A different way forward · your own family co-op
Your own family co-op. Caring for each other. A different way forward.
Your founding share is your seat at the lodge. Your hours and dollars build the pool. The pool pays for the respite, the home modifications, and the age-in-place credits a member needs — today, and across the rest of life. When the work the cooperative does keeps members out of high-cost institutional care, the surplus comes back to the people who did the work. There is no shareholder. There is no extraction layer.
What we do · in one paragraph
We make it easy to create. Valuable to do — protecting your future, and applying yourself thoughtfully to your community and neighbors. That is the main thing this is.
Your own family co-op — owned by you and the people you live among — instead of an insurer that stopped insuring, an agency that keeps 40 cents of every dollar, or a payer with a conflict at the moment that matters most. The Hearth Mutual is the family co-op's own mutual aid pool: what you contribute to, what pays out for you.
About 70% of people over 65 will need long-term care. Only 11% carry insurance for it, because the market collapsed — premiums spiraled, insurers stopped selling, and what's left is mostly hybrid life products that pay your estate after you die. Medicare doesn't cover custodial care. Medicaid kicks in after you've spent down to nothing. Most families end up paying out of pocket or burning out a daughter.
The cooperative is what's left. When members pool contributions, protect each other through their own labor, and capture the cost-savings of prevention as patronage, the form works — Mondragon's Lagun-Aro has done it for sixty years. We are building it for the part of life Mondragon didn't have to: the long arc of caring for someone you love, in the place you live, with the people you know.
How the digital work gets done
Both ends of it — the founding paperwork that creates your family co-op, and the ongoing paperwork that runs it. Each agent has only the context you've consented to share. Every action they draft gets your attest, or your Medical Director's, before anything submits.
Always-on care navigator. Answers what's possible, surfaces what's next, points at the right human when one is needed. Already live across every surface.
Handles the cooperative declaration the moment you decide. Your founding share, the bylaws acceptance, your member registration, the lodge enrollment with the federation. You declare; it files.
Finds the public dollars you already qualify for — HSA/FSA, Medicaid waivers, VA Aid & Attendance, WA Cares, Credit for Caring. Most families never claim what's theirs. This one does the looking.
Drafts the Letter of Medical Necessity from your situation — the diagnosis context, the documented need, the wellness items eligible under IRS §213(d). The Medical Director reviews and signs.
Captures wishes through CareGoals; drafts advance-directive sections you and your family refine on your own pace. The doula carries the wishes — never the payer, never the platform.
Sees what your circle offered, what you need this week, and surfaces the pattern matches no human node could see — Marcus has a truck, Lin is a nurse, Mrs. Garcia needs wound care she can't get to, and Marcus drives past her place Thursdays. AI as pattern-spotter, not matchmaker.
Manages your provident account: contributions in, service credits out, patronage flowing back when prevention work avoided a cost. The ledger that proves the cooperative form is honest.
You stay the decider on everything that matters. The agents draft, scan, file, surface. You — and the Medical Director, and the doula, and the cooperative's bylaws — attest. The reason "we do all the digital work" can be a real promise is that the work is done by agents that have to ask permission, not by employees you can't see.
What membership gives you
Said in plain language, by the people building it.
The work you do today — sitting with Mom, the wound check, the ride to the appointment — has a real actuarial value: future costs that don't happen because you showed up. Some fraction of that avoided cost comes back to you today, on your ComfortCard. Not at retirement. Not at year-end. Today, for today's work. → Calculate yours
The cooperative's take is 8–15% — not the 40–50% an agency keeps. The dollars you spend on care go to the care, not the corporation around it.
A real primary-care relationship through your membership — no copays, no prior auths for the simple things. A doctor on the cooperative's side, not a payer's gatekeeper.
The Medical Director writes Letters of Medical Necessity that make wellness — yoga, supplements, gym, meditation — HSA/FSA eligible. Pre-tax dollars for the things that keep you well.
Hours given are hours owed back. The time bank settles on your ComfortCard. Reciprocity, not transaction — and not charity.
Respite when a family member is dying. Grab bars, ramps, the things that keep you home. Age-in-place credits across the long arc of life — paid from the Mutual aid pool.
Learn the skills that will always be human — care, judgment, relationship, attention. Protection for a job even when there are none left from our previous training.
When the end of life comes, your circle holds you. The doula carries your wishes. The Medical Director attests your decisions. The Mutual pays for the home modifications and the care. You die in your own bed, held by the people who love you — not in a hospital room, not in a nursing home. An exit strategy that is humane and loving — the way M&A exits should have always been.
01 · the architecture
Each one does a real job. Together they make the form.
A one-time membership investment that buys your seat, your vote, and your stake. Not a security. Not a donation. The cooperative form's actual unit of ownership.
Every hour you give, every neighbor you check on, every paid shift logged. Two lanes that never merge — Care Tokens at par for mutual aid, dollars for paid care. Your contribution to the cooperative, recorded honestly.
The mutual aid pool. Members contribute monthly. Reserves build. The pool pays for respite, home modifications, age-in-place credits, caregiver support during a long illness, and the things a member or a family needs across the long arc of a life. Service credits — not cash — so the structure stays clean.
The original move. The work you do today — sitting with Mom, the wound check, the ride to the appointment, the meal that lets her stay home — has a real actuarial value: the nursing home that didn't happen, the fall that didn't happen, the ER visit that didn't happen. Some fraction of that avoided cost comes back to you today, on your ComfortCard. Not at retirement. Not at year-end. Today, for today's work.
02 · how it works
Four questions; five minutes. The picture builds itself. Nothing leaves your browser. Care Compass →
You become a member-owner of co-op.care. Your founding share buys your seat at the lodge.
Hours given. Dollars to the pool. Neighbors checked on. All on the ledger.
Start with 10 free stickers — enough for the people closest to you. Ask for 30 when you're ready. Fund 300 when you're a Health Community Leader for the block. Same mechanic, your own pace.
When the people you brought in do real work — give hours, contribute to the pool — a small fraction credits your patronage. Capped, vested, decayed. No empire, no extraction. Everyone owns.
03 · your stickers
How members spread the door — and how the cooperative stays a cooperative. The mechanic is the same at every tier; the pace is yours.
With your founding share. Enough for the people closest to you — your siblings, your block, your church, your circle. Each one encoded with your ref code.
When you've handed out your 10 and want more, you ask. We talk for ten minutes — who you're reaching, how the conversation is landing, what's working.
When you're ready to be a Health Community Leader for the block, the office, the church, the network. Every dollar covers the printing and the program — no margin to a printer, no logistics company in the middle.
What earns patronage is the work the downstream member does, not the tier you bought. A tap that doesn't lead to a contributing member earns nothing. A neighbor you handed a 10-sticker pack to who does the real work can earn far more than a 300-tier sponsor whose conversations didn't land. Capped, vested, decaying after a few years. The federation captures a portion for cross-Hearth solidarity.
It looks like network marketing from the outside. From the inside, it is structurally the opposite: cooperative patronage on real work, returned to the people who did it.
04 · this is not new
Mondragon's Lagun-Aro · since 1966
Mondragon's worker-owners retire on 80% of working salary — 60% from Spanish social security, 40% from Lagun-Aro, the cooperative's own member-owned mutual welfare entity. It also pays out for sickness, unemployment, maternity, and healthcare. Sixty years compounded. It works.
Before Lagun-Aro, the form was the friendly society — the 18th- and 19th-century mutual aid pools that ordinary working people built to cover funeral expenses, sickness benefits, widow support. In US law the form is the fraternal benefit society, chartered and regulated by state insurance departments under the "lodge system" (a federation of local self-governing branches). Knights of Columbus, Modern Woodmen, Thrivent — they all operate this way today. We are applying the form to the place it is most needed — care, in your neighborhood — with AI doing the coordination work that used to take an office.
05 · stated plainly
What is real today, what is the proposed structure
The Hearth Mutual is the proposed financial structure of co-op.care: a fraternal benefit society under IRC §501(c)(8), chartered as a lodge system, with the mutual aid pool, the patronage logic, and the prevention dividend as designed above. The final form depends on state insurance department review, actuarial sign-off, and securities/cooperative counsel. We are building the substrate before the regulatory wrapper because the work has to be real first.
What is real today: the cooperative entity (Colorado LCA, in good standing), the technology (CareOS, Sage, the care ledger), the founding-member opportunity, and the founding-share mechanism. Membership is voluntary, the founding share is refundable on exit, and your contributions to the pool will be governed by the Hearth Mutual's bylaws once they are filed.
Tell us a little. We'll follow up personally to walk you into your family co-op — the founding share, the assessment, the first conversation. The sticker tier is something we work out together once you're in.
We'll reach out within a day to walk you into the cooperative — the founding share, the assessment, and the first conversation.
Sources
Mondragon's Lagun-Aro (the 60-year precedent). IRS guidance on fraternal benefit societies (§501(c)(8)). AALTCI 2025 LTC insurance facts (the market gap this fills). Cooperative patronage refunds — Co-op Mastery (OSU). The Hearth Mutual is co-op.care's own proposed structure; final form pending state regulatory review.