The Model
A different way to fund a community.
Canmore Legacy is not a fundraising campaign. It is a structural funding model designed to turn everyday economic activity into permanent community support.
A new kind of community infrastructure
Communities usually think of infrastructure as physical things: buildings, roads, and equipment. But there is also financial infrastructure--the systems that determine how money flows, how reliably it arrives, and what can be planned around.
Canmore Legacy is designed as financial infrastructure: a system that quietly, continuously generates funding without requiring constant campaigns or emergency appeals.
How this complements traditional fundraising
It is designed to run quietly in the background, creating a steady, ongoing funding stream that exists alongside campaigns and events. In practice, this means communities can continue to rally, fundraise, and mobilize when something matters — while also benefiting from a structural funding source that never needs to be restarted.
Fundraising
- Starts and stops
- Depends on constant effort
- Difficult to plan around
- Competes with many other causes
Structural funding
- Runs continuously
- Does not need to be restarted
- Predictable and budgetable
- Grows automatically with participation
Why scale matters
This model does not depend on any single large donor or any single campaign. Its strength comes from many small, ordinary decisions made by many participants.
Each individual contribution may be modest. But at scale, the system becomes a meaningful and reliable funding pillar for the community.
Sustainability by design
Most funding systems rely on continued enthusiasm, continued attention, or continued crisis. This one does not.
- It is tied to everyday economic activity
- It does not depend on trends or news cycles
- It continues as long as people use essential services
- It becomes more stable as participation grows
Could this work in other towns?
The model is designed to be structural, not local. While Canmore is the first implementation, the same approach could be adapted to other communities with different anchor institutions and priorities.
The specifics may vary. The underlying idea--turning ordinary economic activity into permanent community funding--does not.
The quiet difference
This is not fast money. It is patient money. It grows slowly, compounds quietly, and keeps working long after the excitement of any single campaign fades.