Our Purpose
HAC-ES exists because the economy of Eugene-Springfield — like most American economies — works well for a minority of people and badly for the majority, and nobody has ever built an institution specifically designed to change that at the community level.
Not a charity. Not a government program. Not a startup. A cooperative — owned by its members, governed democratically, powered by AI, and structurally incapable of extracting value for private benefit.
The deepest purpose is to prove that a different kind of economy is possible, right here, with the people and institutions that already exist. HAC-ES is not asking anyone to believe in a theory. It is building the evidence base — one member matched, one worker trained, one cooperative formed at a time — that the theory is right.
— HAC-ES Articles of Incorporation, Preamble (2026)
The Four Problems We Are Solving
These four problems are distinct in their mechanics, but they are one problem in its effects: people's economic lives are more precarious than their productivity warrants, and the institutions that exist were not built to change that.
1. Work doesn't pay enough
Fifty years of productivity gains went to capital, not workers. Lane County is a 57%-below-average-wage economy. People work full time and cannot cover basic needs. The 40-hour week is an 85-year-old political settlement that was never renegotiated when technology made workers 4× more productive.
2. Basic needs are fragmented and humiliating
The systems that exist to help people are organized around bureaucratic categories, not around the human being who needs help. They require people to re-prove their worthiness over and over. They don't talk to each other. They don't learn. HAIS builds the connective tissue those systems were never designed to have.
3. Wealth accumulates upward and doesn't recirculate
Markets unconstrained by democratic norms extract value from communities and concentrate it elsewhere — in shareholder returns, in executive compensation, in financial instruments that have no relationship to anyone's actual life. The Human Asset Fund is the counter-institution: a pool of capital that, by design, cannot leave the community.
4. The economy treats people as costs, not assets
The entire framing of neoliberal economics sees workers as inputs to be minimized. HAC-ES starts from the opposite premise — grounded in Market Humanism — that people are the economy's primary asset, and their wellbeing is not a social cost but an economic generator.
How We Tell the Story: Three Movements
HAC-ES is not a protest organization. It is not trying to burn the system down. It is doing something subtler and ultimately more durable: it is demonstrating, within the existing system, that the existing system's own logic supports doing things differently.
The story of how we do that has three movements.
Movement 01
We use the system's own tools.
HAC-ES incorporates as a cooperative under Oregon law. It applies for grants through normal channels. It partners with EWEB, SVdP, Lane Workforce Partnership — institutions that already exist and already have relationships with the people we serve. We work with city and county government. We are not outside the system. We are a new participant in it, operating on different principles, competing on outcomes.
This matters because it is the only strategy that doesn't require a prior political victory to begin. We don't need the right people in office. We don't need a new law passed. We need a cooperative charter, a Governing Council, and the first fifty founding members.
Movement 02
We demonstrate what the system is missing.
When HAIS matches a member to a food pantry and a job training program and an EWEB rebate in the same intake conversation, and a government agency would have required three separate applications and three separate eligibility determinations — that is a demonstration, not a critique.
When a worker cooperative incubated through HAC-ES survives five years because its workers have ownership and governance rights, while a conventional business with similar fundamentals fails — that is evidence. We are building the case, slowly and empirically, that the system's own goals — employment, stability, community health — are better achieved through our model.
The Desperation Premium Index is our primary proof point: members whose basic needs are secured make better employment decisions and achieve better wages. The data proves that the Human Asset Fund's basic needs floor isn't charity — it's an economic investment with a measurable return.
Movement 03
We use the evidence to change the system's rules.
The Middle-Out Policy Scorecard. The 32-hour living wage employer network. The testimony before City and County planning bodies. All of this is the moment where demonstration becomes advocacy.
We are not asking politicians to believe in a theory. We are showing them data from Lane County, about Lane County residents, produced by an institution operating in their jurisdiction. That is a different kind of political ask. It is much harder to dismiss.
Oregon led on minimum wage. Oregon led on paid leave. Oregon led on clean energy. HAC-ES is building the community-scale demonstration that makes Lane County — and Oregon — ready to lead on the next generation of economic reform.
The Characters in the Story
The story of HAC-ES is not a story about an institution. It is a story about members. Real people in Eugene-Springfield whose lives change in specific, measurable ways because an institution was built that treated them as assets rather than problems.
Someone comes to HAC-ES with three urgent needs. They are matched within 48 hours. They find employment through the cooperative network. They reduce their energy bill by $800 a year through EWEB programs they didn't know existed. Two years later, they vote at a Governing Council assembly on the policy priorities of the institution that served them. That arc — from need to agency — is the whole theory of change, told in one member's experience.
The system change story is slower and less dramatic, and that is fine. Gardens grow slowly. The point is that the roots are being laid now, and the evidence is accumulating.
The Long Game
HAC-ES thinks in decades, not quarters. The founding cohort is planting roots that will take years to become visible above ground. Here is what the growth looks like.
Roots planted
First 500 members. First Governing Council. First HAIS deployment. First cooperative incubation. First grant. The evidence starts accumulating.
Demonstration visible
First Desperation Premium Index data. First worker cooperatives launched. First full-year Transparency Report. First Middle-Out Policy Scorecard. The case begins to prove itself.
Evidence drives advocacy
Three years of outcome data in hand. Testimony before government bodies with Lane County proof. Policy proposals grounded in demonstrated results. The rules begin to change.
Model replicates
HAC-ES Federation — the model exported to other Oregon communities, with HAIS and governance infrastructure shared across the network. Eugene-Springfield as proof of concept for the state.
Ready to be part of the proof of concept?