A Liberatory Approach to Pay*: A Case Study in Needs-based Money Distribution

Ever wish that you didn’t have to earn a living? That your worth wasn’t defined by money? Have you wanted your financial challenges to be co-held? Do you wish you could just ask for what you needed? 

Introduction

In an evolving work landscape, traditional top-down, profit-driven and scarcity-based pay* models are increasingly being questioned. Two leading-edge organizations – Greaterthan (GT) and Nonviolent Global Liberation (NGL) – embark on an experimental joint project to reimagine how colleagues distribute resources. 

Grounded in principles of transparency, mutual care and nonviolence, this case study documents a six-month experiment where a small team from Greaterthan explores money distribution based on needs rather than work done. The goal is to learn the practices and conditions that empower team members to step into transparent, collective, and ultimately liberatory practices around money. 

Background

Nonviolent Global Liberation (NGL) has been pioneering and evolving a need-based distribution model for years, inspired by nonviolent communication principles and the work of Dominic Barter. NGL has developed a resource flow system called the Financial Gift Hub that matches resources to needs. NGL supports and facilitates this experiment.

Greaterthan (GT) had already begun to develop alternative approaches to budgeting, funding, pay and money flow in organizations, on the premise that “money makes collaboration real.” GT has made transparent financial data and salaries, practiced collective financial decision-making, and introduced a “Happy Money Story” collaborative process aimed at distributing budgets in a relational rather than quantitative way. 

Building on that foundation, NGL designed an experiment with GT to discover and explore together openings for sufficient systems for NGL’s resource flow to operate within Greaterthan’s environment. Greaterthan stepped into this to stretch into and better connect with sufficiency and trust in life, and have new embodied experiences of going back to the roots and connecting to their purposes. The team focused on two key practices:

• Decoupling Money Allocation from Work Recognition: Decoupling decisions of how much money people receive from the amount of work they did. Why is this important? To challenge and overcome the idea that we are only motivated by self-interest, and that we won’t do anything to care for others unless it can benefit us in some way; to get out of traditional work models based on extrinsic motivation of reward or punishment.
• Moving towards Allocating Money based on Material Needs: Allocating money based on each person’s material needs rather than on conventional factors like experience or who did the most work. This is to move towards uncoupling relational needs from material needs, and trying to meet relational needs – which are non-material – with money, which contributes to the degree of isolation and loneliness that we experience today.   

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The Experiment

Creating the right conditions for an experiment took some time and discernment. A joint NGL-GT project team nurtured the vision for a year, while searching for a team within Greaterthan who was willing to step into an experiment. A team was needed that not only had a consulting client generating enough income to distribute, but also enough capacity beyond service delivery to commit to an additional initiative like this. 

Finally, a team of three from Greaterthan – composed of Elena Denaro, Lyssa Adkins, and Stefan Morales – emerged to undertake a six-month experimental phase. They were stewarded by Alper Suzer and Katherina Janevski from NGL, robustly supported by Tomomi Sasaki from Greaterthan and Julia Sherbakov, and coached by Miki Kashtan. The team worked on a single client who provided a fixed monthly payment. Each month, the team would collaboratively decide how to split the fixed sum amongst themselves, based on need and independent of work that would be done that month. Then separately they would recognize each other’s contributions, surface impacts, give feedback and make requests.

Every month, for six months, the team follows a two-step process:

1. Start of month: Distributing Money Circle
The experiment team gathers for a transparent financial review, supported by NGL, where each member presents their individual needs and expenses using a spreadsheet with three levels of financial request — a model coming from years of NGL’s experimentation in resource flow distribution. This document itemizes that month’s expenses — from essential costs like rent and food to discretionary spending such as entertainment and travel — and all outside income (from other jobs or projects or other forms of support available to each person). 

Each expense is classified in 3 columns:

• Minimum: The minimum to cover basic expenses of material needs without stress.
• Restrained: An amount that attends to expenses beyond the basics, to regenerate and increase wellbeing.
• Full: The amount that allows one to live without any material stress, cover non-material needs, and fully offer your energy to the work.

During this circle, NGL supports the GT team to:

• Review each other’s financial needs.
• Ask clarifying questions (for example, to understand the “why” or underlying need behind certain expenses, or to understand including certain items and not others).
• Adjust proposed expense amounts collaboratively.
• Propose individual distributions of the available funds.
• Agree on a final distribution, after which money is allocated.

2. End of month: Recognition, Feedback and Harvest Circle:
In a world where work is recognized by money, the end-of-month Recognition, Feedback and Harvest Circle focuses on work recognition being given by specific appreciations and celebrations for each other’s work. The NGL team facilitates a dialogue for the experiment team to focus on recognizing contributions to the project and reflecting on the money distribution process. This step is critical in decoupling the notion of “payment for work” from “recognition for work,” moving toward financial allocation guided by material needs.

This circle includes two steps:

• Recognition and Feedback Circle: a space to acknowledge and recognize each other’s contributions, give each other feedback, surface impacts and/or make requests of each other.
• Harvest Circle: a space to notice and reflect on what was emerging within the experiment on the specific aspect decoupling work recognition from money distribution.

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Areas of Focus

As this experiment begins, many challenging elements begin to emerge, each revealing deeper insights into individual and collective financial practices:

What is the “minimum” I really need?

• In the Distributing Money Circle, the first order of business is to check if the available funds would meet the total of everyone's "minimum request." Yet we quickly notice that each team member comes in with different interpretations of “minimum” — from a percentage of the full need to all recurring expenses, from only material necessities to emotional or psychological well being, from including immediate expenses to saving for future plans. 
• Thankfully, NGL has been experimenting with need-based money distribution for years, and has a specific guideline: a “minimum” would allow you to cover the basic expenses of your living without stress (e.g. about having the electricity cut off) and without needing to do something else to increase the amount of money you have access to (e.g. take a job, ask your parent for support). 
• Applying this definition takes some time, since “living without stress” may feel different for everyone and is not obvious from the beginning. Here, team dialogue with support from NGL facilitators are important to understanding what is stressful vs. without stress for each, as NGL guides each to articulate their material needs and ask about others’ needs. Through dialogue, the team aligned on a shared understanding of “minimum.”

What is the true need behind how I spend money?

The process pushes team members to distinguish between surface-level expenses (the “what”) and the underlying needs (the “why”). For example, rather than focusing on specific expenses like rent or gym or travel, the team explores the deeper needs for rest, reconnection, or creative inspiration. Already in the beginning of the experiment, we see this approach helping the team feel closer to each other’s lives and needs, and, if needed, opening the possibility for less costly ways to meet the need.

How do I sit with the discomfort of needing to request more money than others? To what extent can I stretch into receiving what we decide together to allocate to me based on material need? 

Sharing detailed personal finances leads to moments of pretty intense discomfort, such as the vulnerability of someone’s request being much higher – or much lower – than others’. With the level of trust already present and tight facilitation and holding of the group, this vulnerability becomes a pathway for resources to flow to needs without resentment or overstretch. 

What cultivates willingness to receive less money? 

Money is the conventional way in which work contribution is recognized and is an impactful way to recognize work contribution; but this experiment was all about separating money from recognition, and moving that money to need rather than to recognize the work being done... which raised the question -- what are the reasons that someone might actually be willing to receive much less than they usually do because it is allocated based on material need and they have access to funds through savings or income elsewhere? There were many months in which we did not allocate funds purely based on material needs, and instead experimented with what minimum would need to be received in order for the team to be able to continue working together. This is aligned with one of our agreements that this experiment would not impair the team’s ability to function and a principle in nonviolence to make decisions based on willingness. We viewed material needs as a sliding scale rather than an either / or which was essential in being able to take small steps towards our vision of decoupling money distribution from work recognition. A part of this allocation towards material needs is a move in the longer term to meet relational needs the way they’re best met: with people! And not money.  

What made it possible for this team to undertake this process?

Some of the openings that make this possible in an organization not committed to deeply aligning with principles of nonviolence. 

Not every organization or every team would be able - or willing - to go through an experiment like this, committed to nonviolence in their work and pay. What was present in this team? The capacity of radical non-judgement, willingness to allocate based on material needs and not fairness, the courage to ask for information that is usually hidden and to lean into trust. Facilitation of meetings that aligned decision making with willingness and based on what was within capacity for people. This is not an exhaustive list… There were also many capacities already present in the team that made this kind of experimentation do-able and within a zone of strategic discomfort rather than in a red zone. Having a team from NGL stewarding the project in which a member had already had seven years of experience in doing this, facilitation and tight holding of the process (preparing sheets with details of financial requests for the next month sent and reviewed to each team member ahead of time, reminders and prompts sent to reflect on feedback and recognition wanting to be given ahead of time, meetings in the calendar etc) all contributed to this being able to move forward. 

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* “pay” is referenced here as shorthand, but part of the experiment is shifting what is traditionally thought of as “pay” toward flowing and distributing resources, both monetary and non-monetary

Past contributors to this project that were core to getting it off the ground after about a year were Dlyn Fairfax, Mareike Haustein and Carimar Barrientos from NGL. and J.D. Nasaw from GT.

This article is Part 1: The Experiment Structure. At the end of the 6-month experiment, we will share more about the lessons learned – for participants, facilitators, and for other organizations. Stay tuned!

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Header photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash