CO-FUNDERS
A small co-funder cohort
Three to five foundations co-funding the 3-year horizon, ideally with overlapping geographic interest and complementary issue areas.
FOUNDATION TRACK · 3-YEAR HORIZON
FOUNDATION TRACK
Catalytic capital for the infrastructure layer the safety net keeps reinventing one program at a time.
Zion is raising $5.5M in catalytic foundation funding over a 3-year horizon to build the LP Account records primitive and seat the Mission Trust that protects it. Documentation built for program officers, not pitch decks.
01 · WHY THE FOUNDATION-TRACK ASK EXISTS
Some pieces of the build should not be on the venture meter.
The records primitive, the Trust Advisory Board, the accessibility floor — these are the parts of the company that need to be load-bearing for decades. Catalytic foundation capital lets us build them without the time pressure that venture creates.
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Records primitive — full build
LP Account v1 + v2: identity, income, immigration, housing, health, learning, benefits, plus the consent-grant subsystem and audit trail.
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Trust governance
Mission Trust seating, TAB stipends, external counsel, public Charter amendment infrastructure.
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Accessibility & localization floor
WCAG 2.2 AA across product surfaces with AAA on benefits/documents/care surfaces. Spanish translation. Pilot for two additional languages.
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Field operations & co-design
Embedded community-facing leads in pilot markets. Member co-design sessions. Partner-org onboarding playbook.
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Impact research & reporting
Outcome categories, public dashboards, annual Impact Report, third-party evaluation partnership in Year 2.
02 · HOW IT FITS WITH THE VENTURE TRACK
Two tracks. One product roadmap. No conflict by design.
FOUNDATION CAPITAL
Funds the infrastructure layer.
Records primitive, Trust governance, accessibility floor, field co-design, impact reporting. Lives entirely under the Charter; no equity is issued against it.
3-YR HORIZON · CATALYTIC
VENTURE CAPITAL
Funds the commercial surface.
OutPosts premium tiers for operators and funders. Oasis creator economy. Procurement-ready API surface. Earns commercial returns under PBC + Trust constraints.
PRE-SEED · OPEN FOR DILIGENCE
A foundation funder is funding the parts of the company that are public-goods by nature. A venture investor is funding the parts of the company that earn revenue under Charter constraints. The two do not compete for the same dollars and the two do not compete for the same outcomes; they fund different layers of the same stack.
03 · WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR FROM PROGRAM OFFICERS
Real diligence. Real partnership. No press-release deliverables.
ADVISORY
Trust Advisory Board seats
Foundation officers and the practitioners they fund are exactly the right cohort for the Trust Advisory Board. Funder-nominated TAB seats are part of the structure.
EVALUATION
A research evaluation partner
A Year-2 third-party evaluation partnership — built into the foundation budget — to validate the outcomes the Impact Report claims.
NEXT
Read the long-form. Then let’s talk.
The Foundation One-Pager and the Theory of Change are written for program officers. Nothing is gated.