rarely worth the same. Stated as a figure in a meeting, that ends a conversation which has circled for a decade.
Ask what “non-core” means. It is the phrase that does the work in every one of these decisions, and it is almost never defined. If nobody can say which assets are core, the category is doing no filtering at all.
If it is already happening
Separate the two questions, because they get answered together and must not be. Can we afford this model? is one decision. What should we sell? is another. Answering the second first is exactly how thirty years passes.
Raise the tier. The cheapest structural fix available: funding an operating shortfall from capital requires a decision at the constitutional level, not an operational one. This does not forbid selling. It makes selling a decision rather than a default, which is what it stops being when it happens annually.
Consider rehoming rather than releasing. Findhorn’s own accounts show the other route alongside the sales — the Sanctuary project transferred to Park Ecovillage Trust, Wikies Wood gifted to Findhorn Hinterland Trust, and discussions about “selling non-core assets into the community.” An asset moved into another community body is out of the organisation’s balance sheet but still in community hands. It is a materially different outcome from an open-market sale, and worth pursuing before the market one.
What prevents it
A register that records, for every commons resource, whether it may be sold at all — and a rule that operating shortfalls are not funded from capital without a constitutional decision. A community land trust does this structurally by putting land beyond the reach of the operating entity entirely, which is the strongest version and not available to everyone.
Sources & further reading
- 1 RCOS stress test — Commons Privatization through Land Sales — the specification this page puts into plain language
- 2 Findhorn Foundation — Trustees' Annual Report, year ended 31 March 2024 — audited accounts, Scottish Charity SC007233 — the thirty-year statement and the asset transfers
- 3 Owning, leasing, renting — land trusts and ground leases — the structures that put land beyond an operating entity
Written by EcoHubs members, with AI assistance for drafting and editing, and reviewed by a person before publication. Facts are checked against the sources listed; anything we could not verify is marked. How this is written
The specification
This page is the plain-language version. RCOS publishes the stress test itself — the failure pattern, what is being tested, and what a compliant community would have in place.
RCOS stress test — economy-resources/commons-privatization-through-land-sales
Terms used here
- Reserve fund
- Money saved each month against future major works. A community with enviably low dues is often one that is not saving, and the bill arrives later.
- Agreements
- The written rules a community has consented to. Distinct from values: agreements say what happens, and what follows when it does not.
- Special levy
- A one-off charge on every household for work the regular budget cannot cover. The bill that tests whether a community's finances were real.
- Community land trust
- A non-profit holds land permanently and leases it to residents who own their buildings, separating the two so homes stay affordable after the first sale.
These travel together
Failures are rarely alone. If this one is familiar, check the others from the same lesson before concluding you have found the whole problem.
- Finances nobody can inspect
Not hidden, exactly — just held by two people, reported in summary, and never actually examined by anyone else.
- Contribution that stops being shared
Some members pay their way out of the work — reasonably, one at a time — until the rota is done by whoever cannot afford not to.